“Without a washing,” quipped McConnell.
“Now it gets washed pretty regularly,” Fishman noted. Dry-cleaned, even, and neatly returned on a hanger.
At a party, Fishman was challenged to play a vacuum cleaner after claiming to have taught everyone in the band how to play their instruments. He made some ersatz squonks and bleats through the activated appliance’s suction tube, and a few nights later he tried it out onstage at Nectar’s. The vacuum cleaner solo became a recurring comic interlude on stages small and large across the band’s career.
There were other gags: the giant hot dog that sailed the band across the Boston Garden at their New Year’s Eve show in 1994; the trampolines, found at a yard sale, that Gordon and Anastasio hopped up and down on while playing at points during “You Enjoy Myself,” “Mike’s Song,” and others; the “Big Ball Jam,” during which the audience’s bouncing of four huge rubber balls (each color representing a band member) directed the band’s performance. Even some of the songs they covered, from Fishman’s warbling of charmingly acid-damaged Syd Barrett tunes and the group’s faithfully hammy renditions of Deodato’s “2001 (Also Sprach Zarathustra)” and the Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” had comic intent.
“I think it’s refreshing to see people onstage who aren’t taking themselves too seriously,” offered McConnell.
“The dress allows me to actually
never
take myself too seriously,” Fishman said with a chuckle.
“It’s a fine line between something that’s funny and something that’s so silly that it detracts,” concluded McConnell. “I think we’re always trying to push that envelope.”
Pushing it to the limit was all part of the Phish experience. The recurring stage gags, the always-varying set lists, and the inventive, unpredictable jams marked Phish as a virtually unclassifiable entity on the music scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“When they came up with an idea, whenever they found a new direction to go in, 100 percent focus would go that way,” Chris Kuroda said of Phish’s creative mind-set.
“That’s Trey’s personality,” added Paul Languedoc. “He’s very excited about what he’s working on at that particular point in time. The other guys, too, but Trey’s obviously a very ambitious, enthusiastic guy.”
Determined to stamp themselves uniquely, Phish even began carrying their own sound and lighting equipment at a very early stage in their career. They’d always bring their own gear, and sometimes club owners would say, “Why are you bringing that crap in here? Why don’t you just use what we have?”
That was the whole point: It was
their
stuff.
“We stamped ourselves with a certain uniqueness that any other band on any given night in any other club just didn’t seem to have,” Chris Kuroda pointed out. “Those things became incredibly important.”
For instance, Phish’s stage backdrops, created by Gordon’s mom, were completely unique, “We always had to put the backdrop up,” Languedoc recalled. “The band was insistent. They’d walk in for sound check and go, ‘Where’s the backdrop?’ ‘There’s nowhere to hang it in this place.’ ‘Oh yeah there is.’ There’d be a huddle and a meeting, and next thing you know, it was up. They’d find some way to get at least part of it up, by folding it or something, ’cause it
had
to be up.”
Even some of Phish’s instruments were homemade. Languedoc, in addition to being Phish’s soundman and equipment manager, built
guitars and basses for Anastasio and, up to a point, Gordon. Onstage, Anastasio has always held fast to a single Languedoc custom guitar, using effects pedals, rack-mounted gear, and pure technique—rather than a bunch of different guitars—to get the sounds he wants. Anastasio is, as Paul Languedoc put it, a “one-guitar man.”
It’s hard to overstate how important Languedoc was to Phish. Anastasio met Languedoc when he brought his Ibanez electric to Time Guitars, the Burlington shop where Languedoc worked, for repair. Anastasio sold that instrument and bought a guitar made by Languedoc, which he played for a few years. Once Languedoc began working full time for the band, he made Anastasio the first custom-built guitar to bear his own name, a prototype Languedoc hollowbody, which Anastasio played from 1987 to 1996. (Another guitar that Languedoc built for him in 1991 never saw much action.) Anastasio switched to a new Languedoc hollowbody in 1996 and played it through 2002. After Phish’s hiatus, another new Languedoc model, called Alcoa, became Anastasio’s preferred ax. He’s held fast to his Languedocs throughout the 2009 reunion shows, too.
Over the years, Phish practiced whenever and wherever they could at their various Vermont domiciles—at the house Languedoc shared with Anastasio and Fishman on Weaver Street in Winooski, in Anastasio’s apartment on the river in Plainfield, in the big livingroom at McConnell’s place in Burlington. When Languedoc bought a house in Underhill, Phish claimed the loft above the workshop he built next to it as their ultimate rehearsal space.
Phish recorded
Lawn Boy
, the follow-up to
Junta
, at Dan Archer’s new studio outside Burlington. As with
Junta
, Phish packed
Lawn Boy
with songs that had become staples of their concert repertoire. These include “Reba” (the
uber
Phish song, in many a fan’s mind), “Split Open and Melt,” and “Bathtub Gin.” For the Phish connoisseur, “Reba” had it all: zany lyrics that didn’t make sense but tickled the imagination; a multipart composed section, with plenty of twists and
turns; and an ending jam that carried the piece to climax with a single screaming note. Tom Marshall wrote the lyrics for three songs on
Lawn Boy
—“The Squirming Coil,” “Bouncing Around the Room,” and the lounge lizard-like title track—signaling the increasing role he would play as Anastasio’s cowriter in the coming years.
Lawn Boy
was released on the Absolute a Go Go label. Phish received a tough lesson in small-label economics after signing with the New Jersey-based outfit. There was nothing wrong with Absolute a Go Go itself, whose signings reflected the good taste of founder Brad Morrison. He created the label in 1986 and two years later signed an exclusive distribution deal with Rough Trade America, the U.S. affiliate of the upstart U.K.-based label. Throughout the 1980s, Rough Trade had been among Britain’s most respected independents, launching the career of the Smiths and others on the U.K. scene’s cutting edge.
In spring 1990, Absolute a Go Go released
Hot Chocolate Massage
by Tiny Lights, a likeable indie-pop band from New Jersey whose previous work had gotten buried on a major label. Phish’s
Lawn Boy
came out that fall. In 1991, Rough Trade America went bankrupt, taking Absolute a Go Go (and
Lawn Boy
) down with it. (Incidentally, Rough Trade was relaunched in 2000.)
During its brief window of opportunity, the original
Lawn Boy
sold well—“To the consternation of rock critics,” in Morrison’s words. Morrison elaborated on this turn of events: “Phish, in particular, were hated by the music-biz establishment, who all took time out of their busy days to phone the label and tell them the record was ‘shit.’ As the fall leaves turned, it became obvious that the Phish record was destined to become the label’s first hit. Suddenly, music impresarios all called to say that they had changed their mind.
Lawn Boy
was not ‘shit,’ it was now a ‘fluke.’”
In the wake of the label’s bankruptcy, the court seized Absolute a Go Go’s master tapes. Phish bought back the rights to
Lawn Boy
, which Elektra reissued in 1992. Despite its eventual reappearance, the album’s virtual vanishing act so soon after its initial release didn’t help
the band’s momentum or inspire much faith in the music business. Incidentally, original compact discs of
Lawn Boy
on Absolute a Go Go (10,000 were made) now fetch modest collector’s figures on eBay. The rarer vinyl version, of which under a thousand were pressed, now changes hands for $250 to $500.
Meanwhile, Phish were beginning to garner some solid notices in newspapers and independent media. There would always be an element of snarky, patronizing commentary. In its preview of the band’s 1989 gig at a club in Poughkeepsie, for instance, the Bard College newspaper noted that “neo-hippy [
sic
] bands are trendy. . . . This is a band for Deadheads, fusion fans and light-hearted druggies.” At the same time, there were growing signs that writers who didn’t come bearing anti-Dead, anti-hippie, anti-jam agendas were starting to appreciate what they were hearing.
“As long as the songs are, the group never runs low on invention,” wrote John Wirt in the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
. “Instead, a single song holds a rich cache of ideas.”
“Fun but skillful zaniness,” noted Phil Smith in a review for the
Portland Oregonian
. “The Phish style of virtuosity instinctively homes in on people’s musical pleasure zones in original and endless ways.”
Overseas, the
Independent
of London touted their “exuberant salad of styles.”
“The music defies categorization” was a frequently repeated line, but that didn’t keep writers from trying.
“We’ve been compared to more bands than any other band,” laughed McConnell.
“It all depends on what track was playing when they [heard us],” added Anastasio.
The Grateful Dead? Santana? Frank Zappa? King Crimson? Genesis?
The best answer might be all of the above—and none of the above.
By 1991, Phish were really starting to rage onstage. Kevin Shapiro, the Deadhead-turned-Phishhead who would become their archivist,
caught his first Phish show in Cleveland on the fall 1991 tour and can vividly recall the experience. “I was totally blown away by the music. At the time I thought maybe it was one long song, because I didn’t fully grasp the definition from one song to the next. There were short breaks, if any, between songs, and it was pretty snappy. It seemed smooth and polished. I would’ve called it very rehearsed. I didn’t realize they played a different set every night.”
Phish did realize that what they were doing from night to night was pretty special, so they started taping every show—on cassettes and then, in 1992, on digital audio tape (DAT). Plenty of other fans were taping Phish as well, with the band’s blessing. The tapes were circulated and traded, and fans compared notes on shows any way they could, including an emerging online community. Phish’s audience was starting to discover one another and grow in size. Typically, Phish would play somewhere for the first time and draw a fair-to-decent crowd. When they’d return, word about the last show would have gotten around and the venue would be overrun or they’d have graduated to a much larger hall. In 1991, for instance, they played a club called Biddy Milligan’s in Chicago. A year later, they did two sold-out nights at the 1,400-seat Vic Theater. In 1992, they also played the prestigious Warfield Theater in San Francisco, as well as a free show in Palo Alto that drew a lot of curious Deadheads (foreshadowing a changing of the guard).
Because of the
Lawn Boy
debacle, Phish was wary of record companies. They nonetheless signed to Elektra Records in November 1991. Elektra had a long and storied history, making waves with folk artists during the early to mid-1960s (Judy Collins, Phil Ochs) and with its rock bands in the late 1960s (The Doors, Love). The label remained relevant in the New Wave era with acts like Television, Simply Red, and the Cars.
By the time Phish found their way to Elektra, the label had been absorbed into the Warner Communications conglomerate. It was still an “artist’s label” but with access to major-label resources, and it seemed like a decent fit for Phish. Phish were brought to Elektra by
Sue Drew, a talent scout who recognized their potential when she saw them play New York’s Marquee club on December 27, 1990. By this time, the Phish phenomenon was in full effect, and it was clear she’d be signing not just a highly creative, road-tested band, but one with a presold audience.
After the Marquee gig, she gave Phish her card; they took it and said they’d call back. They were in no hurry. For one thing, Phish wasn’t entirely sure they wanted to surrender their autonomy or become bigger than they already were.
“I think we’ve really had that attitude since we quit our day jobs, and that’s what made us a little bit different,” Anastasio said in 1995. “We were just so content at that point. Never in our career have I felt this urge to get bigger. We didn’t even talk much about getting signed to a record label at all.”
“If anything, the talk was, we didn’t want to,” added Gordon. “I’d heard so many horror stories and everything,” said Anastasio. “Which didn’t turn out to be true. Not in our situation.”
The group self-produced and recorded
A Picture of Nectar—
their first album for Elektra, released in February 1992—without any interference from the label. This was uncustomary at a time when big labels still tried to insert themselves into many aspects of a band’s business: choosing producers, material, micromanaging tours, videos, marketing, and even the way a band or artist looked and dressed. But Phish were able to negotiate compromises on standard music-biz contract terms, mainly because they were completely willing
not
to sign if their demands were not met.
For example, a standard clause typically insisted that the songs submitted for an album be “commercially satisfactory” (whatever that means). Phish’s lawyer had that phrase amended to “technically satisfactory,” which only meant—so far as Phish construed it—that the songs had to be decently recorded.
Gordon described
A Picture of Nectar
, their Elektra debut, as “almost humorously diverse.” The fifteen songs done in nearly that
many styles on this album go to lengths to showcase Phish’s diversity, eclecticism, and musicianship. The album also gives lie to those who claim, based more on preconceptions than actual listening, that they “know what Phish sounds like.” In any case,
A Picture of Nectar
is a solid place to start for neophytes or skeptics.