From thomas_pacho@comcast.net Sat Jun 03 17:51:07 2006
Subject:Re: Fwd: [canadianclassicrock] Former Tubes Keyboardist dies...oh yeah he also was in grateful dead

Sad to hear about Vince Welnick, a band I was working with opened for The Tubes back in 1981, I guess the curse of the Grateful Dead keyboardist lives on.

-------------- Original message --------------
From: daddyo@telusplanet.net

Brock Gillis
daddyo@telusplanet.net
"Be thinking of B-3's and Leslies goin round"

"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies. Great friends help
you move your B3

----- Forwarded message from Gerald -----
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 20:35:41 -0000
From: Gerald
Reply-To: canadianclassicrock@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [canadianclassicrock] Former Tubes Keyboardist dies...oh yeah he
also was in grateful dead
To: canadianclassicrock@yahoogroups.com

Grateful Dead keyboardist dies
Yahoo News Services
http://www.yahoo.com
Saturday June 3rd, 2006

Vince Welnick, who took over as the Grateful Dead's keyboard player
in 1990 after a succession of predecessors met untimely deaths, has
died at the age of 55, according to an announcement on his Web site.

"Vince passed from this earth on June 2, 2006 ... after a decade of
battling tragedy while creating beauty and light around him," the
announcement said. It did not give a cause of death.

The San Jose Mercury News said he died in a hospital on Friday after
being taken from his home in Forestville, California, and it quoted
a person at his home as saying "it looks like he took his own life."

Welnick had previously spoken of a deep depression after Jerry
Garcia, founding guitarist of the iconic psychedelic rock band, died
in 1995 and the group disbanded.

Welnick is the fourth keyboard player for the band to have died, and
his Web site referred to the position as a "particularly doomed
spot."

He once told an interviewer, "A lot of people ask about that and my
stock answer is that I am aware of the fact that you could die doing
this job, but I was somewhat dying of boredom before the job came up
so I thought I'd take my chances."

Originally a member of the 1970s rock band "The Tubes," Welnick
joined the Grateful Dead after longest-serving keyboard player Brent
Mydland died in 1990 of a drug overdose.

Previously, pianist Keith Godchaux died in a car accident in 1980, a
year after he left the band, and founding vocalist and keyboard
player Ron "Pigpen" McKernan died in 1973 of a gastrointestinal
hemorrhage.

After the Grateful Dead broke up and ended its 30-year run as one of
America's biggest touring acts, Welnick formed his own group,
Missing Man Formation. He also toured with other groups including
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's band.

He did not take part in various reunions of the Dead's other
surviving members.

"His service to and love for the Grateful Dead were heartfelt and
essential. He had a loving soul and a joy in music that we were
lucky to share," the band said in a statement.

In an extension of the band's "curse of the keyboard player," Scott
Larned, cofounder and keyboard player for the nationally-touring
Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra, died last year of a
heart attack.
===============================================
Then I found this little gem on another site and I guess it's not
all peace and love in the camp of the Grateful Dead
================================================

But apparantly he was good enough for Jerry to stay in the band for
five years?? There is most probably a lot more behind it than that...

I don't know how many of you have read this, but I'm taking the
liberty to repost this which Mike Lawson, Vince's friend and website
admin, posted on his site. I apologize for the lengthy post.

-------

Vince Welnick is gone. He was the sweetest human I have ever known.
Kind, generous, funny and warm hearted. He was my friend. He was
talented, so fucking talented. I was lucky to know him. So, damned
lucky to know him and Lori. God bless you, Lori. I'm so, so sorry.

Vince never got over the cruel way that the Grateful Dead band
members treated him after Jerry died. He never got over the sorrow
of losing Jerry, facing his own demons without his friend and could
not understand how the remaining fellow band-members treated him
like shit the past several years.

I cannot possibly describe to you the hurt and anguish he felt
when "The Dead" decided to have a "Family Reunion of the SURVIVING
MEMBERS" of Grateful Dead, a band that he was no mere sideman for
its last five years, but a full member of by order of Jerry Garcia.
How damned insulting was it to have a "surviving members family
reunion" and not invite your new brother? He was the proverbial red-
headed step-child to them. Did it occur to you how that hurt him,
Bill, Bob, Phil, Mickey? The truth is that you selfish bastards did
not care if it hurt him. He's a big boy, he just had to get over it,
right?

I remember seeing Todd Rundgen at the "Walk Down Abbey Road" show in
Concord, CA around the same time when that "Family Reunion" was
booked. He asked how Vince was, and I told him about this "family
reunion" concert of SURVIVING MEMBERS and how Vince was specifically
not invited, but in fact was playing a gig at a campground not far
from the show. Todd said, "Uh, Vince isn't dead, isn't he a
surviving member?" He got the irony. I got the irony, but I also saw
the hurt like none of you can believe. Vince kept a brave face about
it, trying to remain cheerful, hoping that somehow, someday the tide
would turn, the phone would ring and it would be Bob Weir calling
him. Calling just to say, "How are you, Vinny?" Something. Anything.

I am certain that Jerry would have been completely disgusted with
the terrible, cruel and despicable way that Vince was treated by the
band, the management, etc. following his death. The lack of
compassion displayed toward him, the ostracizing he felt burned and
hurt Vince very deeply. He was a sensitive, sweet soul. He just
couldn't handle the rejection. He and I spent hours and hours
talking about these things, trying to get the demons out, which led
to him pouring out his heart when that show happened, right on this
website.

I told Vince to get his story out, tell everybody what happened on
that Ratdog bus, tell them everything. Tell them how Bob and Ratdog
sent him, having overdosed on the tour bus, to a hospital alone in
the back of a taxi cab, without a friend in site, and had him
checked in as John Doe, while they played the show anyway. Tell
them, Vince how you were despondent over facing life-threatening
cancer, a simultaneous diagnosis of Emphysema, and instead of
staying home to try to heal and get immediate surgery, how you chose
to give the fans the ill-fated summer 95 Dead tour. Tell them how
nobody in the band even acknowledged, though they damned well knew,
that Vince was very sick.

Tell them Vince, I said, how you didn't want to let the fans and the
band down, and how eery it was on the tour knowing all these people
who were your "friends" never asked how you were while on the road
or even stepped aside with you to acknowledge that struggle you were
facing. Tell everyone, Vince, how when you returned from the road,
and Jerry was dead, how you were flung into the hell of depression
facing lung disease, cancer and now your friend dying, and how you
saw your world crash around you ever more when months later the band
unceremoniously announced it was over. Tell them Vince, tell
everyone and get the demons out.

Even more amazing than the band being cold to him, I could never
understand why so-called "dead heads" and "fans" spent hours coming
into this site and fucking with Vince, taunting him, posting evil,
nasty lies about him. I finally had to turn this into a registration-
only website to help shield my friend from the cruelness that some
people took sport in on the message boards. Vince could take a joke,
he could take a lot, but he finally couldn't take any more.
I had long, heart to heart talks with him for months before he told
some of that story to you here, though not even close to all that
detail. Vince didn't want to hurt the other guys, he just fucking
wanted to play with them.

Do you hear me, Phil? Do you hear me, Mickey? Do you hear me, Bobby?
Do you hear me, Bill? That's all he fucking wanted, was to play
music with you guys. He loved you and you fucking treated him like
shit. To see your "heartfelt" message on Dead.net today sickens me
to no end, you fucking bunch of lying hypocrites. There is nothing
left to hold back on now. Is it so hard to return the man's phone
calls? Is it so hard to understand what he went through back then
and how far he had come since that dreadful night on that Ratdog
bus? Where is the love? Where is the compassion? Hippy love? Bull-
fucking-shit. You guys could have been nice to him, invited him
along, not made him feel like an ass and like he was bugging you if
he called. Are you happy, Cameron? Are you? Go fuck yourself.

========
Peace Out.....

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