The surviving members of the Grateful Dead had long had a CBS This Morning interview on the books to celebrate their upcoming Kennedy Center Honors commemoration next month (alongside the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Francis Ford Coppola and Arturo Sandoval). Phil Lesh — who died in October at age 84 — was supposed to be there. He was supposed to be there for more than that, too.
Apparently, the band's Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart sat down to film the segment with Anthony Mason in San Francisco, CA, just five days after Lesh's death. It aired today, and revealed that they were planning to do a reunion prior to the bassist's passing.
Next year will mark the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary, and the four of them were going to perform together for the occasion. (Although Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart all play together in Dead & Company, Lesh had sat out that particular latter-day afterlife iteration.)
"We were going to see where it goes," Weir explained. "But we were just going to play the four of us. And now there's only three of us."
Kreutzmann added, "I was hoping that we could play with him again one more time. So that was my sadness, 'cause I know he wanted to play with us again, too."
You can watch the full segment via CBS News here.