Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Aaron and Moses
Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead
This week, the world lost Bob Weir, the rhythm guitarist and co-leader of the Grateful Dead.
Jerry Garcia died in 1995, when I was just seven years old, so for me, Weir was the face of the Grateful Dead. I first saw him perform live at the Beacon Theatre in 2003 when I was fifteen, a night that changed my life. I saw Bobby countless times after that, with both his solo projects and with nearly every post-Garcia incarnation of the band—The Dead, Furthur, Dead & Company, and more.
He was the youngest member of the Grateful Dead, often called “the junior guitarist.” Reflecting on his passing this week, I remarked to a friend how difficult it must have been to share the stage with Jerry Garcia, a once-in-a-century musical icon, night after night. Although Weir wrote and sang some of the Dead’s most beloved songs, including “Truckin’,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Playin’ in the Band,” and was widely seen as the band’s “rock star,” he never quite captured the hearts and imaginations of Deadheads in the way Garcia did.
In a sense, Weir was the Aaron to Garcia’s Moses.
In this week’s Torah portion, Vaera, we read of Moses and Aaron imploring Pharaoh to free the Israelites from the bonds of Egyptian slavery. Moses is the towering figure of our tradition—the prophet who speaks with God face to face, the one who split the sea and ascended Mount Sinai. Aaron, by contrast, is often seen as secondary: Moses’ spokesman, his partner, the one who stands slightly to the side of greatness.
And yet, they did not see themselves that way.
When the Torah speaks of Moses and Aaron together, sometimes it says “Moses and Aaron,” and sometimes “Aaron and Moses.” In Exodus 6:26, the Torah calls them “Aaron and Moses,” and in the very next verse, their names are reversed. Rashi, the great medieval commentator, explains that the order of their names changes because neither brother was greater than the other. They were equal in all respects and most importantly, they understood themselves to be equal. Although Moses was the greatest of all prophets, he did not view himself as being greater than his brother. Moses saw his leadership as inseparable from Aaron’s.
And so too it was with Bobby and Jerry. In a 1981 interview, Garcia said:
“There are ideas that Weir has that I would never have had. And in fact, maybe only he has. And that’s his unique value—he’s an extraordinarily original player, in a world full of people who sound like each other…there’s a lot of our playing together that ends up having an interesting complementary quality, because we’re both so different from each other. It’s neat—it makes it fun.”
So much of what made Jerry great was playing with Bobby. His idiosyncratic guitar style allowed Garcia to soar. Moses could not have been Moses without Aaron. Jerry could not have been Jerry without Bobby. And just as Aaron’s presence allowed Moses’ vision to unfold, Bob Weir’s rhythm and creativity allowed the magic of the Grateful Dead to endure for six decades.
Greatness is rarely the work of one person alone. Moses needed Aaron. Garcia needed Weir. We all need our partners, the people whose gifts complement our own, whose presence allows our best work to emerge. True greatness is about recognizing that we cannot do it alone.
In that sense, and so many others, Bob Weir was extraordinary. May his memory endure as a blessing.