Sad news: John Perry Barlow

Awoke today to read that John Perry Barlow has died.

He was remarkable Renaissance Man: a cattle rancher, song-writing partner of the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and a pioneer of the internet, co-founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

See the BBC’s obituary, here.

And, the EFF’s announcement, here.

Here’s Barlow talking about one of his Barlow-Weir compositions:

When I wrote “Looks Like Rain,” I had never fallen in love. I had certainly heard a lot of love songs. I had been to an opera or six. I was not unfamiliar with the huge literature of amorous helplessness. But I remained skeptical. I secretly believed that “falling in love” was a conceit that people had made up in order to make themselves even more miserable for their perceived insufficiencies. People do stuff like that. Nevertheless, there this song was on a winter day in Wyoming, and I didn’t try to stop it from coming into existence merely because it trafficked in emotions I hadn’t quite experienced. I didn’t know who these people in the song were or, really, what they were experiencing, but as it arrived, it seemed as genuine as any other love song.

And, here’s the Dead:

 

Image credit: JD Lasica/Flickr

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