Introduction: Bill Lesh sent a personal

Every evening for 25 years, the founding
member of the Grateful Dead has given a talk
on the topics that helped him perform well well into his 80s.

The Grateful Dead and its various successors and
offshoots were known for changing their setlists from
gig to gig, ensuring that no two concerts were the same.

But since the late 1990s, every show featuring original
bassist Phil Lesh, who died Friday at age 84,
has had at most one thing starting the song.

Technically it wasn’t a song, but rather a short
monologue from Lesh asking everyone in attendance
to declare themselves organ donors. That was personal
for him. In 1998, at age 58, he was diagnosed
with chronic hepatitis C and underwent a liver transplant.

“Today is the only day I’m alive,” he said before a
2015 concert with the three original surviving
members of the Grateful Dead. “Because a man
named Cody decided to become an organ donor.

And he did it in the simplest way possible. He turned
to the people who loved him and he loved them
and said, “Hey, if you want to do something, be done.”
It happened to me, I want to be an organ donor.

“Of course it is,” he told music magazine Relix in

2002 Well, fair is fair. If you are willing to
accept it, you must be willing to be a donor. “

Lish’s transplant came three years after the
death of his co-founder, Grateful Dead member
Jerry Garcia. The transplant saved Lesh’s life and

allowed him to tour extensively with Dead successors
such as Beyond and his own band, Bill
Lesh and Friends, for decades to come.

The pre-encore speech became a concert
staple, and fans and websites followed Lesh’s bands’
setlists, which often featured “Donner
Rap” or “Bill’s Donner Rap.”

Six years ago, Phil Lesh and friends held a
fundraiser for the American Transplant
Foundation at Red Rocks Amphitheater near
Denver to celebrate the 20th
anniversary of Lesh’s transplant.

“We didn’t have to sell for anything,” recalled
Anastasia Henry, the foundation’s executive director,
in a brief interview on Friday. “He didn’t need it—just.”

As an encore, Lesh rapped for his donor before performing
“Fire on the Mountain” and perhaps Lesh’s most famous Grateful
Dead song, “Box of Rain.” Referring to the liver donor

by name only, Loesch said he wasn’t the only one who
benefited from Cody’s decision, helping half a dozen
people survive his death. “Cody and I have had a
great relationship for 20 years,” she added.