Phish by Parke Puterbaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

all, choosing his influences well. Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix topped the list, with a shot of Frank Zappa and a host of progressive-rock outfits from the familiar (Robert Fripp’s King Crimson and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis) to the obscure (France’s Gong
and Italy’s PFM). At home, his parents provided a sound musical foundation of music from the sixties.
    “I grew up with my dad and mom playing Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies , the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers , and the Beatles’ White Album in the next room,” he recalled. Zappa also was a key discovery, attitudinally no less than musically. It was Zappa who posed the rhetorical question: “Does humor belong in music?” In Zappa’s case, humor—specifically, corrosive social satire—was a huge part of his music. Humor figured in Phish’s music, too, though in a more whimsical, surrealistic way than Zappa’s increasingly puerile jibes at obvious targets. Surely the notion that music could both amaze and amuse registered with Anastasio, though he wisely didn’t buy in to Zappa’s lowbrow socio-sexual japes. Phish never wrote anything as juvenile as “Titties & Beer” or “The Illinois Enema Bandit.” As Anastasio noted, “A better question for Zappa might’ve been, ‘Is humor the only thing that belongs in music?’ You have to be careful about that, too.”
    For Zappa, the ultimate joke might have been his conjoining of intricate, sophisticated music with juvenile lyrics depicting elements of American society at their most vulgar and degraded. However, Anastasio was Zappa’s opposite when it came to how he viewed people. Anastasio was optimistic and gregarious, whereas Zappa became the ultimate curmudgeon and misanthrope. Still, Zappa set a powerful example as a fluid guitarist who could compose for and conduct an orchestra, exhibiting a far-ranging overview that encompassed everything from Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varèse to doo-wop harmonies and avant-garde jazz.
    “I have the highest respect for Zappa, for who he was, what he represented, and the fact that he didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought about him or his music,” he told biographer Richard Gehr. This attitude of self-sufficiency would serve Phish well during those periods when they were overlooked or misunderstood by the rock press.

    At the same time he was digesting all these superlative sixties influences, Anastasio experienced and understood the sociology of the suburbs in the seventies—that peculiar time and place where he came of age. In 1997, he expounded on how its banality acted as an impetus—for him and his Princeton pals, as well as the other members of Phish—to reach for something greater.
    “The life that is put before you is so meaningless and boring: Just go to the mall for the weekend, get good grades in school, get a job at a corporation, and that’s your life,” Anastasio said. “And you’re thinking to yourself, ‘This can’t be it!’ It’s like, c’mon .”
    That skepticism carried over to the music they were hearing.
    “I can remember way back in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades always feeling like there was something better out there,” Anastasio recalled. “Yet still you go to parties, you listen to the radio, you hear it. You can’t help but hear it. I grew up going to hundreds of parties where people put on Fly Like an Eagle , Pink Floyd, Meat Loaf, and stuff like that.
    “That was the soundtrack to my youth, regardless of how much I wanted to be like my idols, like Jimi Hendrix or something. But the experiences are different, and you just aren’t Jimi Hendrix. So all those different experiences add up to who you are. And all the while you’re striving for some kind of meaning, and we found that meaning in music.”
    Life in Princeton wasn’t all soul-sapping suburban sterility. This leafy, attractive college town with its venerable tradition of education and culture actually had much to offer. The Princeton University campus