EXCLUSIVE: Grateful Dead Legend Reveals 'Why I Was Booted From the Band'
A Grateful Dead legend has explained why he was booted from the band and what led to the fallout.
Feb. 20 2026, Published 6:00 a.m. ET
The Grateful Dead's long, strange trip nearly ended early when Jerry Garcia booted Bob Weir from the band, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Weir – who recently died at age 78, 30 years after Garcia's death at 53 – recalled Garcia felt Weir's shortcomings on the rhythm guitar "hog-tied" the band's music.
The 1968 ouster also included the band's keyboard player, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and lasted for a "few months," Weir recalled.
Weir Felt Musically Inferior
Jerry Garcia felt Bob Weir's rhythm guitar was 'hog-tied' during the Grateful Dead's early years.
In a 1992 Grateful Dead Guide blog post, the late Rock & Roll Hall of Famer wrote the band's fellow founding members Garcia and Phil Lesh felt Weir and McKernan weren't keeping up musically.
"We were the junior musicians in the band, and Jerry and Phil in particular thought that we were sort of holding things back," Weir wrote.
"The music wasn't able to get as free because it was hog-tied by our playing abilities, which was kind of true."
According to Weir, he sent himself to the woodshed and concentrated on improving his skills.
Weir Admits Tough Chapter
Phil Lesh agreed with Garcia that Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan and Weir were not keeping up musically in 1968.
"It wasn't the best time of my life," he wrote in a 2011 blog post on the Dead site. "I kept working on guitar and singing. I was thinking about joining another band, but I figured first things first – I oughta woodshed a bunch."
Weir recalled Garcia and Lesh were headed toward fusion jazz, and he and Pigpen weren't quite there.
"It was complicated and required a great deal of facility on the instruments. So they played without us for a couple of months," he wrote.
Garcia Ordered Bandmates Fired
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Rock Scully recalled Garcia later welcomed Weir back, leading to songs like 'Sugar Magnolia' and 'Truckin.'
According to the blog post, Garcia asked band manager Rock Scully to fire Weir and Pigpen. Scully felt they were kicked out as a warning.
"Garcia knew what he was doing," Scully wrote. "He was just scaring their asses, rattling their cages. They took a couple of weeks off. Weir went and got some more electric guitar training."
Happily for Deadheads everywhere, Garcia welcomed the two back, and Weir went on to help write the group's Sugar Magnolia and Playing in the Band and sing the tongue-twisting travelogue in the Dead's signature hit Truckin.'
