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CHAPTER 1

Four (or Five or Six) Dudes in Vermont

What is Phish? On its surface, that seems like an easy question to answer. But Phish is certainly more than the sum of its parts.

Phish is a band, a progressive rock fusion jazz psych jam band with a fervent following, performing live shows across America never repeating a single set, constantly exploring the vast possibilities within musical performance. To laymen, "Phish is kinda like the Grateful Dead, right?" But that's just uneducated presupposition, kind of like saying, "All pizza tastes the same."

Phish is surprising. Phish is inspiring. Phish is a community, a culture, a vibe. Phish is an institution, a religion, a kingdom, a world unto its own. Phish is a misspelling, a Secret Language, a middle-aged man wearing a muumuu. Phish is a vagabond circus, a classically trained pandemonium. Phish is a live performance, a jam, a journey.

But more literally, Phish is an American band formed in Vermont in 1983. Led by guitarist Trey Anastasio (b. 1964), Phish includes Mike Gordon (b. 1965) on bass, Jon Fishman (b. 1965) on drums, and Page McConnell (b. 1963) on keyboards.

The initial group included Jeff Holdsworth on guitar and vocals and briefly Marc Daubert on percussion. While Holdsworth was very much a cofounder of the band with Anastasio and penned a number of songs still included in Phish's repertoire ("Possum," "Camel Walk"), he left the band in 1986 after visiting Alaska and experiencing a spiritual awakening.

While Page McConnell, Phish's keyboardist, is undoubtedly vital to the sound of the group, he was not an original member of the band. He joined Phish in 1985, making Phish a five-piece group until Holdsworth left the band, thus cementing the Phish lineup that has remained unchanged for more than 30 years.

Ernest "Trey" Joseph Anastasio III, aka Big Red, was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and soon moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he and his sister, Kristy, came of age. Both of his parents worked in education, his father as an executive of the Educational Testing Service and his mother as a children's book author and editor at Sesame Street magazine. Anastasio attended public and private schools, graduating from The Taft School, a private prep academy in Connecticut, where he met collaborators Tom Marshall and The Dude of Life (see chapter 10). It was at that time he formed his first bands, Red Tide and Space Antelope. He then enrolled at the University of Vermont, initially as a philosophy major, where he posted a flyer seeking a bass player.

Michael Elliot Gordon, aka Cactus, was the bassist who answered the ad. Growing up in Massachusetts as the son of an abstract painter and a founder and CEO of a chain of convenience stores, Gordon also attended prominent high schools as a student. He enrolled at UVM as an electrical engineering major and graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree — and a new band.

Jon Fishman, aka Henrietta, grew up in Syracuse, New York, where he started drumming at a very early age. He was quite accomplished by the time he graduated high school and moved to Vermont to attend UVM, where he joined Gordon, Anastasio, and Holdsworth to form the band, initially and briefly called Blackwood Convention. Then, of course, the band changed their name, making Fishman the eponymous member, with just a slightly different spelling.

Page Samuel McConnell, aka Leo, aka The Chairman of the Boards, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where he fastidiously studied the piano, playing in bands as early as middle school. His father, Dr. McConnell, worked in research and development at McNeil Laboratories, where he helped develop Tylenol and magnetic resonance testing. Page McConnell, like Anastasio, attended private prep academies, including a boarding school in Massachusetts, before attending Southern Methodist University in Texas. After two years he transferred to Goddard College in Vermont, where he would meet Anastasio, Gordon, and Fishman.

The band played their first gig at UVM on Friday, December 2, 1983 (see chapter 6). Phish's first gig to include Page McConnell was May 3, 1985. And the rest is history.

Over the decades, Phish has released 13 studio albums, hosted 10 weekend festivals, and played more than 1,600 shows. They've grossed hundreds of millions of dollars through album sales, live gigs, merchandise, webcasts, downloads, and films. And yet, Phish has never had a hit single, significant radio play, or mainstream accolades.

In 2000, they took a hiatus for a couple of years and then broke up for five years (chapter 75), and since returning in 2009, Phish has performed and toured regularly, though not as extensively as their prolific glory days in the 1990s. But many would say they're now playing as well as they ever have.

The Phish fan base is perhaps the only true link to The Grateful Dead, as both audiences embraced the counterculture lifestyle of living on the road, following the bands on tour from show to show, effectively building a traveling city with its own economy, rules, and traditions.

To that point, Phish is more than four dudes who met in college in Vermont. Phish have built something larger than themselves. Phish's grassroots growth is unprecedented, mainly due to their unique live performances. No two shows are the same.

Yes, Phish is a band, four musicians playing in a traditional rock band lineup of guitar, bass, drums, and keys. They've got it simple. But to say Phish is just a band is to miss the point entirely.

Phish is a cultural phenomenon, one that simply started with four (or five, or six) dudes in Vermont in the mid-1980s.

Career Overview and the Three Eras of Phish

Since the new millennium, we have seen many tech companies launch, update, and reboot their products by using decimal-based designations such as 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Whole-number jumps often signify huge changes to the product. Within the world of Phish, there are three distinct eras (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0) that signify different phases in the band's history. These segments are based on periods of touring and marked by the breaks between those phases.

The designation 1.0 refers to 1983 to 2000, 2.0 is 2003 to 2004, and 3.0 is 2009 to present.

The 1.0 era is considered by most die-hard fans as the pinnacle of Phish. Phish 1.0 refers to original Phish, from their first concert in the Harris-Millis Cafeteria at UVM on December 2, 1983, until the final note of the October 7, 2000, show at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

Prior to Page McConnell joining Phish in 1985, Phish actually had two other members in the band — Jeff Holdsworth, who was a guitarist at the band's inception until he left for good in 1986, and Marc Daubert, who was an official member of the band for a few months in the mid '80s. Finally, in May 1986, the familiar Phish lineup of Trey Anastasio, Mike Gordon, Jon Fishman, and Page McConnell took shape.

For the next 14 years, Phish toured relentlessly, crisscrossing the nation, and at times, the world, traveling to Europe and Japan multiple times. They went from playing empty cafeterias to smoky bars to classic theaters to sold-out arenas and giant festivals. The miles, musical moments, and monster jams created a totally unique global Phish phenomenon.

Phish hit their self-proclaimed "high point" (as Trey, Mike, and Jon proclaimed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly) during the legendary Big Cypress Millennial Show in Florida during the New Year's run in 1999. Phish played two nights of incredible music, including a seven-plus-hour all-night set after the unofficial start of the new millennium. They felt they had created the greatest spectacle of their career, and were unsure where to go from there.

As Trey said to the Burlington Free Times, "For the first time, we had something [Big Cypress] we knew we couldn't out-do. Our whole career, we had been pushing this big, cool ball steadily uphill; not nine months after Big Cypress, it started to feel like it was starting to roll downhill."

In the fall of 2000, not nine months of Big Cypress, Phish announced they were going to take an indefinite "hiatus" as Trey penned a public letter explaining the motivation. Even though no time frame was given on the return, it was clearly worded to be a pause and not an end.

During the break, band members found a variety of outlets to keep their creative juices flowing. Side projects like the Trey Anastasio Band, Page McConnell's Vida Blue and the Spam All-Stars, Jon Fishman's Pork Tornado, and Mike Gordon's work on the movie Outside Out took the forefront of the band members' attention during the hiatus (see chapter 81).

Ultimately, the break didn't last long, and Phish returned after 26 months on December 31, 2002, at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Phish was back, and Phish 2.0 had officially begun. The tranquil opening notes of "Piper," built into a frenzied intensity, officially ringing in the new phase of Phish.

Phish 2.0 was brief, not quite 20 months, and was a time period known for some incredibly long and unique jams. As with any era of Phish, there were standout moments and shows that left the fans amazed, such as the It Festival, the legendary bust-out of "Destiny Unbound" at Nassau Coliseum in New York on February 28, 2003, and the bust-out-filled Star Lake show in Pennsylvania later that summer, on July 29, 2003.

But with all the good produced during Phish 2.0, under the surface, problems within the band were brewing. A series of infamously sloppy and uninspired shows in Las Vegas in 2004 made it clear that the band was not firing on all cylinders. Something was amiss.

A little more than a month after the Las Vegas shows, Trey sent a letter to the fans stating that he felt, in part, "Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note." The end of Phish, or at least Phish 2.0, was at hand. They scheduled one final summer tour to say goodbye.

The final shows of Phish 2.0 took place at a festival in Coventry, Vermont. The intent was to have a giant final celebration of the band and their fans, but the weather leading up to the weekend and the lapses in the music left people feeling less than celebratory by the weekend's end (see chapter 86).

Unlike the end of Phish 1.0, this was a clearly defined breakup, not another hiatus. There was no guarantee that the band would ever get together again. In fact, Anastasio made it clear to everyone that this was indeed the end of Phish.

During the five-year breakup, the band members took some time away from the stage together, yet still found themselves engaged in creative solo projects and collaborations. Trey, Page, and Mike each had separate stints touring under their own names. In 2006, Trey and Mike teamed up with Joe Russo and Marco Benevento to form G.R.A.B. Trey also collaborated with some orchestras. Jon took on drumming duties for the Yonder Mountain String Band for a while. There were opportunities to see the band members play, just not necessarily together.

Yet the most important event of this time period was also one of the darkest moments of the band's history. In 2006, Trey Anastasio was arrested in Whitehall, New York, for misdemeanor drug possession, driving while under the influence of drugs, and aggravated unlicensed operation. Trey had hit rock bottom and acknowledged this when he spoke to the Washington County Felony Drug Court in June 2016.

"The night I got arrested, I couldn't go 10 minutes without taking something," Anastasio said. "Nine years later, I don't think about drinking or drugging anymore." He added that it was "a gift to get arrested and be put through the paces to get sober."

Trey Anastasio used his experience to become an advocate for drug recovery programs. When speaking on behalf of the importance of the drug courts on Capitol Hill in May 2009, Trey said, "My life had become a catastrophe. I had no idea how to turn it around. My band had broken up. I had almost lost my family. My whole life had devolved into a disaster. I believe that the police officer who stopped me at 3:00 that morning saved my life."

And so, by 2009, by his own accounts, Trey had regained his footing and was clean and sober, and the band members were ready to give Phish one more reboot.

After five years of nonexistence, Phish once again graced the stage. They chose the legendary Hampton Coliseum — "The Mothership" — in Hampton, Virginia, to start things off. The Phish 3.0 era was launched with one of the most epic moments in Phish history. When they walked onstage for the first time in nearly a half a decade, the audience erupted in joy. When they began the first few notes of the classic "Fluffhead" for the first time in more than eight years, the crowd went absolutely wild (see chapter 88).

Phish 3.0 is a revelation. Phish fans around the world "feel the feeling" that we once forgot, and the band continues to create incredible moments, runs of shows, and tours.

Phish 3.0 has had its own microevolutions and epic tours. Fans are once again discussing and debating which 3.0 run was the best (cough Summer 2015 or Baker's Dozen), or which Phish 3.0 jam was the deepest (cough cough "Tahoe Tweezer"). They are even daring to compare the all-time greatness of Big Cypress to the immense achievement of the 13-show Baker's Dozen residency (see chapter 13).

We are in a new, mature, and healthy age of Phish. Much of the fan base has grown up along with the band and is introducing the musical magic to an entire new generation of phans. Trey has written a Tony-nominated Broadway musical, Hands on a Hardbody, and Mike Gordon has become a front man of his own nationally touring Mike Gordon Band (M.G.B.). Jon Fishman was even elected to public office in Maine on the Lincolnville Board of Selectmen. They've released new albums and have continued their longstanding New Year's Eve and Halloween traditions, and have even started new traditions, such the annual Dick's Labor Day run of shows in Colorado.

Phish 3.0 is becoming an entity all its own and is now fully hitting its stride. With this newfound vibrancy and health, it seems the catchy lyrics of "Blaze On" can be seen as a mantra: "the worst days are gone, so now the band plays on, you got one life, blaze on." Apropos for a band that's been playing and creating together for more than 30 years, wouldn't you agree?

Influences and Inspiration

Needless to say, as characterized by Phish's multigenre musicality, its band members have drawn inspiration from a variety of predecessors. Phish is influenced by 1960s rock, '70s disco funk, '80s pop, and more.

In an interview with Charlie Rose in May 2004 to discuss the band's decision to break up, Anastasio also shared some thoughts about which great musicians inspired him to pursue the art himself. When asked about the comparison between Phish and the Grateful Dead, Anastasio said, "It's not true in the sense that [the Grateful Dead] is probably the greatest band in American history." He continued, "Well, I'm just going to talk about Jerry now... . I probably only saw two rock concerts that completely transported me; one was Bruce Springsteen in 1978, he was doing "Rosaletta," and every single person in the entire arena was locked to that guy. That made me want to be a musician. The other times were the first and second times when I saw The Dead. And what I saw was a guy — Oh no no, another one, Zappa. I saw Zappa a number of times and he was just as intense — but Jerry Garcia was an absolute wonder to behold. When he walked onstage, he had every single person in that room riding on his every eyebrow move. And I've never seen it again. And now I know that some time has gone by how lucky I was. He was such a great singer and such a great songwriter. And that's the thing I don't see people talking about as much. But when I saw the Dead what I saw was people singing along. And hanging on this guy's every inflection. And it was done with tremendous soul; he was the most soulful singer I've ever seen. There's never going to be the next Jerry Garcia. There's never going to be the next Grateful Dead."

Anastasio then goes on to herald Bill Monroe as the inventor of bluegrass music, as well as Frank Zappa and Little Feat's Lowell George.

But let's be honest here. Many of Phish's early shows — 1983, 1984, 1985 — featured Grateful Dead covers such as "Scarlett > Fire," "Eyes of the World," "Help Is on the Way," and "Slipknot!," among others, an undeniable influence on Phish's early years to say the least.

Page McConnell was also a Deadhead. In a 2008 interview with ABC, McConnell said, "When I would see [the Grateful Dead] in concert, it would be a different song every night that would be my favorite of the evening. It wasn't any one song in particular that kept me coming back."

McConnell continued to list influences, including The Allman Brothers' "Jessica" and a handful of songs by Elton John, specifically "Amoreena," which, McConnell said, "I think I heard for the first time when I saw Dog Day Afternoon."

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Excerpted from "100 Things Phish Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Andy P. Smith and Jason Gershuny.
Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
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