EGN NEWS DESK
In subsequent years, Walton traveled with the Dead when the band carried out on the pyramids in Egypt, drummed onstage with Hart and fellow percussionist Bill Kreutzmann, and appeared at a Dead & Company live performance as Father Time because the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve in 2019. (Walton was additionally a fan of different musicians, together with Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Phish.)
After Walton joined the Celtics earlier than the 1985-86 season, Larry Bird, the Celtics star, organized a workforce outing to a Dead present in Worcester, Mass., as a part of welcoming the brand new man. Years later, Walton was inducted into the Grateful Dead Hall of Honor — “my highest honor,” he informed Relix Magazine.
“He knew the music inside-out,” stated Hart, who remembered that Walton’s favourite Dead track was “Fire on the Mountain.”
Walton additionally appeared to understand different pursuits by way of the Dead — above all, taking part in basketball.
“The music and the basketball have been the very same factor,” he wrote. “You have a workforce with a aim, and a band with a track, and followers cheering as a result of they’re blissful, but in addition to make the gamers carry out higher, quicker, and to take all people additional.”
He continued: “During the sport, in the course of the track, all people goes off, every in their very own path, taking part in their very own tune. But then with the greatness of a workforce, the greatness of a pacesetter, and the willingness to play to the next calling, they’re all capable of come again and end the job collectively — to win the sport and ship the folks out into the night time ecstatic, clamoring for extra.”
