secondtube Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 Plain and Central - August 2005 Plain and Central August, 2005 Interview w/ Trey Anastasio by Jess Minnen I jerk awake. Why am I on this couch? Where are my shoes? What time is it? I grab my cell phone off the coffee table. 10:00 AM. Fuck. Fuck! How could this have happened? How could I have fucked this up, of all things? I roll off the couch and run to my car. I had the good sense to pass out at a friend’s house, and my shock has completely evaporated the lingering liquor stupor from the night before. 11 AM Eastern time, Beth said. Beth is Trey’s publicist. Yeah, that Trey. It’s 10 AM and I’m running to my car, flooring it down Delmar to the Riverfront Times offices. Parking and running up three flights of stairs costs me six minutes. 10:06. The phone rings. “Jess?†A woman’s voice sounds slightly worried. “Yes!†I answer, huffing. Three flights of stairs is a lot. “I’m here. I’m sorry I’m late.†“He tried calling twice and there was no answer.†“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m here now.†Beth smiles into the phone. “Ok,†she says. “Relax. Breathe. I’ll have him call you back in a few minutes.†Trey is coming to the Fox Theatre here in St. Louis in a few weeks, and on the off chance that I could end my illustrious Riverfront Times career with gusto, I emailed Trey’s publicist requesting an interview. I was pretty much shocked when she got back to me with the affirmative. For the past week I have eat, slept and breathed Trey with a fervor unmatched since my sophomore year of college when I filled page after page of my notebook with “Jess Anastasio†and “Jessica Anastasio†and “Trey and Jess Anastasio†instead of notes about David Hume and the philosophy of art. What do you say to the only man who is still a rock star to you? I’ve worked in the music business for long enough to realize that stardom is a fabrication, a construction created by the admirer rather than anything done by the admired. All those guys who play the music we love—well, they’re just dudes. They’re just like the dudes I hang out with normally, they just happen to be in a rock band and have names like Sam Beam or Doug Martsch instead of Scott Rockwood or Danny Carroll. But this, him, well he’s something else entirely. He’s the man. The man. The progenitor of the greatest rock band ever, a band that I do not doubt will be remembered as one of the greatest rock bands ever. Say what you want about Trey, but for me, he’s the be all and end all. My dream interview. And I overslept. For good reason. See, I’m moving to Jerusalem and it’s all real at this point. In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in the international terminal at JFK airport in New York, waiting out my layover. I haven’t slept in over thirty hours, but I’m about to sleep for ten on a plane, and wake up on the other side of the world. The night before my interview with Trey, my RFT coworkers took me out for drinks, and things got a little sloppy. The phone rings and my heart drops several inches down until it feels like it’s resting on my stomach. I pick up the phone. “Hello?†“Hello!†Holy crap! Trey just said hello to me! And he sounds just like… Trey! And he’s on the phone! And he’s talking to me! “Sorry about that… I ran a little late this morning. Late night last night.†“Oh yeah?†“Yeah. Going away party.†“Where you going?†“Well, I’m actually moving to Israel. To study for awhile.†“Wow!.†Holy crap! Trey just said “wow†to me. He thinks something I’m doing is wow-worthy. Can I gush yet? Don’t tell him about the notebooks. Can I tell him that I think he’s the shit? Is that unprofessional? “Look, I know this is probably really unprofessional, but if I don’t say something now, it’ll just bubble over at some point during this conversation and that will be weird.†“Ok.†“You… are… the best. Really. I just want to thank you so much for what you do, and what it’s meant to me in my life. I mean, I never even would have started writing about music, or gotten into music in the way I am now if it wasn’t for you. And Phish.†“Oh, that’s great. Thank you.†“Well, it’s true. So thank you.†“How did you get into the band?†Holy crap! Trey is asking me how I got into Phish. Damn, I wish I had a better story. “Oh, I was a late bloomer. My boyfriend in high school was ages older than me, from Worcester. He told me about this band called Phish, but this was already ’98. I feel like I missed the boat.†“Aw, you didn’t miss the boat.†“Well, by the time I got to college and actually had the time and the means to go on Phish tour, you guys went on hiatus.†“Sorry about that.†“Mmm.†“So… Israel, huh? Are you going to be on a Kibbutz?†“No, just studying. That’s what’s kind of great about Jewish learning. There’s no end point, no degree, no pressure to get somewhere. You just go and start learning.†“Have you heard of Matisyahu?†“Of course. I saw him several times at Wakarusa.†“He’s amazing. He was at Bonnaroo. I’d never heard of him. He was walking around in my trailer and someone said, ‘You gotta meet this guy. He’s a reggae musician, and he was really into the band…’ So he came back in and we started talking and I was instantly taken with this guy. He asked if we could do a song, so I learned one of his songs really quickly. He was incredible.†“On paper that show looked weird. I remember seeing the setlist and being like, Who the hell is Bo Bice?†“You’ve never seen American Idol? Well, I had an interesting moment because I was thinking about this concept of worshipping false idols. You know, ‘Thou shalt not worship false idols.’ For a long time I thought it meant, ‘There is only one God. Your God is wrong. My God is right,’ which I think is completely off the mark. Then I started really getting it during the last couple years of Phish. I started to find myself really flirting with unhappiness as everything got bigger and bigger and not really understanding why. Like this is all so great, why am I… And then I realized that one God being Truth, Right, Love, the Real Deal. Call it what you will. You’re supposed to worship only that. Don’t worship the messenger.†“But isn’t music by default the most idolatrous art? You or anyone who performs sort of puts themselves on this pedestal. The stage IS a pedestal.†“Exactly.†“People are looking up at you and it is sort of like worship.†“I know it is. And there you go. It’s the first commandment… There’s something essentially wrong if you buy into it. You’re headed for unhappiness. With Phish, we were talking so much about trying to be a conduit. That’s very healthy. A wonderful thing. It was about listening and communication and hopefully some music starts happening. When you’re in the middle of it, it feels like you’re actually channeling something, like it’s not about you. But it’s so easy to get caught up in the fact that you’re standing up there on a pedestal. And you start to miss the boat, right? “So what I saw at that Bonnaroo show was so interesting. I had two people on stage with me. One was this guy who is very religious. Matisyahu. He was singing the most beautiful… His voice… He’s singing and it’s not about him. It’s about God. He’s very straight up. He’s a Hassidic Jew. The look in his eyes… they were kind of glistening. I was playing and looking right into his eyes, and it was so moving for a couple of reasons. One was that he used to follow the band… He told me he’d been to like, every Phish show for ten years. And then he went and became a Hassidic Jew and sings reggae because of the spiritual purity of a lot of reggae. He’s singing about God. So was Bob Marley. So was Bach, for that matter. Bach wrote at the top of everything he ever wrote ‘For the Glory of God.’ “And then I had Bo Bice with me, who just went through what to me must have been the most torturous experience… Being on American Idol—the ultimate example of worshipping false idols. And the two of them were both up there on stage and it was the most incredible experience. I’m so happy to report that Bo Bice is just the sweetest guy and is handling this so well. I said, ‘How are you possibly dealing with this? You’re getting the completely wrong message about music and everything by being on that show. Everything about it is utterly wrong.’ It was just weird how the whole core issue was right before my eyes up on stage that night. It was a very cool experience.†“Well, I could never be Orthodox for a lot of reasons, but there are very strong beliefs within the faith that your gifts are not yours alone, that talent is given to you by God and that by sharing your talent you are in a way doing what Bach said… sharing the glory of God.†“And it’s beautiful to do that. It got very difficult for the last few years for me. It got a little derailed. I’m just trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again.†“Anyway, you know how people talk a lot of shit? Well, you can tell me to fuck off for asking, but I have to ask since I’m on the phone with you. And because I’ve always tried to… I don’t know… stick up for you since I try not to believe things unless you see it happen or hear it from the person. So I just want to ask about the drugs, the rumors, how drugs played into the breakup of Phish.†“Ok. Here’s what happens with drugs, as most people know. Drugs are the tip of the ice berg of an unhealthy situation. There’s no other way to look at it. There’s no question that after many, many years of chess and Tetris and work-a-holic-ness being our drugs of choice, that the scene started to rear its ugly head around Phish. At which point it was an easy decision: Well, I’m not living that life. There was definitely an aspect of that…. Everyone is fine, though.†There’s a semi-long pause and I wonder if he’s pissed at me for bringing it up. Then he starts speaking again. And let me just say, when he gets going on a subject, it’s like a faucet. So much material, matter, information, anything and everything coming out. It sounds like informed stream of consciousness. “Here’s how I’ll answer that question. What was going on out in the audience always seemed to line up pretty well with what was going on back stage. We had a big scene around Phish. That became a serious problem. Our backstage scene was huge. There were so many friends, so many characters. We had parties backstage, at least one or two that were ongoing parties from show to show. It was fun for awhile, then it just kind of took a turn for the worse. Right at the end it needed to end. You know what I mean? There’s no question about that. It couldn’t go on like that. When that started happening, the people who had been around forever… I remember having a conversation with Paul. In the beginning there were five people who traveled with Phish: The four of us, and Paul. He used to do everything. Paul Languedoc. I remember one day he came up to me backstage and said, ‘This doesn’t fit.’ There were all these people around and this darkness had come over the whole thing. It was seedy and depressing. I remember looking at him and saying, ‘God that’s the realest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.’†“It was like that in the crowd, too.†“Exactly. Well, I’m gonna guess that that was right around ’99? That’s what the hiatus was about. The whole thing was like one big gang. I think our guest list at Coventry was like, three thousand people. Everyone on our crew was taking care of this ongoing scene, and it was becoming more and more difficult to do what we were supposed to be doing, which was concentrating on the music and practicing. I always think about what was to me one of the great Phish shows. I just look at it as an amazing night, symbolic of everything good about Phish: the 1996 Atlanta Halloween show when we did the Talking Heads album. It was because we spent months practicing for that thing. All the way up until four o’clock in the morning we were practicing for that show. And then we played the music once. That’s always what it was like with Phish. That’s the way I like to work. I love writing. I love practicing. I love working towards that experience on stage. Discipline towards that ecstatic release. It became harder and harder because we were dragging this giant circus around with us wherever we went. Even the guys on the crew were complaining… ‘I can’t do my job because I’m spending so much time parking the back stage scene at the venue.’ It was completely out of control. “So I can just about guarantee that I don’t need to answer that question. Everyone knows because they saw it out in the audience. I’m going to tell you the truth. We tried the hiatus and nothing was working. It had to stop. I know that was the right thing. I have so much hope. I want to continue to play for a long time, have that feeling of lighting people up. I really love that so much.†“Speaking as an audience member, it’s the most amazing thing to have happen to you.†“I want that! So badly. Every day I pace around waiting. My next show is Thursday. I can’t wait. I wish it was today. And… it was becoming harder and harder to do that, in that context. It wasn’t anybody’s fault or any one specific thing. It wasn’t that drugs were around, or that we weren’t able to practice as much. It wasn’t any of those things. It was all of them. Exhaustion. The utterly overblown scene. Phil Lesh talks about that in his new book, how it was so psychicly draining to walk from the band room to the stage. That’s exactly what it was like. But it’s not like that anymore. When I did my last tour… It worked. I have hope.†“So do we, you know. So do we.†We talked some more. We talked for forty minutes. He sounded real and alive and I felt more real and alive having spoken to him. I wish I had remembered to tell him my name, but nonetheless it was a dream come true, as cliché as it sounds. But I’ve got another dream about to come true: My plane is boarding in fifteen minutes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paisley Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 “Well, by the time I got to college and actually had the time and the means to go on Phish tour, you guys went on hiatus.†“Sorry about that.†LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ms.Huxtable Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 3000 people on the guest list. Dang! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 This doesn't fit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted August 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 i can post the link the blog came from, if you'd like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 'This doesn’t fit.’ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero Posted August 9, 2005 Report Share Posted August 9, 2005 Booche told me about an interview he had read with Tom Marshall which mentioned at one point the turn that the scene was taking. Something to the effect of looking out into the audience and seeing demons. He never did find the link again as far as I know but would love to track this down if it rings a bell. Trey's and Paul's comments in this interview sounded similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted August 10, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 10, 2005 bump Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timouse Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 that was great. thanks for posting this, 2ndtube! i was never a big phish person...they impressed me musically, but i always found their lyrics a little to...straightforward, i guess. what do you expect from someone weaned on robert hunter & john barlow? i remember seeing trey on with charlie rose when he called it quits, and was very impressed with the way he did it. he was then, and was also in the above interview, really classy & straight up about why the band was packing it in. in a way, i wish that jerry would have been able to do the same thing and just withdraw from it before it consumed him. i always wondered at shows what it must be like to be at the nexus of an entire stadium of "enhanced" psychic energy, how that must have felt, and what distractions it drove people to...there's a common theme between the dead and phish....either barlow of hunter made a comment to jerry at one point about it getting darker backstage as it got lighter out front.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tooly Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 sweet read, thanks steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deeps Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 I only was able to go to 2 Phish shows in my life and they were in Saratoga last year as the band was well uhhh dis-banding.I've wondered if they ever went out of their way to tell their audiences to be careful with their drug intake and watch eachother's back and such at any time or were they just silent before the masses when it came to the demons that rise when you get 10000+ people rocked off their asses for months at a time. Input from those who went to a buch of shows would be appreciated?Great article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deeps Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 Looking for answers Phish people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcO Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 No, they never addressed the crowd, that would have been a slippery slope. People are responsible for their own behaviour and addressing any perceived problems in the crowd would have jeopordized the relationship between band and audience. Nobody wants to be told what to do, from either side.It took the Grateful Dead 30 years to address the audience as a band and that was in the form of a letter following a massive gate-crashing episode at Deer Creek in 1995, where they had to cancel the second show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deeps Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 It's all in the delivery I think. "Telling people what to do."I was at Bonnaroo and Burning Spear took the time to ask the audience to watch eachother's back going in and out. Told us all to take care of eachother. I found it a solid move and one that a lot of the bands that I love wouldn't have done. Seems that their is no sense of responsibility among some artists to keep the peace within the communities they create.Strikes me as strange and a little selfish. It's in my nature is to nurture though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 I've been pretty outspoken about similar sentiments Deeps. It is a slippery slope but when massive drugging and particularly hallucinogenic and stimulants are at hand I think some pretty heavy (and dark) psychic energy gets swirling around. I definitely saw and felt the dark side of the lot in my 20 some odd shows I saw. There were some pretty lost people that I think have likely been paved over by now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmoothedShredder Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 Did Trey just not answer the drug question... or suggest that it was work-a-holic-ness that was the 'drug' of choice? If you ask me Cocaine broke up Phish... but then again... nobody asked... and Trey really hasn't answered the question. So what I think is worthless...Still it seems as though he's trying to put this episoide behind him which is good cause he'll admit it was unhealthy... and it's fair to say that it's just the tip of the iceburg of deeper problems... but they are either getting better or worse (IMO), and at the end of Phish (IMO) they were clearly getting worse.I'm glad 40VP is gaining some momentum, and I sincerly wish Trey the best for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevO Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 It's all in the delivery I think. "Telling people what to do."I was at Bonnaroo and Burning Spear took the time to ask the audience to watch eachother's back going in and out. Told us all to take care of eachother. I found it a solid move and one that a lot of the bands that I love wouldn't have done. Seems that their is no sense of responsibility among some artists to keep the peace within the communities they create.Strikes me as strange and a little selfish. It's in my nature is to nurture though. I don't think they ever addressed drug use in the crowd but along the lines of what you wrote above there Deeps, Trey has said things into the mic along the lines of 'take care of each other' and 'we have such a great scene, lets keep it that way' and they would publish stuff in handouts like 'please clean up after yourselves before you leave'. So I guess they sort of told the people what to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamilton Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 Seems that their is no sense of responsibility among some artists to keep the peace within the communities they create.Strikes me as strange and a little selfish. It's in my nature is to nurture though. If I decide to follow a band around and do a lot of potentially dangerous drugs, how is that in any way the responsibility of the band? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paisley Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 Seems that their is no sense of responsibility among some artists to keep the peace within the communities they create.Strikes me as strange and a little selfish. It's in my nature is to nurture though. If I decide to follow a band around and do a lot of potentially dangerous drugs' date=' how is that in any way the responsibility of the band?[/quote']wonder how drums/space would've sounded on Budwieser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guigsy Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 Did Trey just not answer the drug question... or suggest that it was work-a-holic-ness that was the 'drug' of choice? i thought this line summed it up pretty good... What was going on out in the audience always seemed to line up pretty well with what was going on back stage. i read that paragraph as him pretty much answering the question, just not coming out and saying "listen, we were fucked up". he's a high profile musician, so i imagine he has to exercise some tact, and i think that paragraph was well-put. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmoothedShredder Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 I just want to know if the "We" were the scenesters and Trey, the Band and Trey... etc... I think that certain band members saw what Trey was up to and disagreed... creating a swirling Dark cloud over the band. I think some band members were put in a tough spot because of Trey's choices, and like good brothers... they are staying quiet about it. It is also possible that they were all gonzo, but I think there was a weak link factor. You can work hard and still get nothing done if your not focused... I think that statement was a little vague, and did a good job of politely refusing to answer the question. I just think Page's, and the others too, feelings were hurt bad... probably just before the Sisket Disc, and no one ever talks about that... just this Demi-God. Still, they are people, and I'm not condoning them... I just would like to see all this ill-will removed from threads of this nature... I'm ready to move on if Trey is. But if he's not ready to apologize... he's not ready. But maybe he has... see I know nothing. If it's worth anything those 40VP shows just keep sounding better and better. Peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero Posted August 11, 2005 Report Share Posted August 11, 2005 wonder how drums/space would've sounded on Budwieser Well put.As far as Trey answering the drug question I think he did a good job by saying pretty much everything in the audience was happening backstage. That's as straight forward as you can be.Also from what I have heard from insiders Mike, Fishman and Paige were just as much (well maybe not just as much) into their drugs as Trey. I think they all dabbled pretty hard maybe more at some points than others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmoothedShredder Posted August 12, 2005 Report Share Posted August 12, 2005 (edited) Cool, Thanks Zero and Guigsy for setting me record straight.~W Edited August 12, 2005 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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