Phish

“First thought, best thought,” was poet Allen Ginsberg’s counsel to would-be writers. Fellow beat-generation author Jack Kerouac termed his own jazz-inspired writing “spontaneous bop prosody” and rhapsodized about tapping into an “undistributed flow of the mind.” In their own way, Phish have broken major new ground on the musical front with this approach on The Story of the Ghost, their ninth album on Elektra Records. Most of the material was recorded spontaneously, with jam-session excerpts serving as foundations for many of the songs.

“We’ve been after getting to a process whereby the music that ends up on our albums is fresh and spontaneous,” says guitarist Trey Anastasio. “What you’re hearing on The Story of the Ghost is first takes, first creations, first everything.”

“Because it was largely recorded at the point of conception, I really do think the album sounds more like us than any album we’ve ever made,” ventures keyboardist Page McConnell. “Parts of it are a little quieter and pull you in acoustically and introspectively, but it also has the funk and the rock stuff we’re doing, and it’s not overly produced.”

Indeed, parts of The Story of the Ghost were produced in an unconventional manner. The writing and recording of the album occurred in three-to-four-day bursts over the course of a year using methodologies that were unorthodox for even the famously rule-flouting Phish. The process began in March ’97 when the band ensconced themselves at Bearsville studios in upstate New York (where they’d recorded Billy Breathes, their previous studio release) with the intention of playing without plans or preconceptions to see what, if anything, came of it. The group had just returned from a European tour and were “very much in the mind set of extended jamming,” recalls Page. In fact, Phish plugged in at Bearsville only a week after performing the milestone club concert in Hamburg, Germany, that was preserved on disc as Slip Stitch and Pass.

“We’d always wanted to tape ourselves jamming and coming up with stuff, because a lot of times it feels like that’s when our music is most connected,” says Page. “So we pushed the record button and improvised for four days.” They reprised the scenario half a year later, hibernating back at Bearsville. What they took away from those sessions were 40 hours of tape and the vague notion that an instrumental album might be culled for some sort of limited release. What they discovered after whittling the reels down to several hours was inspired passages that could serve as the actual, unaltered templates for songs.

During another working retreat with an eight-track recorder at a rented farmhouse in Stowe, Vermont, Phish added words and vocal melodies, again in largely improvised ways, to the song-length instrumentals they’d excerpted. Working from a book of poems by longtime lyricist Tom Marshall, band members would variously sing along to the instrumental tracks as inspiration struck them. These farmhouse vocals, originally intended as demos to be later re-cut in the studio, were largely preserved intact on the finished disc.

In this fashion, the group worked up ten songs from the jam tapes. All the while, a parallel series of experiments found Trey and Tom embarking on three-day songwriting sessions. These intermittent writing and demoing stints – again at various Stowe-area farmhouses – yielded upward of 30 songs, all of which Phish recorded at Bearsville in April and May 1998 with producer Andy Wallace (Jeff Buckley, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine). When they took stock of what they’d created, Phish found themselves with an embarrassment of riches: 39 songs, from which a single disc had to be developed. It was “a necessarily painful process,” notes Tom, who initially suggested that Phish issue a double CD.

However, this surfeit of material yielded its own unforeseen dividend in that Phish could insist on enthusiastic unanimity for each cut that wound up on The Story of the Ghost. “Because of the sheer number of songs,” notes Trey, “there was a general vibe that if all four of us weren’t completely thrilled with the take and the song, it wasn’t going on the album.”

The result is a lyrically arresting and musically inventive album in which Phish discovered how to accomplish in the studio what they do so well on the stage, i.e., create spontaneously and in the moment. Though their methods were unusual, “We believed in the process and decided to go forward and have faith that we would make the right decisions along the way,” says Page.

“The fact that we went in and jammed for the album and had all that time was so different from the normal situation where you go in with a producer, get the sounds and then, ‘Here comes take one, get ready, make it good,’” adds Trey. “There was no pressure. We were just doing an experiment. In a way, we may have tricked ourselves into making an album.”

Thematically, The Story of the Ghost builds upon the haunting opening track, “Ghost.” The varied musical landscape includes the eight-minute “Guyute,” a spirited and ornate composition that is the only older song on the album, having made its live debut in 1994. “The time was right,” says Trey of this fan favorite about a sadistic pig. “We were playing it a lot the previous tour, and it got to the point where it was flowing and we were inside of it. We had moved beyond notes.” Another eye-opener is the surging funk of “Birds of a Feather,” a song largely constructed by Page, who ingeniously spliced the song’s musical bed together from three jam excerpts.

The bulk of the songs, however, are notable for their startling subtlety and taut, artful lyrics. Trey explains, “We were hearing a different kind of music in our heads, and our last album, Billy Breathes, was an attempt to bring everything down to ground level and simplify. It was a drastic attempt to start fresh. But, of course, that never totally works. And then, lo and behold, when you stop trying, the change occurs. That’s kind of how I feel about The Story of the Ghost, because it has something to do with the past, and we made it through that transition.”

Other Phish Facts

* Phish was founded in 1983 when freshman Trey Anastasio posted flyers around the University of Vermont campus, looking for musicians to form a band. Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon and Jeff Holdsworth answered the flyer and soon Phish was gigging regularly in the Burlington area. The current lineup took shape in 1985, when keyboardist Page McConnell joined the group (and persuaded Anastasio and Fishman to join him at nearby Goddard College) and Holdsworth left soon after. After that, it has been a steady climb from Burlington club band to regional touring act to bigger clubs, theatres and eventually arenas nationwide. The band signed with Elektra Records in late 1991 and has released eight albums on the label.

* This fall, Phish embarks on a national US concert tour in support of their new studio release The Story of the Ghost, due out Oct. 27 on Elektra Records. The tour begins in Los Angeles with a special appearance at the Greek Theatre – other highlights along the way include a two night Halloween engagement in Las Vegas, three night runs in Chicago and Boston and a year ending four night stand at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Full fall tour details are included on an accompanying page.

* This October, Villard Books (Random House) will release the first authorized book about Phish. “The Phish Book” is a large format hard cover edition of approximately 200 pages that includes a rich assortment of b/w and color photos from throughout the band’s fifteen years. It features extensive first hand discussion by band members and is edited and arranged by journalist Richard Gehr, who also provides commentary and insight throughout.

* Todd Phillips, whose recent documentary “Frat House” was awarded the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is directing a feature film about Phish. The film is currently being edited by Allan Oxman (“Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Jupiter’s Wife,” “Happiness”) and should be completed by early 1999.

* Phish continues to be one of the largest-grossing bands on the touring circuit in the United States today. In 1995, Phish played 80 U.S. shows and grossed $16 Million. In 1996, Phish played 49 shows and grossed $17 million. In 1997, Phish played 44 U.S. shows, sold over 800,000 tickets, and grossed over $21 million.

* For the past three summers, Phish have ended their summer tours with self-produced two-day concert and camping festivals. All three festivals (the Clifford Ball (1996) in Plattsburgh, NY, the Great Went (1997) and Lemonwheel (1998), both in Limestone, ME) drew over 60,000 people for a full weekend of arts, music and camping. The festivals were all held on runways of decommissioned air force bases – virtual cities were created from scratch to accommodate the masses.

* Phish has released eight albums on Elektra Records, including four that have been certified gold and one, Phish’s double-live album A Live One, that has been certified platinum. Phish’s last studio album, Billy Breathes, peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200. In total, Phish has sold approximately 3.5 million albums worldwide.

* Phish’s full-color newsletter Döniac Schvice, is mailed free of charge six times a year to a current circulation of approximately 150,000 fans worldwide. Filled with Phish tour information and content created by Phish band members, the newsletter includes a merchandise catalogue and an order form for ordering Tickets by Mail.