McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane's pianist in the John Coltrane Quartet, was a huge influence on Bob Weir. In a 2001 Guitar World interview, Bobby confesses:

my dirty little secret is that I learned by trying to imitate a piano, specifically the work of McCoy Tyner in the John Coltrane Quartet. That caught my ear and lit my flame when I was 17. I just loved what he did underneath Coltrane, so I sat with it for a long time and really tried to absorb it. Of course, Jerry was very influenced by horn players, including Coltrane, but I never really explicitly thought about that relationship, because I didn’t really ever decide to pattern myself after McCoy Tyner’s piano. It just grabbed me.

But it's not such a dirty secret. In numerous interviews, Bobby cites McCoy Tyner as his primary influence, in one 1981 interview, citing Tyner's "chording, voicing and tonalities" as particularly influential.