Phil Lesh is one of the Mike Gordonthe greatest heroes. Gordon, the bassist of Phishingbecame aware of Grateful death in high school and soon zoned out on Lesh. The two met briefly at a show in 1993, but it wasn’t until 1999 that they began a friendship that continued until Lesh came along. death in October. Here, in a tribute in his own words set to appear in our December print issue, Gordon talks about what he learned from Lesh, their frequent onstage collaborations, and that heartbreaking version of “Box of Rain” Phish played right after Lesh’s death.

I thought Phil was the most unique part of the Grateful Dead. It didn’t surprise me that Bob Dylan said this in his book Philosophy of modern songwhen he was talking about (“Truckin'”). Usually there are all these expectations about the bass: lots of repeating patterns, allegiance to “that one” and the root note. Phil had none of these allegiances. He avoided them all.

Do you find yourself gushing a little too hard? At one point, when I first met Phil, I sent an email that said something like, “In my humble view, the Grateful Dead have incorporated all forms of human art to a new level, and in a way that pushes me more. than anything else – an incredible culmination of all the creativity and resonance that preceded it. And at the pinnacle of what makes the Dead unique is your game, and so from what I can tell, you are the pinnacle of all of Western civilization.

The first time I really met him was in ’99, when Trey (Anastasio) and Page (McConnell) were doing shows with him at the Warfield (in San Francisco). I was there for all three (shows). For one of them, I sat behind his bass, on stage, practically leaning against his bass. It was quite thunderous.

I asked if he wanted to have lunch with me. He’s a big hero of mine, and he came to my hotel, and they had special menus that said “Bass Players’ Luncheon.” He said, “I’m going to keep this forever.” » It was only four years after Jerry’s death. I remember him talking about it a lot and being angry because Jerry seemed to prefer drugs to his friends. With people who know about addiction, it’s more complicated than that. (But lunch) was special. I had rented a scooter and was riding around San Francisco on it, and after lunch I asked if he wanted a ride. He told me, “No, I’m going to walk.” » Which is probably a good thing.

Phil has invited me to do these really special things over the years. For his 60th birthday, he invited me to come play bass on “Box of Rain” and a few other songs. The guys from Little Feat were playing. He also invited me to play at this concert he called the Bass Summit. That was one of the times I played his bass. He asked me to help him figure out what songs I wanted to play. We played “The Maker,” the Daniel Lanois song, because it has two bass lines. I suggested doing “All About That Bass.” He threw that one straight away.

It was a huge concert. A lot of times when I would sit down with Phil, I would play the electric banjo, but (this time) the electric banjo wouldn’t work. So Trey (Anastasio) gave me his guitar. And I was angry on the guitar. What shocked me, even being a fan all these years, was the power of Phil’s bass system. It was just larger than life. The only thing that really mattered to me was being up there and hearing Phil’s tone. After a few songs, Trey was like, “OK, maybe I should pick up (my guitar) again.”

The day he died, (Phish) opened our show with “Box of Rain.” We didn’t have a lot of time between learning the news and the show, and there were all kinds of things happening. I had guests I wanted to meet, catering and warm-ups, and all of a sudden the news comes.

So all of a sudden I have 30 minutes before the band goes into our little rehearsal room and then puts on the show. Phil loved writing these songs that didn’t repeat their forms. The bass notes don’t matter; each verse is an unbroken chain, each verse is different. I know the other members of the group were sometimes frustrated: “Why couldn’t this be easier to remember?” I have 10 or 12 pages of “Box of Rain” spread out on a coffee table.

(Phish) jumped into our room and decided we were just going to do a three-part harmony all the way through (“Box of Rain”), and we couldn’t pull it off. We just had to go out there and see if we could solve some problems. Outside of our first two years, it was taboo to play Grateful Dead songs – not just Grateful Dead songs, but grooves that they used – because in the beginning we were too compared to them . So it’s only every two decades that we play a Grateful Dead song. I have this picture of all those people in the front row crying in “Box of Rain” that night.

It just goes back to the sense of vision and having all these influences that equate to what you believe, but also having a spiritual basis. Phil always talked about music coming from God. When I made my film Rising with 25 remarkable bassists, he said this repeatedly while we were filming it: that the notes, the notes themselves, come from God.

He had a passion for the (Grateful Dead) repertoire and he said it could live for centuries. I think Phil just wanted to see where it could go. Until recently, he was doing projects where he was trying to find new permutations of the same repertoire with different people and with different approaches. As people go through longer periods in their careers, there are different ways to handle this situation. There’s something very special about people who keep doing the same kinds of things, because they keep getting better at things.

I was also thinking about the most recent visit, which took place in March (during a Phil Lesh & Friends concert), where I was able to give him his 84th birthday cake before the encore. He asked me if I wanted to do songs. I chose a few that I had never played before and sang one.

Sometimes it works with two bass players, and sometimes it doesn’t. But what was really interesting to me that night was how what we were doing on bass and (our) sounds were so different, despite the influence I had. And for the bass lines, the approach was so different that they complemented each other rather than stepping on each other’s toes. It was a very good mix. Phil smiled all the time, and his bass tech, Brian, later said he didn’t usually smile much. Then Phil said, “We have to do this again.” »

(After the Amazon documentary Long strange journey came out in 2017), I asked him, “Is legacy important to you?” He said: “I think it’s the music itself that can continue to endure and people can continue to deal with it in new ways. I think it will last a long time. I think if people can allow themselves to immerse themselves in the Dead’s music, they will discover that there has never been more beautiful bass playing. Beautiful and powerful. There is this quality that cannot be described in words, that blooms like a little bud that turns into a flower, then a forest of flowers in front of your soul in a matter of minutes, period. It’s this ability to conjure, to be able to say that magic is going to happen. This is going to happen because the universal spirit is going to pass through me and allow this to happen.

This all sounds idealistic and kind of heady, but if people can get past that wall of “Oh, that’s weird” and allow themselves to experience it, what they’ll see is this style of play and this approach to music big, huge and magnificent. this is simply unprecedented. And it will never be like this again.