Vince Welnick
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Vince Welnick, the Grateful Dead's last keyboard player and a veteran of other bands, including the Tubes and Missing Man Formation, has died, the Grateful Dead's longtime publicist said Saturday.
Welnick died Friday, said Dennis McNally, who would not release the cause. The Sonoma County coroner's office said an autopsy would be performed next week.
He lived in the northern California town of Forestville, but McNally said he didn't know whether he died at home or in a hospital.
McNally said Welnick was 51. The musician's Web site gives two ages for him, 51 and 55, but several other sources list his age as 55.
The musician, who grew up in Phoenix, moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s with the Beans, which soon renamed itself the Tubes. After the group temporarily disbanded in the mid-1980s, he worked with Todd Rundgren before joining the Grateful Dead in 1990.
The band retired the name Grateful Dead and quit touring after lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995.
In the years following Garcia's death the group's other longtime members have occasionally toured as The Other Ones or The Dead.
Welnick, who formed his own group, Missing Man Formation, occasionally went on the road himself and had been scheduled to perform later this month, according to his Web site.
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