Phish Winning More 'Phans' With New Album December 13, 1996 - Reuters By Gary Graff DETROIT (Reuter) - Before they named their new album "Billy Breathes," the members of Phish referred to it as something else. The Blob. This was no horror film, though. "The Blob" referred to the mass of sound the Vermont-based quartet was making when sessions started for its seventh album. "We just started recording individual notes, actually," bassist Mike Gordon explains. "We went in a circle, and each of us took a turn playing a note, or sometimes phrases on the instruments in the studio -- without obligation to play your own instrument, either. "And it could be anywhere in the song; I would say, 'I want to put in a bass note after the steel drum flurry at minute four and a half,' that sort of thing." Gordon says that he and his phellow Phish men -- guitarist Trey Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman -- originally viewed The Blob as an end in itself, the way they'd construct the entire album. The irony is that "Billy Breathes" wound up being the tightest and most commercially accessible album Phish has produced; the lead track, "Free," has been garnering more radio airplay than anything the band has ever released. "Eventually, what happened was there were some song ideas bubbling up," Gordon, 31, says. "But we were still eager to use that same experimental attitude in recording those songs." This should not come as a surprise. Often likened to the Grateful Dead -- a comparison the Phish pholks downplay -- the group has made its name with the long, improvisation-heavy pieces from its live shows. Unpredictable and irreverent, the Phish stew is made from rock, jazz, bluegrass and myriad other forms, with a free-form spirit that hails not only from the Dead but also from Frank Zappa and Sun Ra. The goal, Gordon explains, is constant experimentation, trying to never do the same thing twice. That's why the group boasts a reverent coterie of phans known as Phish Heads. Not unlike the Dead Heads, they phollow the group around the country and trade bootleg tapes of its concerts. About 125,000 of them subscribe to the group's newsletter, Doniac Schive, while half that many log on to Phish Internet updates at www.phish.net. That devotion allowed Phish to gross $16 million during its 1995 American tour, according to the trade magazine PollStar. And the enthusiasm hasn't diminished. Last August, an estimated 135,000 of them showed up at an abandoned Air Force base in Plattsburgh, N.Y., to attend the Clifford Ball, a two-day soiree that could well have been called Phish Phest -- since Phish was the only band to play, performing on the main stage, in side tents and on a flatbed truck that rolled through the parking lot. All that makes Gordon and his mates somewhat ambivalent about the possibility of mass acceptance for "Billy Breathes." On one hand, they have no qualms; "To have a song that would be on the radio when people are doing their aerobics in the gym, that the average American might hear, appeals to us," Gordon says. "We can't deny we like that." On the other hand, having a hit does run counter to the aesthetic Phish and its phans value. "We have such a strong following of people really into listening to weird spontaneous music," Gordon says, pointing out that while "Free" is doing well on rock stations, it's hardly scaling the Billboard Top 10 -- yet. "'Free' is a song we've played for a year and a half, and the live version is always different from the studio version. But now that it's a single, it feels awkward to play it. There's this sense of, 'Oh, they're building up to the thing that's on the radio.' And that's not the kind of band we are. "So there's almost a sense for us to not play it as much. In terms of being ourselves, it feels right to wait for it to die down out of public attention, and then we'll play it again and let it become its own thing." Of course, that philosophy runs counter to virtually any other band that's on the cusp of a commercial breakthrough. Gordon says the group knows it also risks alienating the new Phish phans drawn in by "Free." But as much as he claims "we'd like to expose ourselves to people who wouldn't necessarily come down to a concert before," Gordon says Phish would rather err on the side of its creative ambitions. "We're trying to stretch our own limits," he explains. "Then we're happy and the fans following us around will be happy. We don't think that includes playing songs just to appease people. "If (the new fans) aren't happy with that, they don't have to come back. There are plenty of people who want to see us out on a limb and taking chances, which is what we like to do onstage." But at the same time, Gordon thinks Phish's studio works may continue in a more tuneful and accessible vein. "It takes a special ability to write a pop song; it's not as easy as it might seem," he says. "We're not really cut out for it, on one hand; our goals and our abilities are not aligned with the idea of writing pop hits. "But at the same time, as we get a little bit older, we want to sing lyrics we can relate with ... and to write songs that are more concise. It just so happens those songs are more accessible to the average person." article © 1996 Reuters/Variety