RIP Vince Welnick

[Drunk Monk]

I'll comment more on this later, after I've had time to gather my thoughts...

Vince Welnick -- musician in Tubes, the Dead
Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006

Vince Welnick, a keyboardist who possessed a fluid and precise style and played with the Tubes, Todd Rundgren and the Grateful Dead, died Friday in Sonoma County at the age of 55.

The cause appears to be suicide, Sonoma County sheriff's department said.

Mr. Welnick, whom friends called a gentle and sensitive man, was classically trained and spent hours practicing each day. Although he was a member of the Dead for just five years, until the band folded after the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, he left an indelible mark on his bandmates.

"He was a good soul, a very sweet guy," said band spokesman Dennis McNally. "He was also an exceptionally competent keyboardist."

In a statement posted on its Web site, the band said, "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. Our Grateful Dead prayer for the repose of his spirit: May the four winds blow him safely home."

Mr. Welnick was born in Phoenix, where he started playing piano as a kid. He and friends put together a garage band called the Beans, which became the Tubes when they moved to San Francisco in 1969.

"Thank God for rock 'n' roll, because it was a place for all us skinny artistic kids to go when it was 115 degrees outside and we didn't fit in anywhere else," said Michael Cotten, a member of the Tubes who designed many of the band's album covers and elaborate stage shows.

The Tubes toured constantly, and their rowdy antics and energetic shows -- which integrated rock music, video technology and outlandish costumes and sets -- earned them a devoted following. The band recorded more than a dozen albums and scored hits with "White Punks on Dope" in 1975 and "Talk to Ya Later" in 1981.

"It was an amazing time. We played everywhere, and I don't think Vince ever missed a show," said Tubes vocalist Fee Waybill. "But even with all the success, we were still a hippie band from San Francisco. We all lived together, traveled on the same bus, shared everything."

Throughout his time with the Tubes, Mr. Welnick also played with Todd Rundgren.

Mr. Welnick auditioned for the Dead in 1990 after keyboardist Brent Mydland died of a drug overdose. He was among a handful of musicians who sought the job, and he immediately impressed the band.

"He just magically appeared, and he had the attributes they were looking for," McNally said.

Mr. Welnick cherished his years with the Dead and thoroughly appreciated both the tradition and hoopla of Deadhead lore and of the band, McNally said.

His soulful, high harmony vocals and classical training were a good fit for the band, and his "moment to shine" came whenever the band played the Who classic "Baba O'Riley," which begins with an instantly recognizable keyboard passage, McNally said.

It "opens with one of the most amazing riffs in rock 'n' roll," he said. "Vince was great at that."

Mr. Welnick was devoted to his craft and spent hours a day practicing for most of his life, friends said. He was especially proud of his Boesendorfer piano, which is the piano equivalent to a Stradivarius violin.

"His fingers just flew on that thing," Cotten said.

Mr. Welnick was close to Garcia, and when the guitarist died of a heart attack in 1995, Mr. Welnick fell into a deep depression.

"He was extremely shattered by Jerry's death and was very frank about it," McNally said.

Still, Mr. Welnick continued to perform and write. He formed the band Missing Man Formation and performed with Ratdog, a band featuring Dead guitarist Bob Weir and bassist Rob Wasserman.

One of the highpoints of his post-Dead career came in April 2005 when the Tubes had an impromptu reunion at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz.

Five of the original members were playing, and Waybill invited other alumni. They all wound up onstage, playing together.

"It was amazing, like walking on air," said Cotten, who is working on a Tubes documentary.

"The place was packed. People went nuts," Waybill said. "It was a great, great night. Vince was always up for things like that. He was really excited about playing with the Tubes again."

And so it was that Mr. Welnick's death came as such a shock.

"A few of us were just talking about Vince today and about the incredible music he brought us," Cotten said. "What they call chops, that's what Vince had. That's what we want to remember."

Mr. Welnick's death is the latest in a string of recent tragedies for the Dead. Three other members of the band's extended family have died since May 17 -- crew member Lawrence "Ram Rod" Shurtliff, drummer Hamza El-Din and road manager Jonathan Riester.

He also is the fourth of the band's five keyboardists to die, after Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Keith Godchaux and Mydland.

"It's not a happy history," McNally said. "Each one of these guys had a fragility, which isn't that uncommon for musicians."

Mr. Welnick is survived by his wife, Lori Welnick.

[Drunk Monk]

It's strange to think of Vince for me now. Of all the Dead members, I probably got the closest to him on a regular basis. He would eat with the rest of the crew, usually seated alone, unlike the rest of the band who were tucked away in their private backstage lodgings. That spoke volumes about Vince and his standing with the band. The Dead fed their crew very well, gourmet-quality banquets, and Vince was alwways there. I saw him at many a meal, even sat at a table with him a few times, but never engaged him in a serious or extended conversation.

It's even stranger for me to think that he was with the Dead for the last five years, basically when I was on the payroll on the West Coast tours. I was technically a Touchhead - one of the Deadheads that came in after In the Dark, the bands' only top 40. I experienced three years of Brent Mydland, and then five of Vince, and then Jerry was gone. Only eight years, but eight consciousness-expanding years that left an indelible mark upon my psyche. The bulk of that was with Vince in the hotseat (the Dead was hard on keyboardists just like Spinal Tap was on drummers) although I'd say I was more attached to Brent's sound, since that's when I used to buy tickets and listen to the shows more attentively. It was harder to listen to Vince while sitting on top of a raving, screaming tripper.

I searched my embarrasingly large collection of Dead cds and tapes and have only found one Vince show: Chinese New Years '91. I collected the CNY shows because they were very important to me as the designated Dead lion dancer. Generally, they are weak in drumz ironically, because the Rhythm Devils never got that great a handle on CNY drumming ("our interpretation" as Mickey would quip to me when I interviewed him for the magazine in 2000). CNY 91 were significant shows, dubbed the Gulf War run, because we had just bombed Iraq and Hornsby, who had backed Vince on the hotseat, didn't play. I can hear Vince well on Little Red Rooster, but the tape itself is muddy and faded from sitting in a box for a decade or so. But I've been playing it a lot since Vince's passing, looking for clues perhaps, or at least savoring some memories.

There were two songs I remember Vince for: Long Way to go Home and Samba in the Rain. LWtoH showcased Vince's singing, his ability to sustain long soulful notes. It was a great road song and often encapsulated my feelings on tour in Vegas, or Seattle, or Eugene, or whereever I was at the time. SitR only got me once, I can't remember where, but it was a rain show, and it captured the moment in that surreal way that the Dead could be a perfect soundtrack to the psychedelic carnival that surrounded it. I can think back and remember the feelings, the associations, with that moment eveything I hear that song again, which is quite rare now. I don't have any recordings of either song, or at least I haven't found them yet.

It was an amazing time, being on tour with the Dead, glorious, just glorious. I can't imagine a window like that openning up for me again, and can barely comprehend how it openned for me in the first place. I had stopped listening to the Dead a while back, not because it was painful or anything, I just stopped. Vince's passing has my back there again, exploring those glory days, and wondering what tomorrow may bring.

It's a lot less than prison
but it's more than a jail
I'd tell you all about it
But that's another tale

It's a long, long, long, long way to go home . . .