'
Un-PHIL-tered! '
Exclusive
Interview with Phil Lesh
( Continued )
<< Back to Page One
That
reminds me, the PhilHarmonia
must have been a real thrill for you playing with Crosby and all of those
great musicians
[also David Grisman, Donna Jean Godchaux-McKay, Michael Tilson-Thomas,
Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and more].
Well it is, but it’s a whole different kind of thing.
It’s more where the audience is the band. We make them do the "Twelve
Days of Christmas." We make them sing out sometimes we actually shut
up and let them do it. (laughter) It’s really more of a community thing
than it is a performance. It really is a lot of fun.
I think it was in a Rolling Stone interview,
you mentioned Greg Osby as one of your favorite new artists?
No, I haven’t done an interview with Rolling Stone. It was the
kind of thing where they called [Dennis] McNally, the Grateful Dead publicist
and asked if anybody had a list of their five favorite CD’s of the year.
I’m always up for promoting the music that I think is the most interesting
in the world so I gave him the list and Greg Osby’s name was on it. Greg’s
publicist, Brad [Riesau] gave me a call or sent me an e-mail or something
and said, "You know, Greg wants to thank you. Maybe you guys can meet
when you come to Philly?" So I e-mailed him back and he sent me a bunch
of Greg’s records and really cool stuff and so I kept in touch with him.
I said, "These are the dates and I’m at this hotel, maybe we can
get together. (smiles wide) Just tell Greg to bring his horn." (lots of
laughter) So he brought his horn! (laughs)
I heard that he got a real kick out of it too
because obviously the audience at a Phil and Friends show is not the same
as the audiences he’s used to playing in front of.
That’s right, and you know, with everybody saying,
"Who is this guy?" It took him an hour to get to his car (laughs)
because all of these Deadheads were out there saying, "Hey man, that was
great! Where can I get your records?" and stuff like that. So I think
that was wonderful you know, to turn people on to a great musician like
that.
Mountain
Aire is just around the corner and the band will be the same as it
was for the Spring Tour. Are you excited for that?
Mountain
Aire has a special feeling to it, I’m really looking forward to the weekend.
Derek Trucks,
Croz and other friends will be showing up to join in the fun with my band,
and I will most likely be returning the favor. It should be TRIP CITY!!
(laughter) John Cutler has a great sound system coming up this year and
Candace and her lights will be making magic. Playing outdoors is one of
my most favorite things in life, and I hope to do plenty of it. I also
have some relatives up that way and my boys are trying to convince me
to camp onsite.
Will you attack it differently
since it’s just this one show instead of a whole run of shows?
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
Yeah, the setlist will be jam packed with all the
hottest stuff I can think of! (laughter) Yes, just boundless possibilities.
Then this summer you’re going to be on the road with Bob
Dylan for about a month and a half. How does that sit with you?
Oh yeah, I’m really stoked about that. For me it’s just such an adventure
just to take the bus and go all across the country to all these different
places which I maybe wouldn’t normally be able to go to by myself. But
working with Bob [Dylan] is always an adventure. This guy is such a warrior
and such an explorer. To me he’s like Walt Whitman and Jesse James rolled
into one. (laughter) I will never walk away from a good musical adventure.
On our last tour - I found this out later because I didn’t always see him - he was up there almost every night checking us out. He would be incognito and people wouldn’t even notice that he was there. I was up there checking out his show one night and two days later I was walking down the street and I said, "Oh! That’s what he meant!" – because he changes it all the time it’s like a continual exploration of his music. To me that’s very exciting. You know, he and Jerry [Garcia] had a unique bond together. I’m looking forward to maybe doing more intimately related musical stuff with Bob on this tour.
Listen to the following in RealAudio
We
didn’t really get a chance to do that much [in the Fall]
besides - I would sit in with his band at the end of his set. But we got
jammin'! We had personnel problems and we were concentrating on keeping
our stuff together on that last tour. But
even at the end, the last few nights when I was sitting in with his band,
you know, we got into some stuff and I’m looking at Bob and he’s looking
at me and I said, "BOB, WE’RE JAMMIN MAN! WE’RE JAMMIN!" and he laughed,
he laughed because we were! We were! (much laughter)
We
would all hope to see you guys together for the Summer Tour possibly
some dueting on some songs too?
I think you would have seen that on the last tour
but my band was regrouping so to speak. At our soundchecks, Derek was
still learning stuff. He’d be sitting in the dressing room with a CD player
and his guitar. He is a hero to me, he flew in to save the show!
Oh
man, and just to think about how much more potential he still has!
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
(emphatically) OH, I’D SAY SO! (lots of laughter)
And my son Grahame got a chance to hear Derek’s second album which literally
ate his mind. Here's my thirteen year old son is saying, "What is that?
Is that a guitar? WOW! Turn it up!" (laughter) So yeah, I’m looking forward
to doing some kind of collaborative music with Bob on this tour.
There
was some mention that the two of you would be alternating between opening
and closing?
Yeah, that’s something that we wanted to have cleared
up. Last time we sort of flipped a coin and I decided that I wanted to
go first because my kids were on the road with me. That way I could do
the soundcheck, do the show, get in the bus, be with my kids and hang
out. But this time it’s a little bit of a bigger deal we’re playing
bigger places and last year the idea was that we were co-headliners and
so we want to manifest that a little bit more this time.
I know last time when Dylan
played with Paul Simon they did a mini-set in the middle where they were
both on stage together between individual performances.
We’re planning on trying something like that. We’re
not going to be alternating (closing) each show because it’s really hard
on our crew. Since it’s quite a long tour, they asked if we could do maybe
two, three, four days in a row (Phil) and two, three, four days in a row
(Bob) so it’d be easier to set up. So, you won’t know who’s going to close
or open each show. My set will be longer at all of the shows than it was
in the fall so I can have more time and space to do my thing.
We
sure do appreciate all the surprises!
That’s good because we definitely are always surprised in some way. (laughter)
Sometimes it feels better if you just let things evolve. We try to keep
that open enough where we don’t make firm decisions so you can just go
with it wherever it takes you because that’s part of the fun too. "A wing
and a prayer" is what we call it. (laughter) One wing. One prayer. (Phil
mimics a one-winged bird flying in circles explosive laughter)
What about some of the Dead classics like Viola Lee and New Potato what
was the impetus for bringing those songs back and into rotation?
Because the Grateful Dead never did them, that’s
one reason. I just wanted to pick my favorites and the stuff I always
felt that gave the musicians the most room to open it up, because that’s
what I want to do, I want to open it up.
What are some of you’re
favorites to actually play or to challenge the Friends with?
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
Everything
on that list. Everything on that list because I want to be able to be
able to improvise into the song, improvise in the middle of the song,
and improvise out of the song. I
see the songs as islands of order in the sea of chaos. The sea of chaos
is all the jammin' that we’re doing, and every so often we come to these
islets that could be a song, or could be the beginning of a song, or part
of a song. And we’ll just stay there sometimes
and we’ll elaborate on these little
places, and then we’ll go back surfing on the sea of chaos again. To
me in a lot of ways that’s a metaphor for life or for a spiritual journey.
So that’s the feeling in there or the structure that I’m after.
How about some of your later tunes like Childhood’s End
or Wave to the Wind? Why haven’t you played those with Phil and Friends?
Well,
I’m going to bring back Childhood’s End definitely. Plus, there’s one
that has no title yet that I just wrote, then there’s Wave to the Wind
which finally found the right groove, then there are two others that I
am finishing up – so that’s a total of five. You will definitely hear
some new old songs and a couple of brand new songs.
Cool – can’t wait! Well,
that’s exciting that you’re working on some new stuff. Is that a task
for you?
Yeah, because I could never realize the songs to my satisfaction in the
past and I think I can do that now.
I
know a lot of people were crying out for Early Morning Rain from back
in the Warlocks days.
[Editor’s note: Early Morning Rain was
first played on 11/3/65 at Golden State Studios in San Francisco for the
Warlocks Autumn Records Demo under the alias of "The Emergency Crew" and
was only known to have been performed live twice in early 1966, according
to Dead Base IX, copyright 1995 by John W. Scott, Michael Dolgushkin
and Stuart Nixon.]
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
Gee, that’s a Gordon Lightfoot tune. (Phil begins
to sing the first verse of Early Morning Rain) "In the early morning
rain with a dollar in my hand..." (mumbles the melody). It’s a fabulous
song. (singing again) "See the silver bird on high..." It’s about some
guy sniveling in the rain at the airport watching his girlfriend fly off
to Paris to meet another guy or something... I don’t know. (laughter)
Ah,
that was a treat… At your Birthday Benefit you came out on the red Strat.
People went nuts! How long have you been playing guitar?
I’ve been playing at the guitar since about 1970
but I don’t really play. I just strum chords. I wanted to get an electric
guitar so I went and got myself a really
fine electric guitar - a ‘63 Strat. Jeff Pevar and Robben
Ford both 
played
it and said, "This is a fabulous guitar." It’s just such a great instrument
to just play and all of these neat harmonic formations just fall under
your fingers if you just goof around with it long enough. That’s
how I wrote this new song that doesn’t have a name yet. I was just fooling
around on the guitar - I started out doing something I had done years
ago and then it just sort of evolved into this whole big elaborate harmonic
structure. So the instrument is really a fruitful thing for me to play
and just to goof around with it having that electric guitar is really
a good thing. I have a really nice acoustic guitar, but it’s hard for
me to play because the action’s so high and the strings are so fat (laughs)
and it hurts my hands. With an electric guitar, I can play it much more
easily, and it has all those different sounds, but I’m not going to play
electric guitar very often on stage not unless I have another bass player.
You know, I couldn’t have done that without Mike [Gordon] being there.
How was that for you and
Mike? Was that something that was tough to work out at first?
Well, we really didn’t work it out. We just sort
of as just about everything we do we sort of played it by ear. We
did that little bass duet/solo thing at Shoreline with Phish [on 9/17/99]
and that turned out really well. At the Kaiser [for the Birthday Bash
on 3/10/00], it wasn’t quite as successful mainly because there are acoustic
problems sound problems at Kaiser. That
was one of the things that bothered me about that show because it didn’t
show off the band that well. The band couldn’t hear each other on stage.
We went from a pristine sounding rehearsal studio to serious sound problems
and it 
really
didn’t show off what that band can do. A lot of the delicacy
and the soulful
tenderness of the music that is there was lost. The chemistry and musicianship
of this band is unbelievable.
John
Molo suggested we
try Robben, and he’s having such a great time digging into GD music -
his sensibility is perfect for it; he’s a pure soul with the heart of
a lion and absolute mastery of the guitar. Paul and Bill, the Little
Feat guys, are really flourishing in the "jamout" context
- it’s scary to think of what it will be like by the end of the tour,
but I promise you - this band will be dangerous!
How was it joining Phish
at Shoreline (9.17.99), especially joining a show that was in progress
with the heat up so much already? Oh, especially on the trampoline? (laughs)
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
Oh, I don’t know. It was just a goof (grinning hard).
This is so cool. This is Trey [Anastasio] for ya. This is what he’s doing...
[Phil gets up and simulates the action] ...When it's time to turn, Mike
goes [Phil jumps one quarter] to the right... when it’s time to turn,
Trey goes [Phil jumps left] backwards three-quarters of the way around,
and they’re playing! They ARE playing! I didn’t have my bass strapped
on and it wasn’t plugged in so I couldn’t even pretend like I was playing
because if I had tried to put it in while I was on the trampoline I would’ve
fallen off! (explosive laughter) The
funniest thing of it all was that Jay Blakesberg got this picture of the
three of us. We’re all getting air and Trey’s got this much air [Phil
holds hands out showing about a foot], Mike’s got this much air [Phil
shows a bit less], and I’ve got about this much air [Phil shows about
four inches] and I’ve got this look on my face like, "Oh Fuck!" (big laughter!)
[Editor's
note: If you haven't already seen the animation of Phil, Trey, and Mike
jumping on the trampoline, check it out here]
So,
you’ve obviously been spending a lot of time on Phil and Friends. Do you
have time for any other efforts? We’ve heard a little bit about Keys
To The Rain (a symphonic multi-layered transformation of Grateful
Dead songs)...
I’m still working on that. That still looms very large in my thinking
and I just have to knuckle down and do it. The structure of it keeps changing
it’s a long-term project that is constantly being inspired by each new
group of Friends.
Do you have any other side projects?
Oh, I have about a dozen that are simmering in my
mind.
Any hints?
No, not yet.
Do you ever think about
producing any other bands?
No, not really. That’s really not my favorite thing
to do. I did it a little bit back in the 70’s and it was fun, but I did
it mostly just to help out some friends.
In
your eyes, how successful was the Birthday Bash and where are things at
now?
I thought it was tremendously successful in that
we were able to raise almost a quarter of a million dollars for Hepatitis
C Research. That’s the kind of thing that I want to be able to do
each year putting the money directly into the hands of the people who
are researching the virus and its effects.
Could
you tell us a little bit about your new fundraising effort to benefit
Music in Schools?
Yeah, one of the things that we want to do with
Mtn. Aire and the Summer Tour is to help out different Music
In Schools programs because for me, I 
owe
everything to music education in public schools. I would’ve known that
I love music, but I wouldn’t have known that I could do it myself. The
decline of Arts Education in schools means a lot of different things
but to me it means that tragically, there’s a tremendous amount of artistic
potential that’s been lost. There are many thousands of kids that will
never know that they have potential as musicians because there’s no education
in schools to promote it. On the other side of the coin, even if people
don’t become musicians or don’t go on later in life to play an instrument
music education is so important because first of all it creates enlightened
listeners, people who know what to listen for, people who know how to
understand a story that music is telling. Also, musical performance, especially
in ensemble, is a metaphor for cooperative creativity which is something
that we need a lot of in our world today. Arts Education is tremendously
important, otherwise we will have a nation of people who only think of
the Arts as background to whatever they’re doing at the moment.
We are putting together a fund raising auction that
will be on eBay for Mtn. Aire and the Summer Tour where we will
auction all kinds of fun stuff and have contests, with all the money raised
going to music programs in schools. I am personally putting up a matching
grant of $100,000 which means that for every dollar raised up to $100,000
I will match. The auction will run the length of the tour and should be
a lot of fun. I understand Philzone.com
will be helping us. If you check here or our site, ThePhilzone.com,
we should be up and running soon.
You’ve said many times how the loving, healing vibes of all the fans helped you to a speedy recovery. One of the amazing things about the Dead and now Phil & Friends is the ability of the music to power the audience, and then that energy that social cosmicicty is multiplied and given back to the band. Do you really feel that?
Listen
to the following in RealAudio
Oh,
absolutely, without a doubt. It’s been true ever since the first days
of the Grateful Dead. To me, the people that come to the shows are not
there just for the music although I like to think that the music is
a big drawing factor but they’re there to be together. They’re there
to be a community because they know that’s where they can find like-minded
people is at those shows - and it’s been true of the Grateful Dead,
and now it’s true for Phil & Friends, and I’m sure it’s true of a
lot of other musical scenes.
Our
audiences seem to be willing to come in there and say, "Here it is, here
it is, make something of this - make something of this love, this energy,
this community that we have." And they throw it at us and we tie
it up in knots and throw it back and then they unravel it and throw it
back at us again and it’s like an endless cycle and it keeps getting everybody
higher. It's like a spiral...
The late Terence
McKenna spoke about the OverMind and group consciousness...
Yes, Terence... You know, for all the profundity,
really, of his thinking and writing - he was really a cosmologist at heart
- his sense of play is what I’ll remember - he saw the humor in the Cosmic
Joke. But group consciousness is the context of any musical performance...
here’s a smaller group consciousness on stage which is the microcosm,
then there’s the larger group consciousness out in the audience and that’s
the macrocosm and they mirror each other- and so the energy cycles back
and forth between them until they become identical.
Do
you have any plans for any official releases coming up?
We’re still not sure what form they’ll take - maybe putting out a "Best
of" or "Highlights" and then also maybe putting up one show per tour on
the internet to download.
I saw that there’s going
to be a Summer Sessions compilation CD released?
We’re going to have a couple of songs on there and
we’re just thinking about what they are now.
What
other hobbies do you have outside of music?
I’m a Little League Dad. I do a lot of driving the boys to their ballgames
and practices. I’m an obnoxious father that goes "What do you mean that
run doesn’t count?!" (big laughs) Also, I have a lot of interests - I
read a lot of astronomy and cosmology, ancient history and religion, art
history, fiction, the mathematics of chaos and order - that sort of thing.
I also try to take walks and be out in nature.
Is there anyone out there
that you really want to have as a Friend?
That’s
a tricky question because there’s a lot of great players out there, but
not everybody has this sort of mindset that allows them to open up, although
I find that musicians come in and they don’t really have that mindset
to start with but they get it after a while from the experience. It’s
a wonderful thing to watch these musicians come in and learn this music
to me, in a way, it’s a vindication of the music we spent thirty years
putting together. To see these musicians that come from different backgrounds
and different ways of looking at music come in and play this music brilliantly
and GET IT, and understand how to do it and take it to new heights is
just wonderful. To see them interpret the repertoire in new ways to
me that’s what it’s all about.
Thank you for your time Phil!
Special thanks to Phil Lesh and Cygnus Productions for taking the time to make this happen!
Conducted
5.7.00 - NYC
by
Bret Heisler
and
Jendee
Interview written & produced by 2012
Productions.
©2000
www.philzone.com
and www.2012productions.com.
All rights reserved.
All photos ©1999-2000 by photographers noted.
This interview or any photos included may not be reprinted anywhere in
any form - online or offline - without the express written consent of
the photographer and Philzone.com.
However, we certainly encourage you to link here.
.
.