Phish lyricist Tom Marshall has been friends with Trey Anastasio since middle school, and has seen the birth of Phish from its amoeba state to its legendary status of today. Indeed, today marks the 30th anniversary of Phish, so Jambands.com sat down with the magical wordsmith to discuss the three decades, his collaborations with Anastasio, and the origins of some of the Phish mythology and so much more in this long and warm look back at where Phish has gone and where they are now—a very happy place.
Click here to read Tom’s take on the new Wingsuit material.
RR: How did you and Trey meet?
TM: We went to Princeton Day School, a private school, together, so I first met Trey in 8th grade. It’s funny because I had seen him around town because we were both public school kids, and, then, I guess, both of our parents, simultaneously, and this had a parallel occurrence later, when our parents influenced our education, and, again, made us met again, but I think my parents were worried that I was starting to hang out with the wrong crowd and sent me to private school. I am almost positive that was the same motivation why Trey got sent to private school. Boom, we were both in private school. I couldn’t imagine a more musical grade. We were a hundred people—50 girls, 50 boys. There were, I think, six bands in our grade. And Trey was in all of them, as a drummer. (laughs) I was like the only keyboardist who had a keyboard. Keyboards are expensive, so I was asked to be in a few, here and there, and rapidly it became apparent that I didn’t really want to do “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” type stuff, and learn how to sing Rolling Stones covers or Eric Clapton stuff. I started taking up with these guys that were definitely on some extra fringe, outside of the standard, and it was Marc Daubert and Dave Abrahams. We formed a band called And Back. We were 100% original music. That was our stipulation. We are going to be a band that records music. We are not really worried about performing it, and we are going to write all of our own songs.
Trey found out about us right away, and wanted to join and all kinds of stuff, but this was also occurring right about the same time that he was going from being a drummer to becoming a guitarist. We didn’t need a guitarist because Dave Abrahams was an incredible accomplished guitarist. He could play classical style, he could play steel-stringed acoustic, and in 8th grade he could play Steve Howe’s “The Clap” and he could play Steve Hackett’s “Horizons.” He could play these really amazing acoustic pieces, but then he was also accomplished enough to make amazing electric sounds. He had a Gibson SG and he had parents that totally supported his crazy guitar style and equipment. We found ourselves recording over there quite a bit. Trey was sort of involved, and we were involved with him, and we would bring songs to Trey, and Trey would bring songs to us, and it evolved from there. It became very apparent that I was able to contribute words and had just a wild amount of strange word-y type stuff coming out of my head, and Trey had just an overabundance of musical ideas coming out of his head at the same time, so we stayed together even when Trey left to go to Taft in 10th grade. Trey became too much for his parents to handle, so Trey went off to Taft. He was definitely not a follow-the-rules guy.
I continued to send him [material] here and there and we continued to stay in touch. Not so much in touch, but we definitely were still aware of each other’s presence. We weren’t writing songs by any means, but we saw each other when he came home quite a bit, and we sort of kept in tune, musically, with where the other was. But, it wasn’t until Trey got kicked out of the University of Vermont and I got kicked out of Carnegie Mellon for different reasons. For example, I didn’t cut the hand off a cadaver. (laughter) He and I wound up, at our fathers’ insistence, at Mercer County Community College. My dad had said if you go there and get your Associate’s Degree and get straight A’s, I’ll pay for you to finish off college at Rutgers, where he was a professor. Trey’s dad, I think, did something similar to him—you screwed up, you have to go to Mercer County, and do well, and redeem yourself as a student.
I was walking out of class one day, and Trey was walking in, and I said, “Trey Anastasio?” And he said, “Tom Marshall?” He turned around and he didn’t even go to class. He said, “Do you want to go and set up a recording studio in my dad’s basement and record music with me?” And I didn’t have to be asked twice. That was right when Trey was in this incredible creative period where “Divided Sky,” “Letter to Jimmy Page,” “Slave to the Traffic Light,” “Run Like an Antelope,” and a lot of what was on the White Album [ Phish ] , he was coming up with back then, and I was fortunate to be there when that stuff was being recorded. I played keyboards on “Slave to the Traffic Light.” I was the one who came up with see the city, see the zoo, traffic light won’t let me through. I was there when all of that stuff was going on, but that was really all Trey.
There were not a lot of lyrics; you can tell. But, he did all of that. I was just incredibly lucky and happy to be there when that was happening—and, pushing record here and there. He was so driven, and he had this amazing vision. He decided to go back, even though, I don’t think, he could go back to the University of Vermont, but Page, at that point, had somehow convinced those guys to come up to Goddard College. So, Trey went back and, soon, they were at Goddard, and soon, Phish was formed and the rest is history.
I continued at that point, realizing how incredible this music, to send him lyrics. I sent him “McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters,” poems and stuff, and he stuck it outside his door, and the ones that people liked he turned into songs. (laughs) Unknowingly, I named a lot of the Gamehendge characters, even though I didn’t know he was composing Gamehendge at the time. In “McGrupp,” most of the characters are named like Tela, Wilson, and all of that stuff. Actually, Aaron [Wolf], Trey, and I had written “Wilson” before, but that’s another story; that was in high school.
RR: Along that line, describe the importance of the Rhombus.
TM: Oh, God, yes. At Princeton Day School, we were fortunate that Marc Daubert was older for the grade, and, so, he always was able to drive. I can’t quite reconcile how. He may be two years older than I am. In any case, Daubs would pick me up and somehow finagle a six-pack, and we would immediately go to the Princeton battlefield. That was just this place, and they would bring an acoustic guitar, or Daubs would sometimes bring bongos, and I would have bongos, or Daubs would have an acoustic, as well, and we just made endless music on the battlefield monuments. The ritual became—as it became darker and the battlefield closed, and the cops would show, and always splash a spotlight up on the monuments, and if you were there, they would drive on the field and bust you, so, we learned their pattern, and we learned that we couldn’t be there past dust—that we would walk behind the battlefield, where there is the Institute for Advanced Studies, where Oppenheimer and Einstein made the bomb. (laughs) There are these Institute woods that became scary and amazing at night, and so we would go back there, and that path would lead to this amazing opening, one of the Institute lawns where there is this incredible lake with sculptures around it, and one of the sculptures was the Rhombus.
And, so, before long, Trey would join us at the Rhombus, and before long, it became the primary spot for ritually creating music that resounded into the heavens. It involved pounding on this steel rhomboid solid structure. You’d get on top of it. Mounting the Rhombus is the beginning of the ritual because, inevitably, the dew had fallen already, so the grass was wet, and climbing up this thing, which was angled, was very steep, and you had to kind of know what you were doing, and be a little bit athletic. You’d get up on top of the Rhombus, and play guitar, bongos, and pound the thing. “Divided Sky” was written that way—the wind blows high; that chant was there—and a bunch of other material that worked its way into the Phish canon was written there.
RR: Much of the early material did not have lyrics, or had lyrics in a minimal way, which were written by Trey, or had them in a full-length way, but had not really taken on a shape of their own just quite yet. However, Trey, in the beginning, wrote some truly amazing compositional and arrangement masterpieces. At a certain point, a bit later on, perhaps in a very organic process, as you have described your relationship has been from the beginning, it became obvious that there was some lyrical assistance needed, and that is where you entered the picture.
TM: It’s funny. I remember a couple of my friends—myself, included—were very aware of Trey’s band, and that they had this album out, Junta. I was also aware that it really contained entire songs where the lyrics are David Bowie, or let’s go out to dinner and see a movie. While those songs themselves are incredible, you could argue that, perhaps, they needed some lyrical work. Meanwhile, Trey proved himself quite lyrically-adept with songs like “Fee” and “Esther,” which are both lyrical masterpieces as far as I’m concerned, and it showed that he was able to, but I also, just from knowing him, realized that I could save him the effort because I had so much shit pouring out of my head. I wasn’t thinking like, “hey, someday, maybe this will pay me money.” I was just thinking, “it’s just a way of writing songs,” like possibly helping Trey out and having fun in the process because that is always what it was based upon was making the other guy laugh.
Back when we wrote “Wilson,” Aaron Wolf and I (laughs) created this song, and just the word ‘Gamehendge’ made us laugh over and over at; we started oh out near Stonehedge, I lived alone; oh out near Gamehendge, I chafed a bone…—that line, Aaron and I, we were literally on the ground holding our stomachs, laughing at the word ‘Gamehendge’. Over and over and over again, we were just cracking up. Immediately, our thought was that, well, we have to perform this for other people. We played it for our friend and were met with a blank stare. We would ask, “Do you get it? He’s an evil tyrant. Do you get it?” And our friend wouldn’t get it. And we’d play it for other friends: “Do you get it?” Aaron had lots of girlfriends—I didn’t at the time—and we would sing it to a few of them and they would say, “What the fuck are you guys on ?”
And, finally we sang it to Trey. I don’t know why we didn’t sing it to him first, but he cracked up. We didn’t even have to say, “Do you get it?” It was so obvious that he got it. He was the one that it was basically meant for. It was obvious that he got it. That’s the humor. That was our goal—to make the other guy laugh. I had lyrics like that that I was more than happy to send to Trey. That is kind of the way we wrote early on. I was actually excited that on the next album, Lawn Boy, it had “Lawn Boy,” “Squirming Coil,” and “Bouncing Around the Room,” which were written in that vein. Those are just sheets of paper that I sent him; never heard the music or the song until they were complete.
Of course, we’ve changed our writing style now. We like writing together.
RR: That collaborative writing process developed over time to the point where you would take trips, away from everyone else, and work on songs together. Was that a natural, organic process, as well, where you settled into a collaborative pattern? I suppose I am now charting the years from 1992 to 2002.
TM: Right. I think as we started realizing, if you will, the import of these songs, or the popularity of these songs, we began experimenting and taking a little bit more time writing, and experimenting with different ways of writing. It turned out that writing together was the most productive and profitable. I think in ’93 or ’94 when, I believe, or, maybe it was even a little bit later, but, in any case, where we finally struck upon the formula where we would go away for a weekend. It became shockingly apparent that if you put the two of us in a room for two days with the right amount of recording equipment and instruments and frozen pizza and beer that we would create a lot of songs. That’s how the basis, from that point, the next several albums were created—for example, Ghost and Farmhouse, whereas Picture of Nectar and Rift were written in the old way—we wrote them apart; we wrote them over the phone, or Trey wrote them from a piece of paper that I would hand him, or send him, or fax him, back at the time.
The new model—from Billy Breathes, Ghost and Farmhouse, and moving forward—included songwriting trips. For example, Billy Breathes was a songwriting trip we took to the Cayman Islands. That was the era of the songwriting trip where we would go away and write together, and that is how that was born, and we realized we vastly preferred that approach, as it was much more fun collaborating in the same room.
RR: Left turn back to the ‘written in the old way’. Your thoughts on the 1993 Rift album, which featured a dozen Anastasio/Marshall compositions, and turned out to be somewhat of a concept album?
TM: Rift was one where I think Trey realized that the way the songs are coming together there was sort of a mood that linked them all. Trey came upon this separately from me. I also give credit to the producer, Barry Beckett. I wasn’t really part of the recording, or any of that, but I do remember spending hours on the phone with Trey for the first time, prior to that, for example, with “Chalk Dust Torture” from Picture, he would just accept whatever I gave him, never edit it or nothing, he would just turn it into a song. Boom, that’s “Chalk Dust Torture.” “Next?” He never once said, “What the fuck does that mean?” Because it didn’t matter.
But with Rift, oh my God, it started mattering. And I started changing my writing a little bit, realizing that “Lifeboy” [from 1994’s Hoist ] is really saying something from my heart, and so is “Rift” and the whole thing put together to Trey’s credit was this relationship unraveling kind of thing, and when the whole thing was put together in one piece, to me, it told me that (laughs) something is happening in my life that maybe I should pay attention to.
RR: Which leads me to the thought that now you have Trey dissecting your lyrical material, and you hear the song, and think, “What the hell happened to that?”
TM: (laughter) Oh God. I would love it. Whether it was like just handing him a book that Scott [Herman] and I pieced together from our e-mail conversations, which we assembled, probably around 300 poem snippets that we put together in something called The Salamander Prince. Phish has used that to create music—“Roggae” and “Meatstick” were written from that, for example. It is just this tome, and I think I might have the only remaining copy of it. Trey has lost his, or his was so dog-eared that I even gave him another one. I still have a pristine one. In any case, if he would call me and record on my answering machine (or, as the kids know it know—voice mail) a song, I would never say, “What the fuck did he do?” I would always be beaming that it happened at all.
RR: Jumping ahead, and past that new way of songwriting collaboration for you and Trey, Phish took a hiatus in October 2000, and returned in late 2002, owing two studio albums to Electra. Your collaborations with Trey were featured on Round Room and Undermind. Your relationship with Trey had changed, too.
TM: I think the short answer is that a lot of people knew what was happening with the band, and certainly Trey was going in a dark direction, and he had sort of lost direction. Trey and I, every now and then, would be able to grasp some of the magic again, had a little ember in our hands of the magic, and would blow on it and try to make a fire. We’d have songwriting sessions together, but you can hear on Undermind, they were sad.
Undermind foretells, again…like “Walls of the Cave” came out after 9/11, but that is one of the weirdest stories for me in my history, where Trey knew and everybody knew it was about the World Trade Centers, but I didn’t know when I wrote it. In any case, when you listen to Undermind, you hear that Phish is ending: there are no more fish in the sea, and all of that stuff in “Two Versions of Me.” That song, basically, describes the end of Phish. I remember my friend, David Steinberg, you know The Timer, said, “There’s a lot of rumors that the band is breaking up.” I remembered him getting worried. And I said stuff like “Oh, yeah, there’s a rumor.” I didn’t really know what to say. And David said, “Well, the only thing that is really worrying me now is that you aren’t dispelling them.” (laughs) I guess, maybe, he was calling me to dispel certain rumors. I didn’t give him the comfort he wanted, and, sure enough, we all know what happened.
But, yeah, that was sort of a sad collection of songs that I really love, and I really love Undermind. I love some of those songs, and I also like Round Room. The two of those albums get unfairly maligned. I really like them both. The recording quality of Round Room is pretty bizarre. It’s sort of a weird style, but I like it. I think there are some sound audiophiles amongst us that can hear things that I don’t necessarily hear, and don’t like it for that reason, which, to me, is bizarre because when you go and listen to a live audience recording, which is basically half audience sound, and you like that better? Those albums wound up neglected or disliked just because they accompanied the downfall of everyone’s favorite band. We didn’t know it at the time. We thought that was it. People didn’t want to listen to them. They didn’t want to be reminded. It was an old era; Phish is gone; I’m not going to listen to Round Room and Undermind. I am going to listen to Billy Breathes and Junta. Right?
RR: Right. The irony is that when Phish returned with Joy in 2009, there was criticism, and some fans went back and revisited the final two albums with Electra, and seemed to remember them quite fondly. The time between 2005 and 2007 was a transition period for you on two levels—workwise, and you were also thinking of your own future development as a songwriter, and would that include collaborations with Trey. You also released, by a long shot, one of my favorite albums of the last ten years, Amfibian’s Skip the Goodbyes.
TM: I was also trying to reassemble my own professional career, which I had sort of let slip through my fingers, realizing that I didn’t really like programming computers anymore. (laughs) The fun had left after 18 years. And, at the same time, being let go at Prudential was liberating. I didn’t want it accompanying Phish breaking up, so I was cut adrift. Amfibian was a great landing net, a safety net for me, in a way, because I was still writing strong, and Trey and I were still actually writing songs. But, Trey…he had his own…he had stuff to do. (laughs)
Amfibian…I thank you for saying it. That it is still one of your favorite albums, Skip the Goodbyes. The [title track] was written for Trey, and he knew it the second that he heard it. He asked if he could play the guitar solo on it. That is fantastic that he realized that.
RR: I love that story because didn’t you send it to him, and he immediately responded, which was a surprise to you?
TM: Yeah. Yeah. And we hadn’t been necessarily communicating too well. He not only identified that there is a guitar solo missing, but maybe I was hinting to him to add something to it. It wasn’t explicitly offered, but he also tuned in on the lyrics: “this is me leaving Tom behind a little bit, and, maybe, Tom feeling bad about it.” (laughs) But, it wasn’t…well, it was. It was what it was. It wasn’t that dramatic, but, in any case, that was a weird time for me, not knowing if Phish was coming back, am I just going to write with Trey, or is he now writing solo, so my musical companions that I had [in Amfibian], am I really starting a band? What am I doing here? The result was Skip the Goodbyes. It turned out to be a pretty damn good album that I am really proud of.
RR: Absolutely. As you should be. Trey comes out the other side, better than ever in some respects, in a somewhat centered state and Phish reunites in 2009. They record Joy, their first album in 2004. What was it like to collaborate with Trey at that time?
TM: Yeah, how I reached out to Trey across the gulf.
RR: “Backwards Down the Number Line.”
TM: There was a period of mandatory non-communication enforced by Trey’s program that he was in to get healthy. I guess it was deemed finally O.K. for me to talk with him by his father. At the same time, I was informed that Trey, of all people, who had never had an e-mail address had an e-mail address. I also realized it was his birthday (9/30/07). I just wrote this quick little birthday thing and shipped it over to him, and, literally (this is not an exaggeration; I’ll say 15 minutes just to be safe, so the gods don’t strike me down), in 15 minutes, Trey called back laughing/crying and played me a version of “Backwards Down the Number Line,” which was, basically, completely done. He had already written every piece. It was just phenomenal. And that is how we restarted again. I’m not saying that is how Phish restarted. That is how Trey and I restarted. Some people say that is the beginning of Phish again, and I will not go there. (laughs)
RR: Did you go on a songwriting trip for the songs that made it onto Joy ?
TM: We wrote a bit up at his place in Saratoga Springs, and he was also living in New York, and he rented us a hotel room and a beautiful suite in a nice hotel on Columbus Circle. We wrote there a couple times. Those songs were written mostly together. I was pleased that Steve Lilywhite was involved again. He seemed like an apt producer for Phish’s first album in a while [Lilywhite also produced 1996’s Billy Breathes ].
RR: Indeed. Quite a legacy. Speaking of…do you ever look back at the 30 years of Phish, and see what you’ve done with the band and Trey, and how they have all evolved as a band over the years, not to mention your own songwriting?
TM: I do. Phish is such a big part of me and I’m a big part of Phish. Phish, for many people, there are a whole group of people that Phish is nothing but a live experience. I feel like I’m as much an audience member. I’m like one of those guys. Phish has been my favorite band forever, so I get the best of both worlds. I’m not on stage. I don’t have to go on tour. Of course, “have to” is one of those First World problems. You have to stay in a five-star hotel. You have to fly on a Citation jet. You have to be pampered and treated like a king for three months. But, actually, being on the road is grueling as you know. That’s what I meant by I don’t have to go to shows. I get to go to the ones I want to.
So, yeah, I look back and see an incredible wealth of amazing history. I also see places where Phish could have crashed and burned—many places where they were incredibly lucky to have gotten up. I do remember in 2004, after the first hiatus, being asked, “Do you think there is going to be a happy ending for these guys?” I remember not wanting to answer that question. I thought, “Oh my God, that’s a great question.” (laughs) And, the band even joking amongst themselves would say, “We’ve done everything now except a plane crash.” (laughter) Talk like that in 2004, and just preceding it, was scary.
I am just so excited and incredibly elated by this amazing rejuvenation that they’ve had, especially now with the exuberance going behind the songwriting in the Halloween set and Wingsuit, and the incredible Fall tour. The West Coast shows, too [in the summer]. Put it this way, I have not stopped listening to Tahoe and the Bill Graham shows. I just love those shows. I would compare them too…it’s funny because someone online said, “Why does everyone, to this day, still get worked up over the Went Gin?”
RR: What? Are you kidding me?
TM: Yeah, the Went Gin. People were trying to answer him, but in another line, someone wrote, “I’m with you. I’m over the Went Gin. I’ve been listening to the Tahoe Gin.” And I thought, “Exactly!” Even the people that know the Went Gin and how good it is, are now listening to this new era and giving it the same weight as the old era. And that, to me, is this incredible feat that I don’t think that that person who ever wondered if there would be a happy ending for Phish could have ever predicted for Phish in the second act.
RR: I’d say it is a happy new beginning.
TM: Yes, happy new beginning is right. (laughs)
RR: I wasn’t sold on any consistent progress made by Phish until the Colorado dates in 2012. Ever since then, there seemed to be this incredible ability to be patient within songs and setlists, to allow room for air, and to create compositions, on the spot, within the jams, sometimes multiple times, and all inside one song—to create a song, or a series of multi-layered themes within a song, is not easy. I don’t think the band has ever had that form of improvisational power before. I am amazed they got to that place, and delighted they took the time to get there. I’m an old school fan. I love their jams, love the studio albums, and I think Tom Marshall is a lyrical genius. But, I wanted to see the band grow as a unit in this era. They did. Not only that, but, as Phish often does, they involved the crowd in their breakthrough moments.
TM: That is what was happening the whole night in Tahoe [7/31/13]. When that WOO! was born, you’re right, they involved the crowd. Exactly, Randy. It’s funny because in the old days, Type II jamming, I think, people defined it as where if Phish is jamming in a song and there is no apparent remnant of the song that they were in, then that is Type II jamming. They strayed so far away from the song that they were lost in another type of jam. What you’re saying is, and I agree, it is beyond that—they are creating and composing a song, and it is not just a jam. I totally feel that and I love it. It’s beautiful. People say they are cutting the jams short a little bit. I don’t feel that at all. I’m with you in that I’m a song guy. I don’t mind when they change the channel and go to the next song. I don’t like getting dragged down the same highway for too long. I like branching off another road.
RR: That’s a brilliant way to put it, too. To be honest, I’m a fan of some of that lost highway stuff, too, but I will say I don’t mind shorter jams. I just thought Phish was hesitant in taking risks, and not always playing as the four-headed beast that I loved to hear. I no longer feel that way after the last year or so. Suddenly, it isn’t just that they are playing together again, it is like you said, it is very beautiful music, music that I have not heard before, especially by this band, or any band, for that matter.
TM: Right. Something kicked in. You know what I think it is? It’s happiness. (laughs) I think they’re all happy.
