Vince Welnick, who has died in California aged 55, was the keyboard player in the final line-up of the Grateful Dead. The death of the guitarist Jerry Garcia (obituary, August 10 1995) spelt the end of the legendary, west coast pioneers of acid-rock, founded in San Francisco in 1965, and Welnick subsequently struggled to come to terms with the aftermath of Garcia's demise. "I remember his smile, sparkle, kindness, generosity and concern for all humanity," Welnick said in 2003. "He was one of the nicest people in the world. At the time, I was as close as anyone could have gotten to Jerry."
Before he joined the Grateful Dead in 1990, after the previous keyboard player Brent Mydland died of a drug overdose, Welnick had played with some other prominent rock'n'roll characters. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, but moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s with a band called the Beans. They gained notoriety when they merged with the Red White And Blues Band and changed their name to the Tubes, a garishly theatrical ensemble fronted by Fee Waybill.
"We were putting on a big extravaganza," Welnick recalled. "Our performances were very visual and outrageous." But having created such trash masterpieces as White Punks on Dope and Mondo Bondage, the Tubes found themselves short of money in the mid-1980s, and temporarily disbanded. Welnick then joined Todd Rundgren, the Tubes' erstwhile producer, and appeared on his albums, Nearly Human and Second Wind.
In 1990, Welnick was invited to audition for the Grateful Dead, despite being unfamiliar with their music. "The band was going on a fall tour and they were auditioning keyboardists," he recalled. "I ran into Bobby [Weir] and Jerry [Garcia]. They seemed so nice, I decided I wanted to be in the band. So I practised very hard and learned some of their music." After a two-week wait, he got the job, though it was not exclusively his keyboard-playing skills that appealed to the Dead. "They wanted somebody who could hit the high harmonies that Mydland used to do," said Welnick. "I was always a high singer in the Tubes, so I got picked."
"He had this real high harmony," said the Dead's drummer Mickey Hart. "He could go where others couldn't. The big thing about Vince was that he had that fearlessness to be able to go and jump into our madness and operate on it like it was a normal, everyday procedure."
From the start, Welnick was aware of the Grateful Dead's "curse of the keyboard player". Mydland had been its third casualty, succeeding Keith Godchaux, who died in a car accident shortly after leaving the band. Godchaux had been the replacement for the original keyboardist, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, who died in 1973 after a history of chronic alcohol abuse.
Welnick quickly came to feel part of the band's extended family. "I was somewhat paralysed playing at first," he said, remembering his debut gig in Cleveland, Ohio. "Then I heard this ripple in the audience and there was this kid who yelled 'Welcome, Brother Vince' and there were stickers that said 'Yo Vinnie' stuck to the side of my keyboard. The crowd was very forgiving."
After Garcia's death, Welnick, who was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with the Dead in 1994, formed his own band, Missing Man Formation, and they released an album in 1998. He also toured with Mickey Hart's group and the Jack Straw Band. "We all speak the same language, said Welnick, "the language of the Grateful Dead." With his wife Lorie, who survives him, he opened an art gallery and performing arts centre in Akumal, Mexico.
· Vince Welnick, musician, born February 22 1951; died June 2 2006.