The Phish Archive

Phish
June 20, 1995 - The Album Network
by Jim Nelson

Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison Colorado. Have you ever seen 10,000 people all dancing together? And if you have, did they all start dancing together BEFORE the band played a note?
I swear there was not a stationary foot in the house from the instant Phish took the stage last Friday night in this natural amphitheater in the hills just outside of Denver. A more majestic and exquisite setting for a concert you'll not find on this earth, and the beauty of the situation was amplified as the multi-state crowd (the license plates in the pre-show traffic were from as far away as Maine and New York) began dancing in unison even as Trey and Mike were still strapping on their instruments. Of course, for many of the spectators, calling it dancing isn't necessarily accurate. Let's say gyrating to and fro. Noodle dancing, it's been called.
Phish has been creating this sort of frenzy among concert goers for 13 years now. Ever since Trey Anastasio (New Jersey), Mike Gordon (Massachusetts), Page McConnell (New Jersey), and Jon Fishman (New York) formed this phenomenon known as Phish while at college in Vermont, they have been working very hard at being musically spontaneous, with the intention of acting like a metaphorical "hose," directing a flow of creative energy back and forth between the audience and the stage. I now empathize with the tens of thousands of Phish-heads who see this band time after time, traveling if necessary to accomplish their goal. I was among the uninitiated until Red Rocks. I'd heard the stories of how phanatical Phish-heads were, and how just one show is all it takes to convert the skeptical. Now I know for sure.
My conversation with Trey was broken down into two separate chats -- one they day before this life-altering event, and one the day after.
Let's talk about this place that you played last night; is there anywhere more majestic and natural for making music than Red Rocks?
"I think Red Rocks probably tops them all, certainly for the people in the audience, because (they) can see the skyline behind (us), and the moon, and the sound is incredible. When we walk onstage when it's still light, I can see everyone perfectly clear. It's so steep that the people in the back row are right up in your face and it's really amazing."
Did you see the people up on the hill, off to the side?
"I saw somebody up in a cave."
It's amazing that people will climb up these huge rocks, quite literally risking serious injury if they were to fall, just to see you guys play.
"People are pretty die-hard in their attempts to get in."
When you're up onstage and you see 10,000 people out there dancing, as if they're all one spirit, and people have climbed up huge rocks and gotten in a cave just to see you perform, do you relate that to the days when you've gone to concerts and felt that same way for another band?
"I don't know. It's funny, because the focus is so much on this (musical) communication and the jamming that you don't really notice it. There was actually one time when I did make that connection; we did a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden last year, and Madison Square Garden has always been the sort of pinnacle rock'n'roll venue as far as I was concerned, growing up in New Jersey. So when we came out onstage, I remember kind of reflecting "Here I am at Madison Square Garden!" Most of the time I've trained myself not to be thinking consciously, so I'm trying hard not to be thinking at all in sort of a spiritual way, or something, that I don't think along those lines too much. I'm trying to lose myself in the music, and the more lost I am, the better."
More often than not, live albums are to satisfy contractual obligations or to give the band some time off. Why have Phish done _A Live One_ now?
"This is totally the opposite. For us, it's a culmination of a career. I think, I mean, our focus has been playing live for so long -- it's what we've been practicing for and honing and fine-tuning over the years, and whenever we go in the studio, we usually feel a little bit out of our element.
"The best way I could put it would be if somebody said 'I've never heard your band -- what album should I buy,' there's no question that they should be the live album. It's definitely a different kind of a thing; half of it has never been released before and 80% of it is spontaneously-generated music. I think _A Live One_ sounds much more like us than any of the other albums by a long shot."
Please describe phish practice sessions, in which you rehearse improvisation -- which is ironic, the notion of rehearsing spontaneity.
"It is ironic. The main exercise that starts the whole thing off is an exercise that's go a weird name; it's called an 'Including Your Own Hey.' There are four of us standing in a circle in the practice room, and I start a simple, repetitive, three-note phrase. Then, the other three guys come in to complement that phrase till you have a bed of sound. I've often thought that the closest thing I've heard to it is sort of a King Sunny Ade kind of thing, where each person is playing a small part to make a greater whole. As soon as I hear that the other three people have come and and joined me, and have settled onto something that's good, I say 'Hey.' At the same time the other three people are doing the same thing. They're listening to hear when all the other people have joined and made a bed of sound and settled. They also say 'Hey.' Theoretically, it would be at the same time, 'cause we're all hearing the same thing, right? As soon as everyone says, 'Hey,' the person to my right changes his phrase, and then the other three people have to adjust their (musical) statement to fit the other person's, so there's a second bed of sound, at which point you say, 'Hey,' again. This goes around in a circle and the music continues to change.
"What this exercise does is, you have to be listening actively to three different things at the same time, which is a very hard thing to do; it's not the way people listen usually. It gets rid of your ego in that you're training yourself to listen to the other three people all the time, and if you do this for hours and hours, what happens is that if you get up onstage and you find yourself kind of just rocking out aimlessly, your mind is continually telling you 'What's Page doing? What are the drums doing?' That was the base exercise, and we expanded on it over the years. First, we expanded by doing that same exercise, but limiting ourselves to one aspect of music. So we would do it purely on tempo, for instance, so that each person in the circle has a turn controlling the tempo, either rushing it or dragging it. That got us over the fear of our improvisations onstage -- we opened up a new kind of freedom. Then we did the same with dynamics, with harmony, with texture, where everyone's playing one note. Did you hear the live album yet?"
Many times.
"You know in 'Tweezer' [editor's note: on _A Live One_, Tweezer is more than 30 minutes long], that whole thing is total improv. I don't think that we could have ever jammed like that without having done these exercises. I don't think that the band could so fluidly vary every different aspect of music - harmony, melody, tempo, texture - or gone through all those changes without having gone through those exercises. In fact, I'm convinced of it."
Even on _A Picture of Nectar_, 'Tweezer' was more than eight and a half minutes long. How did you guys approach the extended jam that you're speaking of. Did you talk about it beforehand?
"No, we really didn't. That particular one was kind of a breakthrough for us. If anything, it was the opposite (of a rehearsed approach). We don't talk about it at all before we go onstage, but it's kind of a one-mind thing, about trying to break through to a new kind of music or improvisation that wouldn't happen without full cooperation from all four people."
How do you all know to go to the musical places you go when you jam, and how do you know when you're done?
"The funny thing about knowing when you're done -- and this has always kind of convinced me that musicians are not tally creating the music, that the music is sort of going through you -- inevitably everybody knows when it's over. You just know. Bands that do a lot of improv -- it so often comes to this nice conclusion without anybody having to say anything. The other thing that you know; you definitely know if you've gone too far. It's the same kind of thing; it makes me believe that the music is coming through us, and what you're really doing is opening channels; by doing all those exercises you're allowing yourself to be more open. It's like a connection with the audience. During the biggest jams I feel like a hole, like this giant tube or something. How'd we know where to go? I think that the way that you know, in this band at least, is to listen. It comes from rehearsal and philosophy."
So many bands go for the lowest common denominator -- three chords and cliched lyrics. You guys go the other direction. What gives Phish the permission to try to take their audience to higher places?
"I've been thinking about this a lot for a while now. Something about this culture, when you watch TV and advertisements, there's this philosophy -- you know, the whole 'stupid is cool' philosophy; if you're inarticulate and meat-heady, it's cool. I just did some work with an entire eighth grade class, and I think that the 'apathy is cool' attitude has gotten so insulting. I think that it's about to go the opposite direction, thank God.
"The media is so powerful. I was watching the Flyers game, and when these commercials would come on glorifying stupidity, it got me so mad. I kept thinking 'What is all the media moguls go together and said, 'let's just change our whole outlook; let's glorify brilliance for a while, and let's see what happens to all the kids in this country, when all of a sudden it's cool to think.' Wouldn't that change everything? It would."
Hit singles have eluded Phish, though you've gotten a little more airplay with each album. How does that feel?
"It's important to know that it's never been a focus of ours. And I don't have anything against bands for which it is the focus, it just doesn't happen to have been our framework. We don't really expect (a hit single). Our goal has always been the more expanded view of music, though I guess I enjoy writing concise songs: one of the new ones that we did last night, 'Strange Design' is concise. I like writing songs like that, too. But it's never been a thing where we've tried to have a hit, because I think that it brings a lot of nasty baggage with it that I'm not interested in. Our career has gone long enough now that we have a definite attitude that we don't want to do things anymore that we don't enjoy, be they promotional things, videos, or whatever. We're deep into our career and we really want to enjoy it."
What about record sales; do they matter to Phish?
"Not really, I mean, I don't mean to sound flippant, but it doesn't. It never has really mattered to us, and you were here last night; what more could we ask for? The way I see it, what I was doing last night and what we do every night I couldn't imagine being more alive. I love communication through improvisational music so much that, I mean, it's the deepest kind of passion. I couldn't ask for anything more in life."