The Grateful Dead has paid tribute to the late NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton. The surviving members of the band took to their official Instagram account to share photos of Walton in the crowd and on stage with the group while dressed in costumes. Walton passed away on May 27 at the age of 71 following a battle with colon cancer. “Fare you well, fare you well, we love you more than words can tell,” The Dead & Company shared on Instagram. “He loved this band, and we loved him.”
Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead’s member, also paid tribute to Walton on his own Instagram, thanking him for the ride with “wonderful friendship, the years of color commentary, and the Hall of Fame existence that you wore like headlights.” In a heartfelt tribute, Mickey Heart, the band’s percussionist, referred to Walton as “the best friend I ever had” and added that his love for the Grateful Dead’s music was “beyond description.”
Grateful Dead’s drummer, Bill Kreutzmann wrote a lengthy post in honour of Walton, revealing that he had “incredible stories about Bill Walton that I promised him I would only tell after he passed away,” adding that he loved Bill and that “losing Bill is an irreplaceable loss and, in simple terms, I am heartbroken.”
Walton first saw The Grateful Dead band perform when he was 15 years old in 1967, the same year they released their debut album ‘The Grateful Dead’. Kreutzmann has referred to Walton as the “Celebrity Deadhead Number One”. Walton said, “The Celtics and the Grateful Dead represent so much of everything I believe in, live for and try to do with my life.”
In other news, the Grateful Dead recently opened their residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere with an epic visual feast that drew on 60 years of history
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