Phish’s Mike Gordon pays tribute to Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh is one of them Mike Gordon‘s greatest heroes. Gordon, the bassist of Phishbecame aware of the Grateful dead in high school and soon focused on Lesh. The two met briefly at a show in 1993, but it wasn’t until 1999 that they began a friendship that lasted until Lesh’s performance. death in October. Here, in a tribute that will appear in our December issue, Gordon reflects on what he learned from Lesh, their frequent onstage collaborations, and that heartbreaking version of “Box of Rain” that Phish played right after Lesh died.

I thought Phil was the most unique part of the Grateful Dead. I wasn’t surprised that Bob Dylan said that in his book Philosophy of modern songwhen he was talking about (“Truckin’”). Usually there are all these expectations about the bass: lots of repeating patterns, faithfulness to ‘the one’ and to the root note. Phil had none of these loyalties. He avoided them all.

Do you ever guzzle a little too hard? At one point, when I first met Phil, I sent an email that said something like: “From my humble perspective, the Grateful Dead have integrated all human art forms to a new level, and in a way that pushes my buttons more presses. than anything else – an incredible culmination of all the creativity and resonance that came before it. And the pinnacle of what makes The Dead unique is your playing, which is why, as far as I can see, you are the pinnacle of all Western civilization.

The first time I really met him was in ’99, when Trey (Anastasio) and Page (McConnell) did the shows with him at Warfield (in San Francisco). I was there for all three (shows). For one of them, I was sitting behind his bass, on stage, almost leaning against his bass. It was quite thunderous.

I asked if he wanted to have lunch with me. This is a big hero of mine, and he came to my hotel and they had special menus made that said “Bass Players Luncheon” on it. He said, “I’m going to keep this forever.” It was just four years after Jerry passed away. I remember him talking about that a lot and having some anger because Jerry seemed to choose drugs over his friends. For people who understand addiction, it is more complicated than that. (But lunch) was special. I rented a scooter and zipped around San Francisco, and after lunch I asked if he wanted to ride with me. He said, “No, I’ll walk.” That’s probably a good thing.

Phil invited me to do these special things over the years. For his 60th birthday he invited me to play bass on “Box of Rain” and a few other songs. Boys from Little Feat were playing. He also invited me to play at a gig he called the Bass Summit. It was one of the times I played his bass. He asked me to help pick out which songs I wanted to play. We played “The Maker,” the Daniel Lanois song, because it has two bass lines. I suggested we do ‘All About That Bass’. He immediately threw it out.

This was a huge performance. When I was with Phil, I often played the electric banjo, but (this time) the electric banjo didn’t work. So Trey (Anastasio) gave me his guitar. And I raged on the guitar. What was shocking to me, even as a fan all those years, was how powerful Phil’s bass rig was. It was just larger than life. All I really cared about was being up there and hearing Phil’s tone. After a few songs, Trey said, “Okay, maybe I should take (my guitar) back.”

The day he passed away, (Phish) opened our concert with ‘Box of Rain’. There wasn’t much time between the news and the show, and there was a lot going on. I had some guests I wanted to meet, catering and warm-ups, and suddenly the news comes through.

So all of a sudden I have 30 minutes before the band goes into our little practice room and then puts on the show. Phil liked to write songs that didn’t repeat their forms. Don’t mind the bass notes; each verse is an unbroken chain, each verse is different. I know the other band members were frustrated at times: “Why can’t it be easier to remember?” I have 10 or 12 pages of “Box of Rain” spread out on a coffee table.

(Phish) jumped into our room and decided we would do three-part harmony the whole way through (“Box of Rain”), but we couldn’t figure it out. We just had to go for it and see if we could iron out a few kinks. Other than our first few years, it was taboo to play Grateful Dead songs – not just Grateful Dead songs, but grooves that they would use – because we were compared to them too much in the beginning. So it’s only every few decades that we play a Grateful Dead song. I have a picture of all these people in the front row just crying from “Box of Rain” that night.

It just comes back to the sense of vision and having all these influences that assimilate into what you believe, but also have a spiritual basis. Phil always talked about the music coming from God. When I made my film Rising low with 25 remarkable bass players, he said that many times while we were filming him: that the notes, the actual notes, come from God.

He had a passion for the (Grateful Dead) repertoire, and he said it could live on for centuries. I think Phil just wanted to see where it could go. Even recently he did projects where he tried to find new permutations for the same repertoire with different people and different approaches. As people go through longer periods in their careers, there are different ways to deal with this. There’s something extra special about people who keep doing the same kinds of things because in some ways they’re getting better at it.

I also thought about the most recent visit, which was in March (at a Phil Lesh & Friends show), where I got to give him his cake for his 84th birthday before the encore. He asked if there were any songs I wanted to do. I picked a few that I hadn’t played before and sang one.

Sometimes it works with two bass players, and sometimes it doesn’t. But what was really interesting to me that night is how what we were doing on the bass and (our) tones were so different, despite how influenced I’ve been. And the bass lines, the approach was so different that they were actually complementary instead of stepping on each other’s toes. It was a really good mix. Phil smiled the entire time, and his bass technician, Brian, later said that he normally doesn’t smile that much. Then Phil said, “We have to do this again.”

(After the Amazon documentary Long strange journey came out in 2017) I asked him, “Is the legacy important to you?” He said: ‘I think it’s the music itself that can endure and people can continue to interact with it in new ways. I think it will take a long time.” I think if people can delve into The Dead’s music, they will discover that bass playing has never been better. Beautiful and powerful. There is a quality that cannot be put into words, that just blooms like a little bud that turns into a flower, and then a bouquet of flowers for your soul, all within a few minutes, period. It is that ability to conjure, to be able to say that magic is going to happen. It’s going to happen because the universal spirit will come through me and make it happen.

It all sounds idealistic and a bit rambunctious, but if people can get past that wall of “Oh, this is weird” and allow themselves to experience it, they will see this big, huge, beautiful playing style and approach to music. that’s just unprecedented. And it will never be like that again.