The following piece originally appeared in the Sunday edition of the Festival 8 Express.
December 1 is the official release date of Phish: The Biography. The author, Parke Puterbaugh, began his association with the band while on assignment from Rolling Stone in May 1995. He continued his relationship with Phish even after the piece finally ran (in the Feb 20, 1997 issue with Gillian Anderson on the cover). Over the years, Puterbaugh helped the band with any number of writing projects (including the 1996 Phishbill) and has now opted for the long-form approach. In the following conversation, Puterbaugh talks about his first meeting with the band, his approach to the book and about the stonewalling on his part that allowed him to fold in an account of the group’s return in 2009. He’s out there walking the grounds of Festival 8 this very weekend, so if you somehow you happen upon him, be sure to extend a greeting (his first name Parke, rhymes with lark).
Your initial connection to Phish came through a Rolling Stone assignment. Were you altogether unfamiliar with them at that point?
I was pretty unfamiliar although I wouldn’t say I’d never heard a note. At that point in time they hadn’t registered across my screen, in part because I was in graduate school and a lot of my time and energy was going towards pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science. So I wasn’t delving as deeply into new music as much as I would typically. I was familiar with the name and a bit of the story but until I got the assignment and found out for myself, I was largely ignorant of what they were all about and probably subject to many of the same myths and preconceptions that everyone else was.
And you first met them prior to a rehearsal?
That’s right. I rolled up in my rental car. Dionysian [Productions] wasn’t even in Burlington at that point, so they faxed me directions to Paul Languedoc’s house where they were rehearsing. This was a few weeks after the Voters for Choice concert [5/16/95]. I followed those directions out to the countryside, rolled up into the driveway and they were literally hanging out in front of the house waiting for me to show up. Then I got to spend the afternoon at their rehearsal. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was because those weren’t open rehearsals. Not too many people got to see them do the exercises and stuff.
Do you recall your initial reaction to that?
I didn’t know anything about what I was in for or what I was seeing but I was taking it all in and furiously making notes. I wish I had turned my tape recorder on but I was too polite. It was a room above a garage workshop where Paul built guitars, nothing fancy, and they were just sitting around going at it. I had never seen anyone do anything remotely like that. And from watching them play with dynamics, get real loud or real soft and do these exercises where they would try to fill holes and stay out of each other’s holes, I could see over time why were such incredible four-way improvisers because they really worked at it off stage. It was a rather profound thing to see them go through all those rehearsals and make really great-sounding music out of thin air.
When was your first show?
Red Rocks 95, that weekend [6/9 & 6/10]. First of all, what a venue to see anybody but especially to see Phish for the first time. It was so glorious. That weekend wasn’t raining but it was misting real fine mist and I remember Chris Kuroda made incredible use of that mist to project images and colors. I also remember chills going up my neck when they did “David Bowie.” I had filled myself in on the albums but the live experience was something else entirely.
I was also taking in the crowd, which was all over Morrison— the way they looked and the way they seemed to be plugged into every aspect of the ritual. And had their own rituals, flinging these little tortillas around. I remember telling Trey afterwards when I did this marathon interview with him and Mike the next day, that it seemed the crowd was this huge pumping piston and Phish was the fuel that was driving them. I guess that’s some kind of a variation of Carlos Santana’s observation about the hose and the flower bed. So after a full weekend of that as my first exposure to Phish, how could I not have been totally captured?
So you wrote the piece for Rolling Stone and then it was killed?
Between the time it was assigned and the time I turned it in, there was a turnover at the music department. This was right at the height of the indie rock movement and things like Phish were kind of uncool to a crowd that was totally into shoe-gazing. This new editorial regime in the music department didn’t care so much about Phish or someone like me who had written for the magazine for a long time. They wanted to come in and use their own people.
They didn’t kill it, they just didn’t do anything with it. It sat in editorial inventory and then every six months I’d get a call, “Well it looks like we’re going to run that Phish story after all, so why don’t you freshen it up? I hear they’re doing a New Year’s Eve show at Madison Square Garden. Why don’t you to go to that stand and talk to them a little bit, get some fresh quotes and bring it up to date.” So I did. No complaint from me. Each additional layer was making it a richer story and I was getting to go to all these epic shows. The Clifford Ball was the next step and the finale was the Halloween 96 show in Atlanta. By this time I had gotten close enough with Phish that I actually wrote that essay in the Phishbill. So I had begun doing writing for them even though I had no proof this alleged piece I was doing for Rolling Stone was ever going to run. [Laughs] They were taking a lot on faith and that’s another thing that I am so grateful to them for because they just sort of rolled with it.
Your situation was somewhat akin to that of Dennis McNally, who was the Grateful Dead’s publicist and then went on to write their biography. Can you talk about any challenges that you may have faced in a similar content, particularly because you may have been privy to info that otherwise might have eluded you had you not been in that position.
I tried to be fair and I tried to keep things in context and I was always guided by the notion that in general terms there are things that are appropriate to include and talk about. I was trying as hard as I could to avoid sensationalizing anything or focusing on too much negativity and the specifics of it because I just think there’s a point at which people are entitled to their privacy.
Also, I think so much of their private lives were taken with music to begin with. I heard over and over from the people who worked around them just how relentlessly they rehearsed and what a preoccupying thing the music was. You can talk about private lives but think for instance, the day Trey flew back after the Shoreline show that began the hiatus, he started working on sheet music for “Guyute.”
I know Trey said something at one point to the effect of, “I thought our scene was transparent. I thought our fans knew everything that was going on.” But I don’t think they necessarily did. For heaven’s sake as much as I was talking with them, I had no clue. When I interviewed Jon about Undermind, I remember he told me, “This is just beginning to reach its potential and we’re going to be around for many years to come…”
From a musical perspective, what most surprised you over the years?
I thought it was interesting how they wrestled with creative challenges. I don’t know if the fan base really appreciated all of the effort they put into making records. I think maybe the recorded catalogue is underappreciated by the hardcore fans who sort of live to see them play live. I think in the early part of their career before they signed to Elektra, so much of the material Trey was writing was written for the live show. They themselves thought more in terms of live shows than albums. And then I think maybe after a certain point they started to take the album-making process pretty seriously as well and had their different approaches, whether it was the group democracy experiment of Story of The Ghost or going in the other direction on Farmhouse. They’ve really wanted to make great albums as well as being a great live band.
There are so many intense, invested Phish fans. How would you describe your target audience for this book and did you think about that all when you were writing it?
Well, I wasn’t going to try to compete with the Phish Companion. There are several hundred contributors to that. I wasn’t looking to write an encyclopedia or statistical abstract. I wanted to produce a coherent, thorough narrative history of Phish’s career that would be illuminating to fans as well as anyone curious to learn about the band, because theirs is a uniquely fascinating story. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees and in the this case I was trying to get a good glimpse of the forest.
Nonetheless, I imagine it must be at least somewhat daunting that there is an army of fact-checkers out there who will take you to task for even the smallest of errors.
Right. One tiny piece of erroneous information will invalidate the whole thing. [Laughs] That was something I expected going in because that’s just the lay of the land. I knew that full well. But again, I wasn’t writing this exclusively for Phishhead Nation. I wanted the rest of the world to hear the story of this band because it’s an amazing story. So there are several audiences for the book but yes, I realized going in full well that I’m setting myself up for failure to a degree but you just have to plow forward and do the best you can. And I’ll collect anything I find out for the paperback edition.
The publication of this book was delayed a bit. Was that because you had some inkling of what was to come?
I think I tested my editor’s patience by drawing the process out. I was getting wind that there might be a reunion and I wanted to end this book on a happier note than Coventry. I don’t think I heard reunion rumors before anyone else did but what I recall is that when the announcement came, my editor was intent on getting the book out to coincide with the reunion shows. He really wanted it out in the spring of this year. On the other hand, I began having the thought that the reunion had to be the final chapter and epilogue and I wanted to see how it played out. Also, reunion aside, I didn’t want to rush the book into publication for the reason you noted – namely, that it would be closely scrutinized by knowledgeable Phishheads, much more so than the average rock bio.
So it was a combination of being careful and also wanting to squeeze in as much as I could about the reunion year while still getting the book out this year that led to delayed publication. I will say that my editor might not have been thrilled about all this back in the spring but he never jumped down my throat and is pleased with the way it all worked out.
I blew my deadline badly but deliberately in order to accommodate the reunion and it couldn’t make me happier to see all of this get resolved and be in the rear view mirror. I didn’t think their story could end with Coventry. If nothing else, they had to have a better finale. And now it looks like a strong new beginning. I love the fact that they’ve recovered the solid interpersonal group dynamic they had for so long before things got so big in the late Nineties. And it sure makes for a happier ending to my book. That moment when they first came out at Hampton in March and lit into “Fluffhead” stands as one of the great rock and roll moments I’ve ever witnessed.
