American musician (1951–2006)

Musical artist

Vincent Leo Welnick (February 21, 1951:– June 2, 2006) was an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the band the Tubes during the 1970s and 1980s and with the Grateful Dead in the 1990s.

Contents

• 1 Music career
• 2 Film
• 3 Death
• 4 Discography
• 5 References
• 6 External links

Music career

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, as the great-grandson of Prussian immigrants, Welnick started playing keyboards as a teenager. He joined a band, the Beans, which eventually morphed into the Tubes, a San Francisco-based theater rock band popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s and noted for early live performances that combined lewd quasi-adult movieography with wild satires of media, consumerism and politics.

The Tubes in the 1980s were a major commercial rock act with substantial MTV success. Videos for "Talk to Ya Later" and "She's a Beauty" played in heavy rotation on MTV in the mid-1980s. While playing in the Tubes, Welnick also played and recorded with Todd Rundgren.

When Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland died of a drug overdose on July 26, 1990, the band began auditioning players to replace him, including Ian McLagan, Pete Sears and T Lavitz. Welnick was selected, not least for his high vocal range for backup harmonies. Welnick's first show with the Grateful Dead was on September 7, 1990, at the Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio. His *ociated Press obituary mentioned he was so nervous at his first gig with the band that he could barely play, until the fans put him at ease. They held up banners reading, "Yo Vinnie," which Welnick later decided to use as the name of his BMI-affiliated publishing company, Yo Vinnie Music, once obtaining his writer and publisher rights back from Ice Nine Publishing, which had copyrighted his works without an agreement in place to do so shortly after Welnick joined the Grateful Dead. Bruce Hornsby also supplemented Welnick on grand piano for over 100 shows in Welnick's first years in the Dead. Welnick remained as a member of the Grateful Dead and the band's keyboard player until Jerry Garcia's death in August 1995, when the group disbanded.

In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.

Welnick became depressed following a diagnosis of cancer and emphysema shortly before the final Grateful Dead tour. He decided to do the summer 1995 Grateful Dead tour and wait to have surgery after it ended. Shortly after the tour was over, Jerry Garcia died. Welnick joined Bob Weir's new group, Ratdog, as the keyboard player, touring with them around the U.S. About six months after Garcia's death, Welnick attempted suicide on the tour bus to Monterey, California. He received therapy, successful cancer treatment, and management of the early stages of lung disease. He worked with the band Second Sight, with Bob Bralove, and with Missing Man Formation, which released an album that included the song "Golden Days", a tribute to Garcia. He participated in the second Phil Lesh and Friends show in March 1998, and he toured the U.S. with the Mickey Hart Band later that year.

In 1998, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart regrouped under the name the Other Ones. According to musician and publisher Mike Lawson, Welnick was troubled when they reunited without him under the term the "surviving members of Grateful Dead". He voiced frustration to Rolling Stone, saying, "I am and always will be a member of the Grateful Dead. It's a lifetime thing that Jerry bestows upon a person." Welnick toured with jam bands, recorded music in his home studio, and worked with friends on their albums. With the band Mood Food he finished a reggae version of "To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees. He left behind hundreds of hours of unreleased materials, both personal and professional recordings. During his final years, he worked closely with Gent Treadly.

Film

Welnick played a small part in the 1981 film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Fee Waybill of the Tubes played Lou Corpse, the washed-up front man of a band called The Metal Corpses. Welnick played Jerry Jervey, the guitar player (though the reporter calls him the b* player) with the Corpses, who dies of an overdose in a backstage bathroom.

Welnick also appeared in Xanadu, along with the rest of the Tubes.

Death

Welnick died by suicide by slit throat on June 2, 2006, after struggling with depression for ten years; he was 55 years old.

Discography

With The Tubes

• The Tubes (1975)
• Young and Rich (1976)
• Now (1977)
• What Do You Want from Live (1978)
• Remote Control (1979)
• The Completion Backward Principle (1981)
• Outside Inside (1983)
• Love Bomb (1985)
• Infomercial: How to Become Tubular (2000)
• Mondo Birthmark (2009)

With Todd Rundgren

• Nearly Human (1989)
• 2nd Wind (1991)

With Grateful Dead

• Infrared Roses (1991)
• Fallout from the Phil Zone (1997)
• Dick's Picks Volume 9 (1997)
• So Many Roads (1965-1995) (1999)
• Dick's Picks Volume 17 (2000)
• View from the Vault, Volume Two (2001)
• Dick's Picks Volume 27 (2003)
• Grateful Dead Download Series Volume 11 (2006)
• Road Trips Volume 2 Number 1 (2008)
• Road Trips Volume 2 Number 4 (2009)
• 30 Trips Around the Sun (2015)
• 30 Trips Around the Sun: The Definitive Live Story 1965–1995 (2015)
• Giants Stadium 1987, 1989, 1991 (2019)
• Saint of Cir*stance (2019)
• Ready or Not (2019)

With others

• Chance in a Million (1994) – Zero
• Calling Up Spirits (1996) – Dick Dale
• Second Sight (1996) – Second Sight
• Fiesta Amazonica (1998) – Merl Saunders
• Missing Man Formation (1998) – Missing Man Formation
• Might as Well... (2000) – The Persuasions
• Smallstone (2000) – Smallstone
• Uh-Oh! (2001) – Tipsy
• Texistentialism (2007) – Jerry Lightfoot's Band of Wonder

References

• Grateful Dead musician dies at 55 BBC News – Grateful Dead musician dies at 55
• Vince Welnick 1995 Interview with the Memphis Flyer
• "Welnick dies". Grateful Dead Website. June 2, 2006. Archived from the original on May 28, 2006. Retrieved June 3, 2006.
• San Francisco Chronicle "Grateful Dead's last keyboardist, Vince Welnick, dies at 55" June 3 2006
• Urban Tulsa "Healing begins as "Friends" pay tribute to their musical companion and mentor" June 16 2006

External links

• Official website
• Vince Welnick at AllMusic
• Vince Welnick collection at the Internet Archive's live music archive
• The National Anthem by Garcia, Weir, and Welnick before a 1993 San Francisco Giants game at Candlestick Park, boingboing.com.
• Official Grateful Dead Website

Compilations

• Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead
• What a Long Strange Trip It's Been
• The Arista Years
• Selections from the Arista Years
• The Very Best of Grateful Dead
• Flashback with the Grateful Dead
• The Best of the Grateful Dead
• Long Strange Trip
• The Best of the Grateful Dead Live
• Sage & Spirit

Box sets

• Dead Zone: The Grateful Dead CD Collection (1977–1987)
• So Many Roads (1965–1995)
• The Golden Road (1965–1973)
• Beyond Description (1973–1989)
• The Warner Bros. Studio Albums
• All the Years Combine: The DVD Collection
• Grateful Dead Records Collection
• The Story of the Grateful Dead

Videos

• The Grateful Dead Movie
• Dead Ahead
• So Far
• Dead Ringers: The Making of Touch of Grey
• Backstage P*
• Infrared Sightings
• Ticket to New Year's
• Downhill from Here
• Anthem to Beauty
• Sunshine Daydream
• Long Strange Trip

Side projects and
spin-off bands

• The Other Ones
• The Dead
• Furthur
• Dead & Company
  • 2015 tour
  • Summer 2016 tour
  • Summer 2017 tour
  • Fall 2017 tour
  • Summer 2018 tour
  • Summer 2019 tour
  • Fall Fun Run 2019
• Jerry Garcia Band
• RatDog
• Phil Lesh and Friends
• Rhythm Devils
• Donna Jean Godchaux Band
• Heart of Gold Band
• Missing Man Formation
• New Riders of the Purple Sage
• Old & In the Way
• Legion of Mary
• Reconstruction
• Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band
• JGB
• Kingfish
• Bobby and the Midnites
• SerialPod
• BK3
• 7 Walkers
• Billy & the Kids

Related topics

• Acid Tests
• Bill Graham v. Dorling Kindersley
• Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead 1987 Tour
• Dark Star Orchestra
• Day of the Dead
• Deadhead
• Deadheads for Obama
• Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead
• Fare Thee Well (album)
• Fare Thee Well (concert tour)
• Grateful dead
• Grateful Dead Archive
• The Grateful Dead Channel
• Grateful Dead discography
• The Grateful Dead Family Album
• Grateful Dead Meet-Up at the Movies
• Grateful Dead Origins
• Grateful Dead Records
• Jazz Is Dead
• List of Grateful Dead members
• Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions
• The Music Never Stopped (album)
• The Music Never Stopped (film)
• Pickin' on the Grateful Dead: A Tribute
• The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra
• Relix
• Reunions of the Grateful Dead
• Rex Foundation
• Shakedown Street (vending area)
• Summer Jam at Watkins Glen
• Unfinished Grateful Dead album
• Wall of Sound
• Wharf Rats

Related people

• Eric Andersen
• Bob Bralove
• Jerilyn Lee Brandelius
• Candace Brightman
• Betty Cantor-Jackson
• Bob Dylan
• Carolyn Garcia
• Bill Graham
• Gerrit Graham
• Rick Griffin
• David Grisman
• Lenny Hart
• Dan Healy
• Bruce Hornsby
• Alton Kelley
• Steve Kimock
• Ned Lagin
• Dick Latvala
• David Lemieux
• Branford Marsalis
• Stanley Mouse
• Ronald Leon Rakow
• Merl Saunders
• Rock Scully
• Bob Seidemann
• Laurence Shurtliff
• Owsley Stanley
• Howard Wales

• Category

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