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Searching for the Sound
By Phil Lesh Little, Brown
Copyright © 2005 Phil Lesh
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-316-00998-9
Chapter One
I have always considered myself a very lucky man. I've been married for more than twenty years to a woman who loves me as passionately as I love her, and with whom I have developed a level of trust and companionship that I never dreamed existed. We are rearing two fine sons, both growing up straight and strong and loving. I survived hepatitis C and a liver transplant. I was born an only child but found my true brothers through the art of music and a series of improbable coincidences. I am blessed with the joy of earning my way by doing something I love-something that is so deep it can never be boring, or run out of challenges.
Music can define life itself, and it has indeed defined my life. In life, as in art, there are recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define a form that's not necessarily apparent until its ending has come and gone.
I was awakened to the power of music early in life, through the magic of radio broadcasts and by listening to my father play, from memory, his favorite tunes on the piano. Music saved me from the worst effects of adolescent angst, partly by giving me a very real sense of accomplishment. It led me into a quest for knowledge and wisdom, for the cultural, artistic, historical, and religious context of the work that moved me so much. It has clarified my feelings as my father lay dying, kept me company in the early light of day as I fed my newborn sons, soothed and transported me during life-threatening illness and surgery, and brought me illimitable joy as I watched thousands of dancers surge and spin to the music flowing through my band.
The Grateful Dead has always been collectively dedicated to many ideals: family, community, freedom, risk-taking-but for me it was always the music. With all its ups and downs, it's an exhilarating experience to improvise-onstage and in life-with one's fellow humans, who after forty years of living, working, disagreeing, and completing one another's thoughts musically and conversationally, are connected by a bond that's "thicker than blood," as Bob Weir likes to say.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Searching for the Sound by Phil Lesh Copyright © 2005 by Phil Lesh. Excerpted by permission.
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