Phil Lesh Quotes

Everything we (the Grateful Dead) ever did was a demonstration of the value of cross-fertilization, It was unconscious at first, but when we started looking at each other, we had all these different influences ... Bobby Weir used to call it electric Dixieland.

I mean, sports are big, big, big business.

In a way, it's my way of dealing with, finding closure with Grateful Dead music, and giving thanks in a way to Jerry and Bob and all the guys in the band for making up this wonderful music.

So, in the course of events, I had an opportunity to come in contact with Colin Matthews, through the Rex Foundation sponsoring recordings of various music that was being recorded over there.

And the input that we always got from Deadheads, at the moment of making the music, was always a factor.

When the band would leave the stage, and then the audience would just take over, and keep the groove goin'.

Of course, we didn't survive to play all the way through the '90s, so I can say that - as I said, everybody in the band was aware of this, and we trying to figure out ways to make it different.

And there was a movement afoot to take another year off, and if we had been able to do that, and rethink everything, I think when we came back it would have been very different.

Especially in the realm of bringing an opportunity to do something creative to people, as I said, who wouldn't ordinarily have that opportunity. I think that's very important.

We borrowed it all from Coltrane. I started encouraging everybody in the band to listen to John Coltrane - 'Check it out, see what these guys do.' They take one chord, the tonic chord, and just play all over it. 'We can do that too!' I wanted to make our music something really amazing - I wanted it to be jaw-dropping and turn on a dime and do all of those things that I knew music could do, and nobody told us we couldn't do it. I shouldn't say 'I,' though - Jerry Garcia was behind it the whole way.

To sing a simple round is truly an enlightening experience.

Because, first of all, we were becoming aware during that tour that there was a group of people that was following the band around, and they weren't interested in coming in to the shows, they were just interested in hangin' out outside and tryin' to break in.

And that format was - we'd been using that format, I guess, since the late '70s, and it was starting to get very predictable. In other words, certain songs would surface in the same points in the set every so often; it was like rotation.

Michael is the kind of guy who has rhythm; he has rock'n'roll in his soul, whether he really plays it or not.

In St. Louis, some people were hurt seriously when some fans got on top of a roof that was where other fans were underneath it, at a park somewhere, and it collapsed.

Yes, Pluton, actually, in the play. And I play him in my most stentorian voice.

If, as some savants of consciousness suggest, we are actually agreeing to create, from moment to moment, everything we perceive as real, then it stands to reason that we're also responsible for keeping it going in some harmonious manner.

Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing.

There was always so much encouragement, to just really take it and run with it, from Deadheads.