Rest In Peace: Vince Welnick, February 21, 1951-June 2, 2006!
Dead Net (Click through and very slow right now- 22:48 EDT):
Our Grateful Dead prayer for the repose of his spirit:
May the four winds blow him safely home.
IUpdate: never understood the rift between Vince and the rest of the band after Jerry passed. Clearly, it created a lot of unhappiness on Vince’s part and for a pretty raw and direct take on the impact on Vince.
Update: Scott and Vince
Update (6/10): Kim and Vince
Update (6/8): From Hunter….read the rest:
But people demand answers. Failing answers they go away. Please don’t do that. Just don’t expect golf balls from a walnut tree. All I can offer is perspective; a limited one at that. Answers are a different matter.
I may personally believe the only answer is to continue creating one’s art while being careful not to live beyond one’s means, physically or psychically. Sure. But that’s not what people twant o know. What they want to know is: who’s to blame? Not the music. If the music were to blame they wouldn’t be asking the question in the first place. Play the recordings. I put as many clues there as I could. In a way, they are one long letter to the Grateful Dead. The tensions involved created art. I think that art lives. Go there for answers.
It looks like he committed suicide. It just breaks my heart that he was in so much pain.
We met Vince last summer in NYC when he played with our friend Greg’s band, Gent Treadly. Fantastic show and he was a kind a man as you would ever meet. We got to hang with him for about an hour after the show and he was just so amazingly gracious.
That Heads turned on him is no surprise. It’s sadder that the Core 4 pretty much shunned him after he tried offing himself on Ratdog’s tour bus in ’95.