Today marks Phish’s 30th Anniversary. Well, well, well… congratulations, boys. We’ll get to all of that in a minute. But first…
Look, the first time I saw Phish perform, I was just a kid that didn’t know much about anything. It was supposed to be my senior year of high school, but the boarding school I was attending—the Hill School—didn’t invite me back, so I went straight into college instead. I remember my first night there, after my parents had waved goodbye. One minute, I was a high school kid on his summer break, hanging lazily by my swimming pool and cruising around the local amusement park looking for girls and cheap thrills. The next minute, I was a college student enrolled in classes for literature, sociology, music, art and… political science. I had no idea what I was doing. One minute, I was home in my parents house in Pennsylvania, listening to the Grateful Dead on my bedroom stereo while leaning out the window, sneaking a cigarette. The next, I was in a grassy field in western Massachusetts, lying on my back, looking up at the stars. Everything was about to change. It was my first night at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. I was with some girl I had met in the cafeteria just a few hours earlier. Neither of us could believe we were there. Just like that, we were in college. Our bodies were hurling through space faster than the world was spinning around its axis. We had no axis. Not yet, anyway. Every time we blinked, a different scene. I remember looking up at the infinite parade of stars as they scattered themselves all along the Milky Way. The sky was incredibly clear that night and it felt like I could see more stars than I could possibly count in a lifetime (although I was willing to try). We started talking about our lives, but not the lives that had led us to that moment; the lives that were still in front of us, waiting to be discovered, breathed, unleashed, revealed. Every star in the sky that night represented a different possibility. Every constellation, a different outline, a different course, a different path, a different potential. The world was ours. And we fucking knew it.
A few weeks later, I heard the beginning of Junta while taking rips from a Graffix in some kid’s dorm room. During “You Enjoy Myself,” the earth came to a screeching halt. It was no longer in orbit around the sun. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have noticed, nor cared, if that’s what happened — I was preoccupied. That sound… that sound was different than anything I had heard before. It was MORE. It meant something greater than just a song being played on a stereo. I borrowed the album and, later that night, heard the rest in my room while having sex with my girlfriend. During “Union Federal,” I think, she had enough. She asked me to change the music and put on something else. But I couldn’t do it. It was either her or Phish. So I chose Phish.
Over the next however many years, that would be a familiar ultimatum and I would make the same decision again and again when it came to Phish versus some other distraction or commitment or, even, obligation. I was addicted to Phish. Clinically. I was hopelessly in deep with them. I mean, completely obsessed. I was more concerned with the latest setlist than with finding a job. I was more concerned with figuring out what they were going to play for Halloween than where I was going to live or how I was going to survive when I finally left home. I was more concerned with how I was going to finance two weeks of summer tour than how I was going to pay my credit card bills. Phish defined my 20s. And I wasn’t the only one. I had company. Lots of company. Friends I still keep in touch with today. Friends I still see—and sometimes even dance with—at shows. So when I say that seeing Phish for the first time changed my life, I mean it changed my life.
I first saw Phish play on a snowy New Year’s Eve in Worcester, Massachusetts. I had just finished my first semester and wasn’t quite sure what direction I wanted to go for my second. The friends I went with that night were no longer my friends by the time we piled back in the car to go home—they thought it was a pretty good show and all, but… the one kid said it just made him realize how psyched he was for the upcoming Rush concert. Bah. Not my people.
I had seen the Grateful Dead a few years earlier and was similarly transported and transformed by that experience, so I was beginning to understand that these two bands held some kind of key to the door that I wanted to step through—the identity that I had been searching for. And I was also beginning to understand that friendships could be defined by more than just geographical proximity to someone your same age. It’s way better when you find people with the same interests. And, for awhile, my only interest was Phish. First the Grateful Dead. Then Phish.
I would read Relix cover to cover in my dorm room, and I spent endless nights until dawn in the computer lab — the other geeks there were working on term papers. Meanwhile, I was researching the fuck out of this band, glued to every new post on rec.music.phish. Setting up tape trades, writing down lists of recommended versions of all my favorite songs, reading show reviews, and learning my history.
I was 18 years old. What the bleep did I know? Nothing. I knew nothing. Between then and now, I’ve done all the big things in life, except, perhaps, marriage and fatherhood—but I’ve fallen in and out of love, had my heart destroyed, broke a few hearts along the way, buried my parents and other loved ones, traveled across the country, moved to California, written for Rolling Stone, had dream jobs, lost dream jobs, found new dream jobs—all of these things, more than once. I think I’m still me… but how would you know?
Look, I think the point I was trying to make with all of this is that a LOT happens over time. Phish formed in 1983, the same year that the Internet was born. The same year that the first mobile cellular phone call was made. Ronald Reagan was in office. Return of the Jedi was in movie theaters. The D.A.R.E. program launched. The first McNugget was sold at a McDonalds. The Cold War was in full effect. Somewhere, a Mrs. Winehouse gave birth to her daughter, Amy. Michael Jackson introduced the Moonwalk — and, in a way, introduced Phish to the world, given that their very first gig (or one of their first, depending on which revisionist history you believe) was cut off early while the audience danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album.
And while most people don’t mark the progress of their own lives based on the timeline of some rock and roll band, everyone has a timeline. The mountain there is now a hill. These rocks will fall away at last.
I’m more than halfway through my 30s now. Most people my age wake up on Monday morning and do the same thing they do every Monday morning. They drink their two cups of coffee, check Facebook on their smart phone, and drive to work. They listen to Howard Stern on the way there and maybe respond to a few text messages that they received after their bedtime the night before. Maybe they’re responding to my late-night texts. It wasn’t like this back in 1983, when Phish first formed, but those people had their own routines.
Most people my age come home from work — not just on Monday but Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday too, and do the same thing. They kiss their wife, play with the kids, and turn on ESPN. There’s nothing wrong with this. At least, not in and of itself. I’m not knocking routine. That’s fine. Desired by most, in fact. I’m knocking going through life on autopilot. I’m knocking the ones who have forgotten how to have fun. How to be in love with life. How to rage an “Antelope” and enjoy a “Divided Sky.” How to stay up all night, unplanned, because you’re so caught up in a great moment that everything else has been temporarily washed away. When I said Phish changed my life, I also meant that, in some ways, they showed me how to live. Because you can’t get stuck playing yesterday’s jam.
Although, of course, at points, they’ve been guilty of just such a crime. It’s such a human thing to do. We all get stuck along the way. It’s getting unstuck that matters.
Sure, there were some nights when Phish—on stage—felt to me, out in the audience, like they were just getting home from work, about to kiss their wives, play with their kids, and turn on ESPN. Metaphorically, I mean. It felt like routine. The band was approaching three decades together. What else did they have left to do? And why did I still need to be there, inside an arena, watching a rock concert that I’ve seen more than two hundred and fifty times? What could they possibly give me that’s new? Where could they go from here? What else could they prove? There’s a surprise ending here.
When Phish reunited a few years ago, it sure was great to have the band back. I still loved going to shows and I still loved dancing to those songs, after all. And I was still having new experiences, going with new friends, doing new things before and after the shows. It’s a revolving cast but it’s the same old game. Reinvented, redefined.
It wasn’t exactly like it used to be, but nothing ever is. And you don’t want it to be. I don’t go to see Phish these days because I hope to catch another 12/31/95. Nor do I go see them because I want to relive some of my favorite days alive from a decade past. I lived those days already. And they were great. But I go to see Phish because I want to break on through with them. Because I want them to be the soundtrack to another favorite day of my life. A new one. Because I want to hear them jam like they’ve never jammed before. Otherwise, I may as well eat the same old breakfast, pat the dog twice, and automatically turn on Howard Stern as I start the car and head to the cubicle.
And then Phish 2013 happened. Phish’s 30th Anniversary Year.
***
Led Zeppelin was a band for 12 years. The Beatles for 13. The Talking Heads had longevity—they were around for 17 years. The Doors only lasted 8 years. The Velvet Underground officially disbanded after 9 years. As did The Band. Blind Faith lasted less than a year.
Most bands that make it past the first decade are unrecognizable by the time they make it through their second. Unrecognizable because the very musicians in the band have changed. Some bands are really just bands in name alone—Guns ‘N’ Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jethro Tull, the Smashing Pumpkins and so on. The Allman Brothers Band have had at least a dozen musicians step through their rotating door, so if you think you’re seeing the same band that recorded Eat a Peach, think again.
As for the music, most bands that have made it past their second decade focus on music from their first. In other words, most of them have become irrelevant. When was the last time The Who did anything new that will be remembered? Metallica recently hit their 30th anniversary but what was the last, truly great Metallica album? And even though fans can argue this, the same could be asked about the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan. It’s rhetorical, you guys.
Despite popular culture’s obvious ageism, growing old gracefully in rock and oll can be done. Look at Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and um….um…..well, David Byrne hasn’t lost any of his creative spark.
But, after three decades, Phish just might be on the verge of a new creative peak. And, frankly, that’s pretty much unheard of.
***
From one perspective, it might seem as though, somewhere above, I called anybody with families and responsibilities and a solid home life a muggle. That’s not what I meant to do. Many of those people are my heroes. All I meant is that it’s easy to get stuck on autopilot, to sleepwalk, to stroll through our adult years with our eyes closed. To let contentment breed stagnation. And what I’m saying is, don’t do it. And that doesn’t come from me — I’ve been there and done that, too.
It comes from a band who, 30 years deep, has just unveiled a whole batch of new songs that are unlike anything they’ve written before and which will no doubt become highlights of shows and tours to come. It comes from a band who, this past year, played a 36+ minute version of a song that they played live 323 times before — but this one was remarkably different than any they’ve ever done before. It comes from a band that, just a few months ago, opened a second set with a song that most people have written off as a standard ho-hum-along (“Chalk Dust Torture”), and then proceeded to rip it into a 23+ minute, nothing-else-matters jam. I’m talking about a band that, at age 30, has reinvented themselves yet again. I’m talking about Phish at age 30.
Almost every band that age has broken up or taken years off before reuniting. Almost every band that age has gone through at least one major, mid-career lineup change. Most of these bands have just two options at that point: they can either do the same old song and dance routine (some, admittedly, for a rather hefty profit), or else take a final bow. Phish, meanwhile, just renewed their vows. Which means that they’re still a new band almost every night. Which means that they’re still the same band they used to be.
I don’t really know why I’m still compelled to fly across the country to see this band any chance I get, but I can guess that it has something to do with that sense of renewal and redemption. And the underlying knowledge that this crazy adventure, wherever it may go, is still far from arriving at the destination. So it’s onward we go. Chug-a-lug-a-lug.
Oh, Phish.
Happy 30th anniversary, fellas.
