Phish (17 page)

 

From 1988 to 1992 were the bleary-eyed years, when Phish put in the roadwork that primed them to become the world’s greatest jam band. When people talk about the golden years for Phish in concert, they most often refer to 1993 through 1995. Many of their greatest shows occurred during this time frame. Some of their greatest shows occurred outside of this time frame, too: the Clifford Ball, in 1996; Halloween 1996, in Atlanta; the New Year’s runs of 1997, 1998, and 2003; and, of course, Big Cypress, where they ushered in the new millennium on a Seminole Indian reservation in south Florida. However, some longtime followers still regard the period from 1988 to 1992 as prime time to be a Phish fan, in terms of the size of the venues and sound of the band.

“I loved ’91 and ’92,” said Jason Colton, who has co-managed Phish. “Something about the sonic quality and intimacy of those shows. Trey’s amp and Mike’s amp were both homemade, and Page on his Yamaha CP-70 [keyboard] . . . There’s just something so specific to that sound, before it became a bigger sound, that I just loved.”

Many of Phish’s most prolific years as a performing group occurred from 1989 through 1992. In those four years, they played a combined 532 times, with an annual average of 133 shows and a single-year peak of 148 (in 1990). If you add in the years 1993 (111 shows) and 1994 (125 shows), that’s 768 total concerts in six years, or more than half of all shows in the twenty-two years from formation to breakup. Essentially, Phish played every third day for six years. If you additionally factor in 1988 (97 shows) and 1995 (81 shows), Phish performed 946 shows over an eight-year span—basically two-thirds of all shows in one-third of all years.

That’s a lot of gigging. Twenty years on, Paul Languedoc clearly remembered that period of time—the many gigs and the long drives to them.

“For some reason they would book all these one-nighters with three hundred- to four hundred-mile drives between them,” said Languedoc. “I just remember being so tired—get a hotel, sleep for three hours maybe, take a shower, drive. I remember thinking, like, ‘I’ll get to sleep in four days.’”

“We’d literally get there in the morning, load in, set up all day, do the show, break it down, put it in the truck, and then drive until we got to the next town at daybreak,” added lighting engineer Chris Kuroda. “That kind of exhaustion.

“By the fourth or fifth day of doing this, the conversations and banter that we would have among each other at 3 in the morning as we were loading out was so nonsensical and insane. We used to make up songs about McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches. It was funny. We didn’t even know what we were talking about, we were so exhausted. We’d be lucid enough to look at each other and go, ‘We’re out of our minds.’ It was sleep deprivation, but we’d have some pretty goofy times just being completely exhausted.”

Kuroda recalled one stretch when they played “something like twenty-nine shows in thirty days.” Upon coming home to Burlington from a grueling spell of roadwork, they would, of course, play some more. They’d finish a tour, drive all night, pull into Burlington by dawn’s early light, and immediately load their gear into The Front. Then they’d go home and crash before returning to the club that night for a homecoming gig.

“It was a nice, relaxing, cool feeling,” he said. “You really felt like you were home.”

“We were playing places all over the country,” added Languedoc, “and then would come back to Burlington and play in the same little three hundred-seat club. Nobody thought it was weird at all. Even into the 1990s.”

When they weren’t on the road, they were rehearsing. “
Lots
of rehearsing,” recalled Languedoc. “They’d do these marathon rehearsals every day, and it’s really when they got their chops down. Late eighties, early nineties. It was a very productive period for them as far as getting their catalog together.”

The core members of Phish’s hardworking crew during this hectic time were Kuroda, Languedoc, Pete Schall (monitor engineer), and Andrew Fischbeck (tour manager). The groundwork laid by Phish and crew during their decade-straddling growth years paved the way for the group’s peak, from 1993 to 1996, where they achieved the optimum combination of creativity, maturity, and energy. And from there, the Phish phenomenon—the mystique, the audience, and the venues—just got bigger.

“Back in 1989 and 1990, Paul and I used to have this joke,” said Kuroda. “You have to remember I had like four par cans then. I used to go to Paul and say, ‘Yeah, someday I’m gonna walk into Madison Square Garden and say, “Mmm, I need lighting trucks #4, #8, and #12 today.”’ You know what I mean?
Ha ha ha. Very funny.
We’d have our little joke. And there was a moment in the late 1990s when we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh my God, that came true!’”

O
n New Year’s Eve 1994, Phish sailed to new reaches of inspired lunacy. Performing in the jumbo-sized Boston Garden, they wanted to maintain some kind of connection with everyone in the crowd. They figured out a way to do just that, navigating to the farthest fan in the arena in a flying hot dog. It may have been the most brilliant of their gags.

They were brainstorming some sort of vehicle to transport them around the arena when manager John Paluska suggested “something long and cylindrical.” “Like a hot dog!” suggested Fishman. What started out as a joke within Phish often became reality. In this case, designer Chris McGregor—longtime production manager of the avant-garde outfit The Residents—was enlisted to design a mobile hot dog that seated four. A side order of fries and a drink were fabricated as well. The props were rendered by McGregor and J. W. Nickel of Rocket Science, a San Francisco-based company.

Phish began their third set on New Year’s Eve with “My Sweet One.” They were interrupted by a voice from offstage, inquiring, “Excuse me,
guys, did somebody order a hot dog?” Everyone pointed at Fishman, and a giant takeout tray appeared with the frankfurter, fries, and drink. The band boarded the hot dog, which ascended for a ride across the Garden, waving as they approached the fans farthest from the stage, as had been their initial wish while Captain Beefheart’s “Tropical Hot Dog Night” played over the sound system. Then they counted down to midnight.

Thus ended 1994, one of the more phenomenal years of live Phish. They were hitting a mid-career peak. It was a time when they consistently reached for the stars and anything seemed possible. They made giant strides on the recording front with the intriguingly conceptual
Rift
(1993), the lively, accessible
Hoist
(1994), and the brooding, bottomless
Billy Breathes
(1996). They also issued the ultimate Phish primer,
A Live One
(1995), a double CD of concert highlights.

 

What I see as Phish’s third phase, after their formative years and growth spurt, ran from 1993 through the Clifford Ball, in 1996. During this period, Phish ascended to another level. The jamming became more adventurous, the venues and audiences got bigger, and an increased revenue stream meant improved conditions on tour. For one thing, they graduated to a tour bus. Leaving the driving to others was a big relief to the band’s hard-working crew, who no longer had to operate in a state of chronic sleep deprivation.

Musically, the biggest change was that they could now afford to tote a baby grand piano from gig to gig. It was first wheeled onstage on February 3, 1993, in Portland, Maine, and it made a huge difference to their sound. Page McConnell shone on acoustic piano. Its more naturalistic sound jibed with Trey Anastasio’s wood-toned Languedoc guitar.

Anastasio himself has noted that the group improved as McConnell’s gear improved, and it was a “great leap forward” when the baby grand entered Phish’s tour arsenal. McConnell’s keyboard armory continued to expand. He brought back the Fender Rhodes on
the summer 1993 tour and began adding electronic keyboards to the mix, too.

Hardly anyone has bad things to say about Phish from 1993. Band archivist Kevin Shapiro goes so far as to call it “the year Phish could do no wrong.” It was the sixth year in a row they’d played one hundred- plus gigs, and the seasoning showed. The segues were seamless and inspired, and if one didn’t know better one might suppose theirs was a fixed set list repeated night after night. But it wasn’t. The set list changed nightly, and Anastasio was putting considerable time and effort into drawing up each night’s set list.

They were carrying the improvisation farther out, too. Songs that had previously been fairly concise, such as “Bathtub Gin,” became extended jam vehicles in 1993. They were also playing perfect-sized venues—large enough to represent forward progress, yet small enough to maintain a high degree of intimacy.

“Phish was so creatively and musically compelling, and they were taking crazy risks,” Shapiro said. “Before 1993, it had seemed to be a very practiced, concise show that flowed real fast and didn’t necessarily have any huge improvisational moments. All of a sudden there were
huge
improvisational moments everywhere. You’d get some of that in 1992 and throughout the early years, but by 1993 the growth was obvious.”

 

In 1993, they also hit a new peak as recording artists with the making of
Rift
. The majority of Phish fans generally revere the live experience and overlook the albums. Among jam-band fans in general, albums are viewed as somewhat synthetic studio artifacts. They’re plainly not as organic and in-the-moment as a live performance, and fans are not present for their creation, as with concerts. There’s another way to look at it, though. If a good jam-band concert is like a lengthy, articulate conversation, then a studio album should be conceived more like a series of concise, well-honed speeches. If this is true, then
Rift
is among Phish’s greatest pieces of oratory, perhaps second only to
Billy Breathes
.

Rift
marked a major step forward in maturity for the band and lyricist Tom Marshall. The subject matter was serious, the album cohesive, and the music exploratory and riveting.
Rift
was, in some vague sense, a musical play. In it, the protagonist is tormented by a relationship that causes a rift in his psyche.
Rift
is about feeling trapped in a situation from which there is no escape. Its sustained air of anxiety makes it a far cry from the sunny cornucopia of its predecessor,
A Picture of Nectar
.

“
Rift
was a reaction to
A Picture of Nectar
, which we thought was totally all over the place,” said Anastasio. “In
Rift
, he’s having a dream. The first two songs are overviews of the whole thing. Then he starts to fall asleep, and the rest is supposed to be a dream. The songs are dreamlike reflections of this rift he’s experiencing in his life. ‘Maze’ is the first song he dreams: ‘The overhead view is of me in a maze.’ He can’t get out, he’s chasing this thing around. In ‘It’s Ice,’ he battles with his mirror image on the ice, which is like having a fight with yourself. It goes on like that till he wakes up, ‘Silent in the Morning,’ and he didn’t solve anything. But at least he wakes up!”

The lyrics reflected an intensely emotional period in Marshall’s life, and their candor posed a challenge to Phish as musicians. When Anastasio approached the rest of the band with “Fast Enough for You,” he felt some trepidation about presenting them with a relationship song. He needn’t have worried; they were ready to move on to something more human-scaled and real-life.

“
Rift
was an attempt to get away from the fantasy aspect and say, ‘Well, this is what’s going on, let’s write about it,’” Anastasio acknowledged. “The beauty of it is that we went from an extreme of fantasy kind of lyrics all the way into this depth-of-the-soul stuff, and now the whole spectrum is open to us. We can write any kind of song.”

The album’s artwork, a rectangular painting that extends from front to back of the CD booklet, depicts a labyrinthine dream state in deep blue tones. The painting references every song on the album (except for “The Horse”) with some kind of image. The conceptual
nature of the album is further reinforced inside the booklet with more lyrics and artwork, including enlarged details from the painting. The actual piece of art, which is quite large, hangs in Phish’s storage facility in Burlington.

Rift
was cut in Burlington at White Crow, a studio with decent gear but poor maintenance. “A complete wreck,” cracked Anastasio. “All the wiring was messed up and nothing worked.”

A technical glitch with the equipment resulted in recording levels being set too high—15 decibels greater than what the needles registered, in fact. They discovered this fact when they put the tapes on a normal machine for transfer as a prelude to overdubbing. They hit “play,” and the levels just pinned into the red zone. “Basically, we had gone to tape hotter than we thought we had, or something like that,” explained Anastasio. There were a few anxious days before they knew if the basic tracks could be salvaged. The nervous band members were asked to leave the studio so the engineers could do their work.

Rift
was the first Phish album made with a name producer. At the suggestion of Elektra’s Sue Drew, they picked Barry Beckett. On paper, it seemed an unusual match. For decades Beckett was a member of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section, an Alabama-based studio band whose sessionography encompasses a galaxy of R&B, soul, rock, and folk legends, from Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon—even Lynyrd Skynyrd. A keyboardist, Beckett was rooted in music that was earthier, more Southern and soulful, than Phish’s jammy, surreal fantasias. Perhaps bringing Phish closer to terra firma was the point of his selection. If so, it didn’t quite work out as intended. Phish seized the reins, insisting on working in Burlington at White Crow with a favorite engineer (Kevin Halpin), and they did not draw on or defer to Beckett’s expertise as much as they might have.