INTERVIEW: PHISH Trey Anastasio March 13, 1993 - Edge City Magazine by Bob Doran Phish? Who are Phish? It depends on who you ask. _People Magazine_ included their album on last year's list of the ten worst of the year, right up there with Madonna. On the other hand, _CD Review_ included them on their list of the best. One way or another they are making an impact. They are four guys from Vermont who have been together for a decade playing their concept of rock and roll, along the way creating some new forms and gathering a dedicated following. What do they sound like? When I first heard them, I thought of the Allman Brothers old records -- extended solos with guitar trading licks with piano. They throw jazz, bluegrass, TV themes, Latin rhythms, and more into the Bass-o-matic, shifting genres freely, blending from one song to another in endless sets that last for hours, like the Dead. Also like the Dead, they have built their reputation through years on the road without much success in the record stores. Last year was a big one for the band -- they put out their first major label release, _Picture of Nectar_. Electra also reissued their two earlier albums, _Junta_ and _Lawn Boy_. They followed a spring tour for Nectar with the summer H.O.R.D.E. TOUR with the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, then went into the studio to record their latest effort, _Rift_. It's a different species of Phish, lyrically introspective with songs about relationships quite unlike the surrealistic fables and bizarre word play of their earlier records. Most of the songs come from the collaboration of two long time friends, Tom Marshall and Trey Anastasio. Trey is the guitarist and lead singer for the band. He called me from the road. -- Bob Doran Edge City: There's a song on the album _Junta_ called "Golgi Apparatus" that you wrote while in the 8th grade along with three other guys including someone named Marshall. Is that the Tom Marshall who you still write with? Trey Anastasio: Same Marshall. Tom Marshall. I just saw him a couple of days ago. Starting in about 6th grade I had this group of friends who are very musical. Our ideas of fun was... well we would just hang out and write songs constantly. EC: Did you play the guitar then? TA: I was just singing and playing the drums at the time. It just seemed natural at the time. I thought everybody did it, but it turns out that I haven't met other people who had the same kind of experience. EC: You mean starting a band in the 6th grade. TA: The people that I hung out with were really, really creative. I just feel lucky to grow up with such a great group of people. EC: Where was this? TA: This was in Princeton, New Jersey. My dad works at ETS, the Educational Testing Service. We moved there from Texas when he got a job as a computer programmer. EC: When was this? TA: I was born in '64 and we moved shortly afterwards. We just wrote lots of songs together. When we would go out, it was usually 5 or 6 people, we'd go to this rhombus in Princeton. EC: This was some kind of club in Princeton? TA: No, it's an actual rhombus. EC: Like the shape? TA: The shape, yeah. It's the Institute for Advanced Study. Where are you by the way? EC: I'm in Mckinleyville. It's near Arcata and Eureka in Humboldt County, CA... you guys played here not too long ago. As I remember, it was last spring the same night that Bonnie Raitt played a benefit. I went to see Hugh Masekela in Arcata. It's pretty unusual in this area to have that much music on the same night. TA: I probably would have gone to see Bonnie or Hugh myself. I love Bonnie Raitt's music. EC: We're off on a tangent, but that's OK. Anyway, back at this rhombus, you'd get together with your friends... TA: And we still do. The cool thing is that we started hanging out in the 6th grade behind the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which is where Einstein did all of his work. We used to go there and we still do, at the age of almost 30, on Tom's wedding night, it's this weird thing. We just call everybody up, people we haven't seen in years. We say, "rhombus, half an hour." Everybody will show up there. It's a big black rhombus in the middle of a green field. You climb up on top of it. It's kind of a magical place for us. We'd write music up there. The whole time through high school, we had these bands, and Tom and I continued to write songs together. EC: At what point did you start taking these things you wrote and use them for material for a band? TA: Well, what happened was, I was always in bands and doing music since a very early age through the normal routes. In high school I was in Glee club, Jazz band, Orchestra, Madrigal singers, all that stuff. EC: Were the other band members involved with music the way you were? Were they classically trained? TA: No one was "classically trained." They had all done plays and stuff like that. Like any kind of average geeky high school student, which is what we were I guess, we had done our share of music in high school. EC: What kind of music did Phish play when you first got going? TA: We were playing... It's funny. We got together and we had another guitar player. We had two guitar players and Page wasn't in the band. We got together and jammed for the first couple of days. We did the typical jam band songs. EC: For example. TA: We did "Midnight Hour", "Long Cool Woman in the Black Dress", "Heard it Through the Grapevine", that was a big one, "Whipping Post". EC: The Allman Brothers. I hear their style in what you're doing. Their kind of extended jazzy jam style. Were you playing in bars? TA: Our first gig was at this ROTC dance. Two weeks after we got together. EC: So you literally put this together with a "Bass player needed" ad on a bulletin board. TA: "Guitarist and singer into Steely Dan, Allman Brothers". I probably put Led Zeppelin. I was also into progressive stuff like early Genesis. Mike answered the ad. I really wanted to get into a band. That was foremost in my mind. Fish [the drummer] and I kind of just hit it off. I remember I was standing in front of the library and he walked by. he was the funniest looking guy I had ever seen. EC: Is Fishman really his family name? TA: Yeah, Fishman. EC: So is that where the band's name comes from? TA: Sort of yeah, (laughs). We didn't say, "Let's name the band after Fish," we were just throwing names around. EC: So you changed the spelling... TA: In the tradition of the Beatles, (laughs) whatever. I hope I'm not blabbing too much. This is kind of different than most interviews I've done. I've been thinking about stuff that I haven't thought about for a long time. Anyway, I guess the thing that held us together, the people that did stay in the band, was that we wanted to be doing different kinds of things. Especially Fish and myself. Mike was up for it too, maybe not as enthusiastically as us, but Jeff, the other guitar player pretty much wanted to have a good time and be in a college rock band, and play the songs. It all came to a head. I hadn't thought about this for years but it suddenly dawned on me. There's a song on Junta called "You Enjoy Myself". EC: I like that one. TA: All that stuff at the beginning was sort of written out, "composed" stuff where it goes to do do do do do (sings) before the words come in. It was the first time, myself and John (or Fish the drummer) had gone to Europe, and we were playing street music. While we were there I wrote this thing, "You Enjoy Myself". I brought it back to the band when we got back and I said, "Let's learn this." That was it. Right then. The tension started with Jeff. It was like beating his head against the wall. He thought it was stupid. EC: He didn't want to do original music? TA: Only within the boundaries... This was very different sounding stuff. EC: Not in a form that he was used to? TA: My whole goal was, "as different as possible." That was the beginning of the end for him. He left the band and at that point I started working with Emie [Stires] and writing even more. He was helping to emancipate the concept of dissonance in my ear. The beauty is dissonance that jazz introduces to people. The music was getting even weirder and weirder so he [Jeff] left and Page heard it and really wanted to be in that kind of band. He sort of forced his way in. At the time Fish and I were saying, "We don't want another person." EC: You didn't have a keyboard then. You must have had a much different sound. TA: Yeah, we did. We started out as your basic two guitar, classic rock attack (laughs). Since then it's grown. Now to bring it all home again, I think that's been the underlying philosophy. EC: You mean creating new forms? TA: Yeah, doing something different and introducing people to some new ideas. EC: I think it works. I like it, but for some people it's too much. My wife made me turn it off the other day. She didn't care for it. She said it sounds like the Grateful Dead. TA: The original stuff was the focus from the beginning but there's always a lot of jamming, hence the Allman Brother, Grateful Dead kind of comparison. EC: You're not offended by that are you? TA: No. Because it's there. You can't deny it. EC: In _Billboard_'s review of the Horizons of Rock Developing Tour [with Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler], they describe your crowds as "tie-dyed Deadhead U types." TA: Deadhead University (laughs). I didn't see that. Our crowd, whatever you want, them. They are a great audience. They're supportive. They listen. They're open to new stuff. For instance, this tour, the first night of the tour Rift had just been released. The tour is to support the new album, Rift. The first night we played four brand new songs that no one had heard before and everyone was open to it. We never had albums out. We've been going for so long, it's always been a word-of-mouth, cult sort of thing. EC: You put out your own album? TA: _Junta_, but we only sold it at shows, so you had to already be there to buy it. EC: That was on Absolute A-Go-Go... TA: Distributed by Rough Trade. Then Rough Trade went bankrupt, taking our meager profits with them. We didn't get any money from that. EC: So you got burned. TA: We got totally burned, but hey! Who cares? EC: At least you got to put your record out. TA: For a month. Then everybody would call up and complain that they couldn't get it. Then we signed with Electra and we had already recorded _Picture of Nectar_. EC: So you did that on your own? TA: It was basically done. We did it on our own, paid for it ourselves. EC: Did you approach Electra? TA: No, they approached us. EC: Are you insulated from that dealing with Electra? It's not like the corporate big wigs are going to come to a Phish gig. TA: We've done two albums for Electra and we just went in and did it. On Rift no one even came to the studio, no one had anything to say at all until we were done. EC: After producing your own records successfully, why did you decide to bring in an outside guy [Barry Beckett] for Rift? I assume you liked the end product on your other albums. TA: We didn't like the end product. EC: What didn't you like? TA: I'll give you an example. When we did decide to get a producer. We sent out feelers, got some resumes. One of the people we liked was Barry. His response was, "I've got to be honest. I don't get it. I don't hear anything going on. I don't understand what you guys are all about." We said, "Why don't you just come see one show live." He said OK. He came and saw us. He saw one set. He came backstage and said, "I really want to work with you guys. Whatever you've got going is not coming through on the albums at all." That's what we've been hearing for years, that the energy isn't there. EC: I've never seen you play, but I think I have a good idea where you're coming from musically. TA: I don't know what it sounds like, I'm so biased being in the middle of it that I can't tell. But I can't listen to _Picture of Nectar_, of the four albums I really feel like it was... I don't usually say either because I don't want people to think, "I'm not going to buy that, " and people do like it. I put it on and I can't get past the first song. EC: What about the older albums? TA: My favorite of all three is _Junta_. There's about four of five songs that I feel were successful. Those songs are: "You Enjoy Myself", "Ester", "Fee" and "Dinner and A Movie" isn't too bad. EC: That's interesting. I borrowed that disc from a friend and taped part of it. Those were the same tunes I chose, plus Fluff Head. It took me a while to get used to what you're doing with your lyrics. TA: That's not surprising. EC: I noticed something in your press packet. There's a review from the _LA Times_, mostly the guy loved you, but he attacked the lack of "emotional weight" in your lyrics. Then in your own description of _Rift_ you talk about the songs having "more emotional weight." Did you make some conscious effort to write heavier songs? TA: His criticism, it's not just one guy. It's something we've talked about. Other people say the same thing. But, the people who do like us say, "I like coming to your shows, because it's an escape." EC: It's fun! The big difference I noticed listening to _Rift_ after hearing your other stuff, there's this joy in your old stuff. Then with _Rift_. TA: What did you think? EC: I thought this is heavy. What happened? Did his girlfriend throw him out? Some emotional trauma must have happened. It was effective that way, but I missed some of the playfulness. I realized that on your other stuff a lot of times the lyrics didn't make any difference, that you were using words for rhythm and music. Sometimes reading your songs on paper they won't make sense. There's these bizarre surrealistic images. TA: That's the whole idea. Like "Ester", all I was thinking about when I wrote it was that I liked the way the words sounded together. I had this music in my head, the first line that I sat down and wrote, I remember it was, "Quibble grew to spat, to wrangle, then to brawl." I was actually thinking about the singability of it, how the mouth works from one word to another. Then I got into the story and I thought, "This is really bizarre." She goes up in the air and flies around. I just sort of filled in the words. I think you hit the nail on the head. This is a good question. The thing is we've always had these challenges along the way. We never set out to be a band that plays 16 different styles of music. It's just that we see something we like and we want to do it. Like, we started getting into this bluegrass stage, listening to it... EC: There's a lot of that style on Nectar. TA: Right, We said, "Let's learn how to play it." We started covering bluegrass songs, the same thing with jazz and with Latin rhythms and stuff. Then it got to a point where, it was like, that was something we had never done. There was this Eric Clapton song on the radio, "Tears in Heaven". Here's this guy who's been playing for so long, and he manages to come out with this song, the first time I heard it my heart was breaking. EC: Of course it came from the most extreme life experience anyone could have. TA: At the same time Tom [Marshall] was going through some heavy times with his... now she's his wife. EC: He wasn't married yet? TA: The one song where we felt like we really did it was "Fast Enough For You". It's completely almost so embarrassingly personal. I don't see how his wife could even listen to it. What happened was, they were having these problems a little more than a year ago, they were going to get married, they were engaged and he decided, "I don't want to get married." The wedding date was set, everyone was ready, he was freaking out about the whole thing. He always is sending me letters in the mail with poems in them. These poems started to get more and more heavy. That was one of them. It's basically saying, "Nothin's fast enough for you, why can't we just wait?" At the same time this was happening, well, we're on the road eight months of the year, we all have girlfriends and we all have plenty of problems trying to keep these relationships going. EC: They're in Vermont or Massachusetts... TA: Or in New York, actually that person in the band just split up because they couldn't make it work anymore. All this stuff was happening, and there definitely was this conscious thing where [we said], "Let's see if we can do it? Let's see if we can write about something that's real in our lives." Talking back and forth to Tom, a lot of songs we do over the phone, trading lines. Since then we've written more songs. We just finished one that is absolutely the heaviest, most depressing thing I've heard (laughs). It's so heavy it makes that stuff look light. I can see it now, for years people have complained about us as being too light hearted, "Why don't they write about something real?" EC: Do you worry that your fans who love you for your light heartedness will not like the heavy stuff? TA: I think things will keep moving forward. I've been talking to Tom about this. Let me tell you what I think the moments were where we really hit it off as a song writing team. There's a song called "Bouncing Around the Room" on _Lawn Boy_. I really, really like those lyrics, and even though they are kind of heavy, I like the lyrics to "Rift", and "Lawn Boy". EC: You think they have "weight"? TA: I don't know about weight, but they create vivid images, there's some kind of beauty to them. EC: Tell me about "Phishnet". TA: We were playing out in your area,... [and were] told about this Phishnet that was going on. Independently they had set up this computer network where people communicate with each other exchanging song lists, making bootleg tape trees... EC: Something like the Deadheads do. TA: Same basic thing. They trade tickets and stuff. It's kind of grown really fast. There it goes. We don't have anything to do with it... EC: Do you guys have a message? TA: What is our message? What pops into my head is that one man's trash is another man's treasure. (laughs) I don't really think about it most of the time, but that comes to me from our conversation. The funny thing is that people either love us or hate us, in general. The [critic] from the _LA Times_ really liked the show, the woman from the _NY Times_ hated it. At the end of last year we were voted one of the ten worst albums of the year by _People Magazine_, which is quite an honor. EC: It is. It shows that you had an impact on somebody. TA: We were the only act in there that wasn't huge. We didn't sell that many records but they put us in there with Madonna. We were voted one of the best albums by _CD Review_ so, who's to say? "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Maybe that will be the title of our next album. Transcribed by Derek Atlansky