Trey Anastasio Quotes

My life was a complete catatrophe. I was very, very sick from drugs and alcohol.

Things have gone beyond my wildest expectations and dreams, and I feel like I've been given so many blessings in my life, between my friendship with the guys in the band, our wonderful audience, being able to play this music, and then my family.

Music is a spiritual expression of what's in your heart. Music as a way of getting rich is a pretty new thing, and I often wonder if the mega-bucks glitzy atmosphere is making the quality of music suffer. You have to work really hard to get around that and remember why you're in it in the first place: because you have to be. It's like an addiction. You can't go a day without picking up your guitar. To me, the only commercial goals that are really valid are, 'Boy, I wish I didn't have to go to work. I wish I could do this all the time.'

I absolutely love the Philharmonic. I also love rock guitar.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

I can't wait to play the Hammerstein shows. Things have been exploding in the last week, and that's going to be the exclamation point.

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.

If I had a ghost living on my street. I would try to stay alive, and offer him some meat!

I've learned that in the theater the story is everything. Every lyric, every line and every musical gesture has to propel the journey of a given character or the overall plot.

I cannot spend my entire life going around the country playing 'You Enjoy Myself '.

My life had become a catastrophe. I had no idea how to turn it around. My band had broken up. I had almost lost my family. My whole life had devolved into a disaster. I believe that the police officer who stopped me at three a.m. that morning saved my life.

I've been sober for two-and-a-half years, My children are happy. In August, my wife and I will celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. My band is back together with a sold-out tour.

There's so much excitement around the Phish tours, and if it stopped feeling that way, it would ruin everything we've done for seventeen years.

Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture. It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.

We always felt like we were throwing a party for our friends, regardless of the size or the place, because we actually were throwing a party for our friends. We've always had a very tight knit community.

Things don't go on forever, and the quicker you accept that change is inevitable, the happier you're gonna be.

It's like you're surfing ... The same wave that can be a source of pain can be a beautiful flowing grace and source of power. It's all a matter of how you respond to it.

Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note.

Ideally the point of music is community, not the player. Musicians are simply channels to link the audience to the music and to each other.

When Phish broke up, I made some comment about how I'm not gonna go around playing 'You Enjoy Myself' for the rest of my life.

I am excited to get on tour, if I'm speaking to the Phish fans. I can't wait.

We want to have a spontaneous adventure. You can't plan an adventure, or it ceases to be one.

If there's one thing I discovered since I came back from hiatus, it's that you can't go backwards.

Creativity is the antidote to destruction.

Swing will never sound as good as it did in the '40s.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, my mom would regularly take my sister and I into the city to see shows. I have many fond memories of standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square and going to matinees.

As long as your intention is pure, and you know what you're in it for, then you're alright. And I'm in it because I enjoy it. I take it seriously ... real seriously. I mean I could sit and talk all day about the music.

I feel a great responsibility to deliver for our audience ... I am like their servant, but there's only one honest way to lift people up, which is to feel genuinely elevated yourself. And the way to do that is follow your heart. That's all we try to do.