LIANE HANSEN, Host: [excerpt of song by band Phish] One question I haven't asked, one question that America is bound to be asking, where did the name Phish come from? P-H-I-S-H?
TREY ANASTASIO, Lead Guitarist, Phish: Well, they were the first. [laughs] We came from them, remember that.
HANSEN: Yah!
Mr. ANASTASIO: So, now we're back.
HANSEN: But who are 'they?'
Mr. ANASTASIO: Uh, Phish. [laughs] You know, it's like the Beatles, the whole- you've got to do it, you've got to change at least one letter.
HANSEN: But they're not the Beatles. Some say they're more like the Grateful Dead. Coming up on Weekend Edition, a band called Phish. Stay with us.
Phish-ing for the Secret to Phish's Musical Success
Underground band Phish makes a splash with their single, "Lifebuoy"on their latest album, "Hoist". Their music receives little radio play but fans follow the Vermont group on tour.
MIKE GORDON, Musician: We thought that our old album sounded like a live band stopping by the studio on their tour. We would write these songs. We would bring them out in front of an audience, and they would sort of take form in the live venue, so you'd end up with these very long arrangements that really worked in a live setting but didn't seem to work so well on albums.
[excerpt from album 'Hoist']
LIANE HANSEN, Host: Without a Top 40 hit and no heavy rotation on MTV, the Vermont-based quartet, known as Phish, spelled P-H-I-S-H, still plays to standing-room only crowds when they tour around the country. Their devoted followers often are compared to fans of the Grateful Dead or Deadheads, although I'm not sure if Phish fans are known as Phishheads.
Drummer John Phishman, keyboardist Page McConnell, bassist Mike Gordon and lead singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio have been playing together for a decade now. They've made several recordings. The new one is called Hoist. Both Mike and Trey say since Phish has been together for so long, it takes a lot of work to keep their music fresh, and they're very proud of this song from Hoist called 'Lifeboy.'
Mr. GORDON: It was one of my favorite songwriting experiences that I ever had with my songwriting partner, Tom Marshall, where he had written a long poem, and the last line of the poem was 'God never listens to what I say. That you don't get a refund if you over pray.' And, we got on the phone one day - it was about 11:00 in the morning - and we said, 'Let's write a song together, written from the point of view of someone who would be saying that line,' and the whole thing grew. We were on the phone for about four or five hours, and it was a complete teamwork kind of thing. We were bouncing ideas off each other, and after the phone conversation was over, the song was written - music and lyrics - and, it was just a great experience.
[excerpt from 'Lifeboy'] Well, God never listens to what I say. God never listens to what I say. So, very- So, very hard, and you don't get a refund if you over pray.
TREY ANASTASIO, Musician: Bela Fleck played on that one, and we wanted to put him in an atmosphere where it's the last song that you would expect to hear banjo on - banjo being such a kind of a happy instrument, and it's such a sad song. So, it was a real challenge for him to fit the banjo into that very slow, sad, sweet kind of song, and he was incredible.
HANSEN: There's so much interesting music on this album and the other ones you've done. It's a very eclectic mix of music, and, Trey, you've been quoted as saying it's 'East Coast Rock-a-suey?
Mr. ANASTASIO: [laughing with Mr. Gordon]
HANSEN: I'm afraid to ask what that means.
Mr. ANASTASIO: It's kind of a cross between that and Rock-Donkey-Dunkle.
HANSEN: Rock-what?
Mr. ANASTASIO: Rock-Donkey-Dunkle.
HANSEN: Uh-huh.
Mr. ANASTASIO: [laughing] You know it's kind of a- it's a little country asp- Well, the thing was that the four of us all had very different influences when we got together, and none of us were willing to give them up, so instead we decided to try to meld them.
HANSEN: I wondered how much you were all influenced by Frank Zappa.
Mr. ANASTASIO: Oh, particularly myself and Phish, our drummer, I was heavily influenced. As a matter of fact, the two of us, I remember going, following him around for a week or so at one point back when he was still touring a lot, but I always liked any kind of improvised live music, be it Frank Zappa or the Dead or jazz, and I think that's the one love that we all shared-
HANSEN: But the thing about Frank Zappa's improvised music is there was a certain control to it, a certain discipline to it, whereas a lot of improvisation can end up being rather self-indulgent.
Mr. ANASTASIO: Yeah, absolutely. We actually have exercises that we do where we work on improving our improvising as a group. It gets rid of the ego. It's an exercise to get rid of the ego, and the more that we do it, the more we find that our improvisations are less concerned with showing off flashy solos or whatever and more concerned with making a group sound. There's the feeling that we always talk about when we went out with Santana, he had brought up this thing about the hose. I don't know if you heard about that. But, uh-
HANSEN: No, I didn't.
Mr. ANASTASIO: -where the music is like water rushing through you and as a musician, your function is really like that of a hose and, well, his thing is that the audience is like a sea of flowers, you know, and you're watering the audience. But the concept of music going through you, that you're not actually creating it, that what you're doing- The best thing that you can do is get out of the way, so when you're in a room full of people, there's this kind of group vibe that seems to get rolling sometimes-
Mr. GORDON: It really starts to seem like it's not the audience or the band. This thing that gets rolling is its own thing.
Mr. GORDON: When things are going really well and a jam has taken off, there's this feeling of motion that is created by the rhythm and at that point, my bass that I'm playing feels like this sort of vehicle or like a hitch for me to hold onto, like someone would hold onto a-
HANSEN: -Sounds like water skiing-
Mr. GORDON: -Like if you were on a-
Mr. ANASTASIO: -Yeah [laughing]-
Mr. GORDON: -ski lift maybe, a chair lift or-
Mr. ANASTASIO: -[laughing]-
Mr. GORDON: -something that would hook you onto the motion that's going and pull you along with it.
Mr. ANASTASIO: And, yeah, the proof of that is that you can't- The water skiing is a good analogy when it-
Mr. GORDON: Yeah, that is a good one, actually-
Mr. ANASTASIO: And I think the proof of it is that there are times when you just can't pull it together, and you try and try and try, and you're beating your head against the wall, and it's just not happening, and that kind of shows right there that you can't pull it. It's gotta pull you.
[music]
HANSEN: Is this true? Do you allow people who come to your concert to actually bring a tape recorder with them?
Mr. ANASTASIO: Oh, yeah. We sell special taping tickets through mail order, and people can bring their gear, and they tape and they have been for the whole 10 years.
HANSEN: So there are bootlegs of your concerts, but it doesn't bother you, it doesn't matter?
Mr. ANASTASIO: No, as a matter of fact, it's been the key to our existence, I think, because the live show has always been so much a part of what we do, so much a focus of our energy and the shows are different every night. People have been trading tapes and before we ever even signed with a major label, we were touring the whole country and playing, you know, Great American Music Hall and places like that, just in our van, and there was no records available of Phish at all. It was purely through tapes being traded and word of mouth, so it's always been a real underground phenomena, and the taping has been such a big part of it that it would be pretty strange for us to stop it now.
It keeps you on your toes. You can't do the same show twice. You can't even do the same- You can't tell the same joke twice. You can't do anything twice, 'cause everybody knows. I mean, the taping network is incredible now. They start these tape trees. They use the computer networks, the Phish-net, to start tape trees, and you might play a show in South Carolina or something like that and a week later, you're playing in Phoenix, Arizona, and everybody there has heard the tape. 'Oh, I heard you did such and such a thing in South Carolina.' Oh, yeah. So, you can't do it again.
HANSEN: That's bound to keep you fresh, exciting, energetic, alive-
Mr. ANASTASIO: It really does. That's why I say it's the key to what we are, 'cause I'm sure there are times when we would have just fallen back on our past successes. Oh, well it worked this time. Let's do that again. But you really can never do that. And, it's great. You just have to keep thinking of something new.
HANSEN: Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon of the band Phish. They are now touring the country. Their latest CD is called Hoist, and they spoke to us from Burlington, Vermont.
HANSEN: This is NPR's Weekend Edition. I'm Liane Hansen.
© 1994 National Public Radio, Washington
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