Phil Lesh's Second Chance At Life and Music
Theme Stream by Rex Rutkoski
April 8, 2001

Phil Lesh knows he has been given a second chance.

The former Grateful Dead bassist's life-saving liver transplant in December
of 1998 also has given him a renewed appreciation for life.

"Absolutely," Lesh says in a conversation from his home. "Every breath is a
gift. That's one of the reasons I'm so hot on making this music. I really
feel I was given a second chance to continue doing the work I should have not
stopped doing. I know there's a lot of work I have to do and I'm hoping to
have all the time I need to do it."

Feeling healthy again, Lesh is psyched for the challenge.

Ask him where he is in this interesting musical journey and he's quick to
answer, "I'm right at the beginning."

He's eager to show concert-goers across America how vital a unit he believes
his current line-up of Phil Lesh and Friends is in its improvisational
explorations, and, as he tours, to use the public spotlight that he enjoys to
help others in need of organ transplants.

To raise awareness, Lesh will make personal appearances at local community
blood banks during his tour. A blood drive is scheduled in some cities (for
details, go online at www.phillesh.net.)

In one sense, it is a way to give back to Deadheads and others who organized
a "Five Minutes for Phil" worldwide prayer circle the Sunday before he was to
undergo surgery.

Lesh says he saw firsthand the power of prayer. "I felt it and I've seen the
results," he says.

He would like to do even more blood drives. "I had two internal bleeding
events. Each time I lost a third of my blood. Without blood banks and people
having given blood, I'd be dead now. During a transplant you need blood as
well. There's always a shortage of blood. There's never enough, especially
during periods of time like the holidays. It's even more acute then."

Following Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, Lesh took time off to recharge after
a musical lifetime of demanding touring with the Grateful Dead.

He eventually discovered the jam band scene inspired by the music of the
Dead. He began leading his own onstage jams with a changing line-up of
musicians, the genesis of the Phil Lesh and Friends concept.

Then liver disease sidelined him, the result of Lesh's contact with the
hepatitis C virus 30 years previous. His condition worsened considerably and
a transplant was deemed necessary.

Lesh recalls that before the operation he adopted a philosophy of,
"Whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen." "But I really had a lot of
confidence in my transplant team. They were superb," he adds.

Now, he says, "it's a whole new world." "All kinds of little things you never
even knew were wrong with you and all of a sudden they are gone." Now, he
says, he can be as active as he wants to be.

He advises others who may have to have a transplant to be proactive. "Make
sure you see a specialist. Don't let your family doctor tell you about your
liver. You have to be proactive," he says.

Know your options, he adds, including where you can go to have the operation,
how long you have to wait and other information, such as changing to another
waiting list if necessary.

He suggests that the waiting to find just the right line-up for Phil Lesh and
friends may be over.

"The revolving door is gonna slow down and perhaps shut for a while," he
says. "The magic this band can make is so phenomenal. Every time we play we
raise the bar for ourselves. The magic goes beyond chemistry with these guys.
I haven't experienced that since the peak of the Grateful Dead. In all
honesty, I want more of that. "

There's guitarist Jimmy Herring, an alumnus of Col. Bruce Hampton's Aquarium
Rescue unit and Jazz Is Dead. Last summer, he replaced Dickey Betts in the
Allman Brothers Band for the summer 2000 tour.

Guitarist and singer-songwriter Warren Haynes played 10 years in the Allmans
before forming Gov't Mule. Haynes was a member of Phil Lesh and Friends for
two of Lesh's 1999 tours. He penned hits for Garth Brooks and George Jones.

Drummer John Molo, referred to as the lynch pin of Phil Lesh and Friends, of
whom he is a core member, was a founding member of Bruce Hornsby and the
Range as well as the post Grateful Dead unit, The Other Ones.

Rob Barraco, hailed as one of the most sought after keyboardists on the jam
band scene, came from the Zen Tricksters.

"This is the line-up that most completely realizes what I feel to be the
mission of the music I'm making," Lesh says. That mission, he explains, is to
create a music that lives.

"That's music that has a life of its own and opens up the door for us to just
be pipe lines to the transcendental that descends to us when the vibes are
right," he adds. "We the musicians sort of disappear and the only thing that
really exists at that point is the music."

It's always magic when that happens, he says. It's the creation of a group
mind situation where no one is really controlling anything, he explains.
"That's the highest state of consciousness." The music is in control at that
point, he says.

Lesh previously has said that he is in "relentless pursuit of improvisation."
"It's like exploration or discovery, like going to Mars, or discovering a new
scientific principle. It's the highest level of achievement the human mind
and spirit can aspire to discovering something new."

That always has been the appeal of jamming for him. "Yes, ever since before I
was a player and just listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Bill
Evans, people like that, any of those guys," Lesh adds.

He says with each new group of musicians with whom you play you don't go back
to square one, but your angle of approach changes, the frame of reference
changes, the point of view changes.

"I've had half a dozen, maybe 10 different line-ups in the last two to three
years. This one has the most potential as far as I can see. That's why I'm
putting everything I have into making sure we stay together and keep raising
the bar."

What are the qualifications to be a Friend?

Lesh: "Fluency on your instrument and open-mindedness and love of Grateful
Dead music and willingness to stretch yourself as far as you can and play
outside yourself, outside the envelope."

People want to hear this kind of music and this music wants to happen, he
says. "This music lives in kind of am eternity space where, when we are lucky
and everything is right, we can tap into that. I can't explain it in any
other way except to say the music is like a living organism. It wants to be
alive, wants to develop and wants to perceive.

"It wants to know the audience, and the audience wants to know the music. The
audience wants to be the music, just like the musicians do. There is a demand
for that that can't be satisfied or fulfilled by other kinds of music,
records or MTV."

Lesh likes what he is hearing in the jam band movement.

"I like where it's going," he says. "The more musicians doing that kind of
thing the better I like it. Each musician brings a different approach to the
concept, and they are a different approach to whatever songs they are doing.
To me the variety of interpretation possibilities is a wonderful thing."

That's one of the reasons, he says, that he started doing Phil Lesh and
Friends. "I wanted to use Grateful Dead music as kind of a repertory basis,
and bring in different musicians in different ways than the Grateful Dead
did. I always felt Grateful Dead music and the concept of it was strong
enough to support all that."

The popularity of jam bands does not come necessarily from people wanting to
carry on the spirit of the Grateful Dead, he says, but rather that spirit of
adventure. "It's the spirit of running away with the circus, of throwing it
all to the winds and seeing what tomorrow brings. There's not a whole lot of
that left in America or anywhere in the world. When I was 20 years old I
hopped a freight. You can't do that anymore."

The Grateful Dead were the last survivors of the spirit of adventure, he
says, "and caring and loving which really animated the '60s. These things are
food for the soul and we need to know how to eat them."
 

Wherever Phil Lesh and Friends take their own spirit of adventure he hopes to
surprise audiences. "Whatever your expectations are, my hope is we will do
something different," he says. "In a way that's the source of artistic
tension. People expect something to happen and it's the artist's business to
confound those expectations."

Lesh is offering free samples of those shows on his Web site. There are at
least seven full concerts available for download at www.phillesh.net.

"I wanted to put the music out there, make a show from each venue we played
in the fall (of 2000) available on the Internet," Lesh says. "I just wanted
to put it out there. It goes back to the original tape trading idea from the
Grateful Dead. That's how the Grateful Dead built an audience. Jerry Garcia
always used to say, 'We don't have a problem with you taping it. You can have
it. We're done with it.' We never really foresaw the extent of the whole tape
trading phenomenon."

Lesh says he doesn't have a record company and doubts if any record company
is interested in him.

Why?

"I haven't the faintest idea. But I'm not really interested in record
companies," he says. "If I do make a studio record with this band, which is
something we are thinking about, the way I imagine now selling it is on the
Internet."

There will always be a way to get the music to the people he implies.

"To me, music is the door to the spiritual realms, and for a larger portion
of my life it was my religion, and it's the most meaningful and infinite
endeavor I can imagine."

 
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