Interview: Bob Weir Part 3 – How Barack Obama Reunited The Dead

"We weren't kicking around the notion of playing together until the opportunity to make a difference and get people registered and voting. When that opportunity came our way, we all said, 'Hell, we gotta do this, guys.'"

Bob Weir – of the Grateful Dead, RatDog, and, most recently, Furthur – sits on HeadCount’s board of directors and has long been a vigorous advocate of voter registration and participatory democracy.

Last fall, during RatDog’s four-night run at Manhattan’s historic Beacon Theater, Bob sat down with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke to discuss HeadCount, politics in America, analog versus digital music, the Obama administration, the Grateful Dead, and other topics of interest.

In the third of four weekly installments (watch parts one and two), Weir discusses how Barack Obama brought the Dead back together and recalls inauguration gigs of yore.