RIP Vince

I'm amazed no one has mentioned Hamza.. he's all over my other lists...
but here's the SF Chronicle article:
Vince Welnick -- musician in Tubes, the Dead

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, June 4, 2006


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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.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/04/BAGOUJ89201.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

 

check out the pain and anger in this: (from Kimock list)
bitter, bitter (language and graphic detail warning...

As posted by the administrator of vincewelnick.com;


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.

 

that's only ONE person's take. We weren't in the room, we don't know what happened and I'm leaving sources alone while they get over these losses (four in three weeks)