Vince Welnick
Encyclopedia
Vince Welnick was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 keyboardist
Keyboardist
A keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...

, best known for playing with the band The Tubes
The Tubes
The Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...

 during the 1970s and 1980s and with the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

 in the 1990s.

Music career

Born in Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

, Welnick started playing keyboards as a teenager. He joined a band, The Beans, which eventually morphed into The Tubes
The Tubes
The Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...

, 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-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism and politics.

The Tubes in the 1980s were a major commercial rock act with substantial MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 success. Videos for rock classics "Talk To Ya Later" and "She's A Beauty" played in heavy rotation on the MTV network for years in the mid-1980s. While playing in the Tubes, he also played and recorded with Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...

.

When the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

's keyboardist, Brent Mydland
Brent Mydland
Brent Mydland was the fourth keyboardist to play for the American rock band the Grateful Dead. He was with the band for eleven years, longer than any other keyboardist.- Early life :...

, died of a drug overdose on 26 July 1990, the band began auditioning players to replace him, including Ian McLagan
Ian McLagan
Ian McLagan is an English keyboard instrumentalist, best known as a member of the English rock bands Small Faces and Faces.-Small Faces and Faces:...

, Pete Sears
Pete Sears
Peter 'Pete' Sears is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than four decades he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues...

 and T Lavitz
T Lavitz
Terry "T" Lavitz was an American jazz-rock/fusion keyboardist, composer and producer. He is best known for his work with the Dixie Dregs and Jazz Is Dead.-Biography:Born on April 16, 1956, Lavitz grew up in New Jersey...

. Welnick was selected, not least for his high vocal range for backup harmonies. His AP obituary mentioned he was so nervous at his first gig with the band in 1990 in Cleveland 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-affiiated 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 Vince joined Grateful Dead. Bruce Hornsby
Bruce Hornsby
Bruce Randall Hornsby is an American singer, pianist, accordion player, and songwriter. Known for the spontaneity and creativity of his live performances, Hornsby draws frequently from classical, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Motown, rock, blues, and jam band musical traditions with his songwriting and...

 also supplemented Welnick on grand piano for over 100 shows in Welnick's first years in the Dead. Welnick remained as a member of Grateful Dead and the band's keyboard player until Jerry Garcia's death in August 1995, when the group disbanded.

Vince became very depressed following a diagnosis of cancer and emphysema shortly before the final Grateful Dead tour. Without any publicity about his illness, 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
Ratdog
RatDog , is an American rock band. The group began as a side project for Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir and bassist Rob Wasserman. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in December 1995, following the death of Jerry Garcia on August 9, 1995, RatDog became Bob Weir's primary band...

 as the keyboard player, touring with them around the USA. He attempted suicide about six months after Garcia's death on the Rat Dog tour bus on the drive to Monterey, CA. Following intense therapy, successful treatment of his cancer, and management of the early-stages of his lung disease, he became involved in solo efforts, including Second Sight with Bob Bralove
Bob Bralove
Bob Bralove was an auxiliary keyboard–synthesizer player for the Grateful Dead in the 1990s. His more notable works included such songs as "Picasso Moon", "Way to Go Home", "Easy Answers", the rare tunes "Parallelogram", "Little Nemo in Nightland", and other works on the albums Infrared Roses and...

 and Missing Man Formation
Missing Man Formation (band)
Missing Man Formation was a band put together by former Grateful Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick, featuring Welnick and an ever-changing group of musicians, including Steve Kimock on guitar , Prairie Prince on drums , Bobby Vega on bass...

, which released a critically acclaimed single album on Grateful Dead Records which included "Golden Days", a tribute to Jerry Garcia. He was a key member of the second ever Phil Lesh and Friends
Phil Lesh and Friends
Phil Lesh and Friends is an American rock band formed and led by Phil Lesh, former bassist of the Grateful Dead.Phil & Friends is not a traditional group in that several different lineups of musicians have played under the name, including groups featuring members of Phish, Little Feat, and the Zen...

 show in March 1998, and toured the USA with the Mickey Hart Band later that year.

In 2002 Bob Weir
Bob Weir
Bob Weir is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead...

, Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995...

, Bill Kreutzmann
Bill Kreutzmann
Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

 and Phil Lesh
Phil Lesh
Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

 regrouped under the name The Other Ones. Their reuniting for a concert billed as the "Grateful Dead Family Reunion" with the "Surviving Members of Grateful Dead" without Welnick deeply troubled him, according to musician and publisher, Mike Lawson, his close friend who also oversees Welnick's website. As a "surviving member of Grateful Dead" himself, Vince couldn't personally come to terms with how he could be completely left out of a "family reunion" and took this apparent shunning very hard. He worked hard to try to move on musically, and continued to work on personal music projects, toured with various backup jam-bands around the country, while writing and recording both solo in his home studio and with friends on a variety of projects. He completed several tracks with a group called Mood Food, including a reggae arrangement of "To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees. He left behind hundreds of hours of unreleased materials, both personal and professional recordings.

Welnick is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...

.

Film

Welnick played a small part in the 1981 film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is a 1981 film about three teenage girls, played by Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Marin Kanter, who start a punk band. Shot in British Columbia, Canada, the film also featured Ray Winstone, Christine Lahti, ex-Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, along with...

. Fee Waybill
Fee Waybill
John Waldo Waybill , known as Fee Waybill, is the lead singer and songwriter of the band the Tubes...

 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 bass player) with the Corpses, who dies of an overdose in a backstage bathroom.

Welnick also appeared in Xanadu
Xanadu (film)
Xanadu is a 1980 romantic musical fantasy film written by Marc Reid Rubel and directed by Robert Greenwald. The title is a reference to the poem "Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is quoted in the film. Xanadu is the name of the Chinese province...

, along with the rest of The Tubes.

Death

Vince Welnick committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 on June 2, 2006, after battling depression for 10 years.

According to friends and band insiders who spoke with family members, Welnick had stopped taking his anti-depressant medication cold-turkey unbeknownst to his family and friends, and woke the morning of June 2 and told his father-in-law, who was staying at the house, that he had slept well. A little later, when his wife, Lori Welnick, found a prohibited bottle of liquor, she went looking for him. She spotted him in the backyard climbing the hill and called his name. He turned and slit his throat. She tried to stop the bleeding, but he told her to let him go. He also reportedly resisted recovery efforts by his sister-in-law, a nurse, who was also staying at the house.

An ambulance was summoned at 9:30 a.m. by the Sonoma County sheriff's dispatcher. Welnick was still alive when it arrived. An hour later, he was pronounced dead at the emergency room of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, according to the Sonoma County coroner's office.

Former Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

 keyboardist Tom Constanten
Tom Constanten
Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.-Biography:...

 played keyboards for the "Vince Welnick and Friends Tour" that was scheduled before his death. They played many Vince Welnick staples including "Samba in the Rain". "He Was a Friend of Mine" was also played in honor of Welnick. On the second night of the tour they stopped in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 and the opener The Schwag, who Welnick had played with before, did "Turn on Your Love Light" and dedicated it to Welnick with some improvised lyrics about Welnick and his life.

Discography

  • The Tubes
    The Tubes (album)
    The Tubes is the debut album of The Tubes. Songs from this album which received significant airplay include "What Do You Want From Life" and "White Punks On Dope"...

    (1975)–The Tubes
    The Tubes
    The Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...

  • Young and Rich
    Young and Rich
    Released in 1976, Young and Rich was the second album released by The Tubes. While Young and Rich is no longer available on CD, all of the songs from Young and Rich and their first record are now available on a single CD from Acadia Records called White Punks on Dope.-Track listing:#"Tubes World...

    (1976)–The Tubes
  • Now
    Now (The Tubes album)
    Now is the third album released by The Tubes. It was partially produced by John Anthony. John Anthony left the project after a drug-induced breakdown, Bill Spooner took over and completed the project with the help of engineer Don Wood....

    (1977)–The Tubes
  • What Do You Want from Live
    What Do You Want From Live
    What Do You Want from Live is the fourth album released by The Tubes. It is a live album, recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon, London.-Track listing:#"Overture"#*"Up from the Deep" – 2:00#*"Young and Rich" – 1:27#*"Madam I'm Adam" – 0:49...

    (1978)–The Tubes
  • Remote Control (1979)–The Tubes
  • The Completion Backward Principle
    The Completion Backward Principle
    The Completion Backward Principle is the sixth studio album from the rock group The Tubes.-Side one:#"Talk to Ya Later" #"Sushi Girl"#"Amnesia"#"Mr...

    (1981)–The Tubes
  • Outside Inside
    Outside Inside
    Outside Inside is a 1983 release on Capitol Records by The Tubes. The album was produced by David Foster. The Tubes had their biggest radio hit with the single "She's a Beauty" ....

    (1983)–The Tubes
  • Love Bomb
    Love Bomb
    Love Bomb is an album by The Tubes produced by Todd Rundgren. It was released in 1985 on Capitol Records. It is the last major-label release by The Tubes....

    (1985)–The Tubes
  • Nearly Human
    Nearly Human
    Nearly Human is a 1989 album by Todd Rundgren, and his second for Warner Bros. Records. His first release in four years time - the longest break in Rundgren's discography up to that point, although he had been active as a producer in the intervening years - the album has a soulful, searching,...

    (1989)–Todd Rundgren
    Todd Rundgren
    Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...

  • 2nd Wind
    2nd Wind
    2nd Wind is the thirteenth album released by Todd Rundgren, as well as his last one for a major label.Rundgren terminated his relationship with Warner Bros. Records shortly after its release...

    (1991)–Todd Rundgren
  • Infrared Roses
    Infrared Roses
    Infrared Roses is a live compilation album by the Grateful Dead. It is a conglomeration of their famous improvisational segments "Drums" and "Space."...

    (1991)–Grateful Dead
    Grateful Dead
    The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

  • Chance in a Million (1994)–Zero
  • Calling Up Spirits (1996)–Dick Dale
    Dick Dale
    Dick Dale is an American surf rock guitarist, known as The King of the Surf Guitar. He experimented with reverberation and made use of custom made Fender amplifiers, including the first-ever 100-watt guitar amplifier.-Early life:Dale was born in South Boston, Massachusetts and lived in nearby...

  • If a Tree Falls (1996)–various artists
  • Second Sight (1996)–Second Sight
  • Fallout from the Phil Zone
    Fallout from the Phil Zone
    Fallout from the Phil Zone is a double compilation album of live recordings by the Grateful Dead handpicked by the band's bassist Phil Lesh. It contains the first Grateful Dead CD releases of "In the Midnight Hour" and Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna"...

    (1997)–Grateful Dead
  • Dick's Picks Volume 9
    Dick's Picks Volume 9
    Dick's Picks Volume 9 is the ninth live album in the Dick's Picks series of releases by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on September 16, 1990 at the Madison Square Garden in New York City during the first tour with new keyboardists Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby...

    (1997)–Grateful Dead
  • Fiesta Amazonica (1998)–Merl Saunders
    Merl Saunders
    Merl Saunders, was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.-Biography:...

  • Missing Man Formation (1998)–Missing Man Formation
    Missing Man Formation (band)
    Missing Man Formation was a band put together by former Grateful Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick, featuring Welnick and an ever-changing group of musicians, including Steve Kimock on guitar , Prairie Prince on drums , Bobby Vega on bass...

  • Infomercial: How to Become Tubular (2000)–The Tubes
  • Dick's Picks Volume 17 (2000)–Grateful Dead
  • Might as Well... (2000)–The Persuasions
    The Persuasions
    The Persuasions are an a cappella group that began singing together in Brooklyn, New York in the mid 1960s. They have performed interpretations of both secular and non-secular music, and have covered a wide range of musical genres....

  • Smallstone (2000)–Smallstone
  • Uh-Oh! (2001)–Tipsy
    Tipsy (band)
    Tipsy is an electronic music band, formed by Tim Digulla and David Gardner in San Francisco, CA in 1996. Their music is a quirky blend of lounge and experimental sound collage.-Albums:* 1996 – Trip Tease* 2001 – Uh-Oh!...

  • View from the Vault, Volume Two
    View From The Vault, Volume Two
    View from the Vault, Volume Two is the second entry in the "View from the Vault" series by the Grateful Dead. It was released simultaneously as a three-disk CD and a one-disk DVD. This volume features the June 14, 1991 concert at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, D.C., and bonus material...

    (2001)–Grateful Dead
  • Gifts from the Dead (2001)–various artists including Merl Saunders
    Merl Saunders
    Merl Saunders, was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.-Biography:...

     (in duet with Vince, along with tracks from Mike Lawson, Vassar Clements
    Vassar Clements
    Vassar Clements was a Grammy Award- winning American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass along with roots also in country and other musical...

     and others)
  • Texistentialism (2007)–Jerry Lightfoot's Band of Wonder
  • Road Trips Volume 2 Number 1
    Road Trips Volume 2 Number 1
    Road Trips Volume 2 Number 1 is two-CD live album by the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The fifth in their "Road Trips" series of albums, it was recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City on September 18, 19, and 20, 1990...

    (2008)–Grateful Dead
  • Road Trips Volume 2 Number 4
    Road Trips Volume 2 Number 4
    Road Trips Volume 2 Number 4 is a two-CD live album by the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The eighth in their "Road Trips" series of albums, it was recorded on May 26 and 27, 1993, at the Cal Expo Amphitheatre in Sacramento, California. A third, bonus disc included with some copies of the...

    (2009)–Grateful Dead
  • Mondo Birthmark (2009)–The Tubes

External links

  • Vince Welnick official website
  • Vince Welnick collection at the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

    's live music archive
  • The National Anthem by Garcia, Weir, and Welnick before a 1993 San Francisco Giants
    San Francisco Giants
    The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....

     game at Candlestick Park, boingboing.com.
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