Vince Welnick was the safe pick — and that is exactly why he never had a chance. When Brent Mydland died in 1990, the Grateful Dead didn't reinvent themselves; they chose the candidate who wouldn't change a thing, built him a role with no room to matter, and then forgot him.
By 1990 the Grateful Dead were no longer six men on a stage. They were a touring institution with hundreds of employees, and Jerry Garcia told Rolling Stone the band had become "a board of directors," "running on inertia," kept moving by a "huge overhead" of people depending on the next show. So when Brent Mydland died, the question wasn't who could push the band somewhere new — it was who could be plugged in without disrupting the tour. Bill Kreutzmann admits it in his memoir: Vince Welnick, the synthesizer player from the Tubes, was his "least favorite" candidate, voted in "by default" to keep the "fame-and-fortune machine alive."
They wanted Bruce Hornsby, but he wouldn't go full-time. So they hired Welnick for one thing — he could sing the high harmonies — handed him ten cassettes covering a 120-plus-song catalog, and gave him ten days to learn it before the September tour opener at Richfield Coliseum. Don't innovate. Don't disrupt. Play Brent's old rig, fill the textures, stay out of Hornsby's lane. The band that built its name on improvisation barely rehearsed anymore; when Phil Lesh wanted to revive "Unbroken Chain," running it four or five times was rare enough to remember.
Hornsby left in 1992, Jerry Garcia faded, and the band played its last show at Soldier Field on July 9th, 1995 — a month before Garcia died. Vince Welnick had spent five years learning those songs and singing those harmonies, and when the surviving members regrouped, he wasn't invited. He spoke about the exclusion in Relix in 2003. He died by suicide in 2006. The keyboard "curse" files him as one more cursed chapter. This is the story underneath it — the safe pick who was never given a chance to matter, and then forgotten — told from the record.
This is the third in our look at the keyboard chair the Grateful Dead could never solve, beside Keith Godchaux and Brent Mydland.
Chapters:
0:00 The Curse Everyone Believes In
1:35 August 1990 — A Choice, Not a Hex
3:25 Hired by Default to Keep the Machine
5:15 Bruce Hornsby, the Star Who Said No
7:05 Ten Tapes, Ten Days, No Room to Create
9:05 The Band That Stopped Taking Risks
11:05 Soldier Field, the Reunion, and the End
