His summer 2015 was a high point in Bill Walton's life. He watched the Grateful Dead, in all its reruns, for 48 years from that point. He had been to hundreds upon hundreds of shows, but like many Deadheads, the series of 50th anniversary shows in Northern California and Chicago (billed as Be well) it was going to be monumental: The first time most of the surviving members of the group would play together in years, and the last time it would happen.
Walton, who by then was already known as one of the world's most famous — and, at 11 feet tall, recognizable — die-hard fans on the planet, spent the summer as the team's unofficial liaison: interviews about reconnecting and writing a postscript on a coffee table to celebrate the performances. Walton, who has suffered from chronic pain since he began suffering injuries as a teenager, was up for the grueling course of marathon performances. His spine felt good, he had a new knee, he was ready. Walton stood among the huge crowd for the shows, which he described, with serious exaggeration, as “the nine days that changed the world.”
“Everyone was so happy and there were only tears of joy and pride and gratitude,” Walton later he said Relix of the experience of seeing the performances up close. “I got to be in the pit, 12 people deep, right in front of Bruce Hornsby. I was thereand I will do never forget it and I'm terribly sorry for the man behind me.”
Bill Walton, who died earlier today at age 71 of cancer, was known to most as a Hall of Fame NBA center and, later, as a prominent and energetic broadcaster and color commentator on national television. But just as important to Walton was his lifelong love affair with the Grateful Dead. Walton became a familiar, unmistakable presence at Dead shows, happy in the pit alongside the band's incredible die-hards.
It didn't take long for the band themselves to notice the towering giant who began appearing at all of the band's West Coast shows. The first year Deceased singer-bassist Bob Weir spotted Walton in the crowd, “I thought to myself, 'There's a really tall person.'” “He was the only one in the audience,” said the band's drummer Mickey Hart. “I thought everyone else was sitting, and of course they were standing, and he was standing too.”
Such was Walton's devotion to the band that he attended over 850 Dead concerts in his lifetime, showing up to announce nationally televised basketball games in tie dye. viral for sorting through recyclables at Dead exhibitions, showed up on stage at Dead & Company New Years Eve performing as “Father Time” (a nod to the character Bill Graham used to dress up as every New Year's Eve), DJing on the band's Sirius XM satellite radio channel and finally, in 2021, entering in the band's 'Hall of Honor' itself, which later described as the most important honor he had ever received.
But despite the attention and platform he received as one of the group's most famous and recognizable true believers, Walton considered himself just another member of the ever-expanding community of Dead devotees. “I'm really just a fan,” he said he said in 2022.
Throughout his career, and especially while promoting his 2016 memoir (titled, what else: back from the dead)Walton often drew comparisons between his beloved band and the sport he devoted his life to.
“Playing in a band and playing on a basketball team, I'm sure they're very, very similar,” he once had he said. “It requires, first of all, tremendous discipline.” Necros, that later he claimed, helped him become the basketball player he once was and the man he has become. As a lifelong competitive athlete, there was a unique reward in being a Grateful Dead fan, Walton explainedbecause “they play all the time, too win all the time.”
Walton's love of the band was much more than a useful sports analogy. For him, Dead fandom served as a guiding light and a steady beacon of stability, community and inspiration in a life plagued by pain and setbacks.
“For me, the Grateful Dead, there are so many different reasons why I love it so much, but they give me strength, they give me confidence, they give me hope, and they make me believe that tomorrow feels like it's going to be even better.” that he said in 2016. “And at the end of the day, when they're running off the stage and out of there, I'm out in that pit and I'm like, 'YesI'm with those children.'”
When Walton cleared his calendar for the nine Be well shows in California and Chicago in 2015, he had only one quibble with the shows: the fact that they came to an end. “I'll be there,” he he said the previous weeks. “I'll be cheering for more.”
In this same interviewjournalist at Washington Post wanted to know if Walton had requests for these special shows? “Sugar Magnolia?” “Uncle John's Band”?
“I don't care what they play,” Walton he answered. “I just want to go. I just want to listen, I want to be educated, I want to be inspired, I want to be healed. I want to think, I want to laugh, I want to cry, I want to dance… Years ago, I used to [with requests] all the time. Then I stopped asking and tried to listen more. And I tried to let life go like the great river finds its way.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bill-walton-grateful-dead-1235028270/