Phish (45 page)

The great thing about Phish was when they were all in their roles and flourishing. Obviously, it’s the band dynamic that makes them so great. The first thing I was drawn to with them was the relationship between Trey and Fishman back in the early nineties. To me, it was like Pete Townshend and Keith Moon of the Who. If you watch old interviews with Townshend and Moon, and you watch Trey and Fishman interact, it’s the same thing. It’s like two goofballs who are brothers bouncing off each other.

ME: And pushing each other to musical heights, as well.

BRAD: Exactly. It’s like when you listen to the Who, a lot of the time the guitar and drums are more connected than the bass and the drums. Now Fishman doesn’t really play like Moon, but it’s a similar vibe. It’s no surprise they named the band after him. He really embodies the spirit of the whole thing. And then Page is like a backbone up there. He’s solid strength, like a tree with deep roots. Mike is just genuinely strange. He gives the band their weirdness. When you put all four of them together, it’s like Trey used to say: “A wop, a mick and a couple of hebes.” [
laughs
]

ME: Amy Skelton said to me, “We almost lost Trey.” Did you ever have that fear?

BRAD: Yeah. I mean, it was a strange time, because I was around him a lot in that period and one of the things he always used say to me was, “I don’t ever want you to have an intervention for me or anything like that.” Which to me meant he knew he was in trouble. But knowing Trey well enough, he was going to have to find that out on his own. He tried a few times from other people prodding him to do this or that. It just didn’t stick. It was gonna have to come from him. It did because he was sort of forced into it by a court case. But I think a lot of it was just a cry for help. ’Cause Trey’s a really smart guy. He’s not stupid, you know, and a lot of what was going on was just stupid on everybody’s part.

ME: In your interview with Randy Ray, you said, “We liked the partying. We liked the rock and roll atmosphere. But it all just became too much.”

BRAD: Well, that was the thing, you know? From 1997 to 2000, we had all of our friends around all the time. There was a big party. The whole thing was a big, fun, happy experience. Amy Skelton is the one who
came up with the Betty Ford Clinic. Don’t let anybody tell you that was my fault. That was her idea! [
laughs
] She was like, “I’ve got a ton of friends. Why don’t we get a room backstage and stock it with booze?” Trey was like, “Great idea!” But after the third night, when there was all this hard liquor, people were back there getting shit-faced, just wasted. So then we went to all beer, and that’s when we started calling it the Betty Ford Clinic, because it looked like every single person in there needed help.

To us it was funny. It seemed like good times. Arguably, for four years you could say we were throwing the best party in rock and roll. Which is pretty cool! When we first met Stewart Copeland from the Police, he came to see us in Vegas. It was him and his brother Ian. They flew in, and when Stewart saw the setup he was like, “Man, you’ve got this shit down! This is hospitality.” Ian was like, “This is amazing. . . . I haven’t had such a good time in 20 years.” And we’re thinking to ourselves, “Wow, these are real legendary guys here.”

We enjoyed that reputation. But then it took over, and it just got too crazy. The whole thing took on its own momentum, ’cause that’s what they wanted at that time. I couldn’t drag those guys out of there at set break half the time. They loved their friends, and they wanted them to be having a good time

ME: You’ve called Big Cypress “the best weekend of our lives,” and it was a career pinnacle.

BRAD: It was like climbing Mount Everest. It was the biggest festival, the longest set. Everything was just
big
, you know? When I got on the property, which was on December 27th, 1999, there wasn’t anybody there yet. But there was already this magnetic energy that was just undeniable. Like,
this is gonna be special
. You could feel it in the air. And because it was on an Indian reservation, it really did feel like anything goes, like anything can happen out here.

Phish totally rose to the occasion on all fronts with the playing. I don’t remember much about the 30th at all, to be totally honest, because it was all about the 31st. It’s funny because they closed the 31st with “After Midnight,” and from that moment on, it was a crazy buildup of energy—I get goosebumps just talking about it—until we finally drove the band through the crowd to the stage on the airboat hot-dog thing.

The playing was pure adrenalin and joy. I remember moments in the set where it started to lull, and then they played something that pulled it right back into the energy. You know, if you stay up all night with a friend, it’s a cool night. Could you imagine doing that with 85,000 people? It’s pretty intense! To be able to pull that off, all of us as a group, I never felt so much satisfaction in my life, professionally.