Mikey Welsh: 1971-2011

The Chicago Tribune and Weezer website confirmed that former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh died Saturday in what appeared to be a drug overdose. The bassist was 40 years old.

Welsh was pronounced dead on the scene at 2:30 p.m. in his hotel room in Chicago where he was found to be unresponsive by hotel staff. A bag of white powder was found in the room that authorities believed to be heroin.

The bassist played with Weezer starting in 1998, but left the band in 2001 because of a nervous breakdown and opted to start a career in art. He recorded bass tracks on the self-titled “Green” album.

As Pitchfork points out, Welsh coincidentally predicted his own death on Twitter, stating on Sept. 26: “dreamt i died in chicago next weekend (heart attack in my sleep). need to write my will today,” and later adding, “correction – the weekend after next.”

Weezer released the following statement about Welsh on their website:

Dear friends and fans,
It saddens me and the guys in Weezer so much to say that our beautiful, creative, hilarious and sweet friend Mikey Welsh has passed away at the very young age of 40. A unique talent, a deeply loving friend and father, and a great artist is gone, but we will never forget him. His chapter in the weezer story (’98 – ’01) was vital, essential, wild, and amazing.

Mikey was never one to shy away from the absurd, dangerous or strange, and he did so with a gusto few others had. No one had quite the stage presence of Mikey, nor have there been many who pulled the types of shenanigans he did at shows. If it rocked, he had to try it – and he always found a way to pull it off.

When he emerged from his nervous breakdown that spelled his exit from the rock n roll world, he took on a new role as an astonishing and pure visual artist. It was a glorious flowering of a talent he always possessed, but he had chosen to rock out first, paint later. Our more recent meet-ups at weezer shows, including recently at the Weezer/Flaming Lips show at Jones Beach were always a great time. We will miss him terribly. Our deepest heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends. The world has lost a truly one of a kind guy.

…Tomorrow we play the RIOTfest in Chicago as planned – Mikey was planning on attending this show and we were looking forward to seeing him again. As sad as it is to think about, we know Mikey would never want the rock stopped on his account – quite the contrary in fact. While we wont see him, we know he will be there rocking out with us!

You can watch Welsh perform “Say It Ain’t So” with the band below: