Phish (44 page)

ME: I’d like to go back to the beginning and ask how you came onboard.

BRAD: I first heard of Phish in the summer of 1991. My friend Greg came home with the
Lawn Boy
album, and we were immediately drawn to it. We saw that they were playing at the Arrowhead Ranch in upstate New York and drove up there. They were passing out flyers for Amy’s Farm, which was eight days later. We were like, “Who’s gonna drive all the way to Maine to see these guys? Ha ha ha!” Arrowhead Ranch
was great and we saw them the next night, too. Then we all decided, “Hey, let’s go to Maine! What the hell!”

Since I was collecting unemployment, we decided to drive across the country to see the Dead in Oakland on Halloween, which is my birthday. Along the way, we planned to see Phish in New Mexico and Arizona. At the Club West in Santa Fe, a friend of mine and I showed up early, hanging out with nothing to do. They didn’t have anybody to help load in their gear, so we asked Andrew Fischbeck, who was the tour manager at the time, “Hey, you guys want some help?” “Yeah, sure.” So we helped load in their stuff and I helped Chris Kuroda set up the lights. Chris and I got along immediately, because we were both huge New York Giants fans and loved the Grateful Dead.

They asked if I would sell T-shirts for them that night. Later that evening, they were like, “Do you think you’d be interested in doing something like this, ‘cause we’re hiring somebody,” I said, “Yeah, yeah,” and went to the next 15 shows. I always bought my ticket, never asked them for anything, and just basically kept my mouth shut and helped. I weaseled my way in there and wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip away. That’s how I got the job. I started helping Chris set up the lights, selling merch and driving the truck. I was 21 years old and making $250 per week. And I was as happy as shit. Those were the happiest days of my life.

ME: Moreover, you were now getting into the shows for free.

BRAD: Yeah, and as a bonus Paul Languedoc let me start taping the shows with my little tape recorder. I’d patch into the soundboard. If you notice, there are a lot of soundboards from ’93 and ’94 out there. Those are my tapes, the “Bradboards.”

ME: What were you hearing that would make you want to tape every show?

BRAD: I was immediately drawn to Trey’s playing, and he had this shit-eating grin on his face that was totally contagious. I just couldn’t believe what a good time it looked like they were having. They seemed totally weird but cute and funny. The drummer’s wearing a dress. A lot of it was the energy of the crowd as well. People were really psyched back then. I knew they were going to be big. Maybe not as big as they ended up getting, but I could tell there was a movement that was going to happen with these guys.

ME: I know there weren’t titles per se in the Phish organization, but when did you become “road manager”?

BRAD: In 1993 and 1994, we were getting bigger and starting to play some amphitheaters. They hired their first real production manager and tour manager/accountant. They made me production assistant because I wasn’t a very good guitar tech. Drums, I was okay. Guitars, no. What they found happening was that the tour manager job was the hot seat. They could never find a guy the band liked. As I was production assistant for two years, it got to the point where I was the one who was always around the band. I knew exactly what they needed, how they wanted it to be finessed, and the right time to say something and the right time to shutup. So eventually, in 1996, I became road manager.

ME: How would you define the job of road manager?

BRAD: The job of the road manager is basically to make sure the band feels like they’re looked after 24/7. I did a lot of travel planning and day-to-day logistics. And I’d take care of their guests. Make sure their people were having a good time. Make sure the band members were all in a good mood. Basically, my job was to make sure that all Phish had to think about was playing music. That was a big part of it. The thing about Phish is they’re four totally different people.

ME: I don’t think people realize how different they are, because they project so much unity and oneness of vision.

BRAD: People just know them as “the band.” But they’re all completely unique individuals and they all have their own patterns. For example, I might say, “Bus call is at four o’clock.” Everybody has to be on the bus at four, right? Well, here’s how it would break down. Page would come down early. He’d be down about 3:45. Trey would show up anywhere between 3:55 and 4:05. So Page and Trey are both there, and they’re asking, “Where’s Mike? Where’s Fish?” “They’re not here yet.” “Okay, we’re gonna go get coffee.” So they’re gone. Mike might roll down around 4:15, 4:20. Fishman’s still nowhere to be found. Then Mike’s gone because no one is there. Trey and Page come back. Then Fishman finally comes down. He sees that Trey and Page are there but Mike went back up to his room. Imagine trying to keep your sanity when you’re dealing with those guys on that kind of stuff [
laughs
].

ME: It’s like herding cats.

BRAD: Yeah, it is! You always had to build in a half-hour buffer. But to be honest, it was almost impossible to be mad at any of them. Fishman would be late all the time and I could never get mad at the guy. He just has that personality. He comes out, “Hey, man,” and he smiles, and you’d forget everything. “Hey, Fish, how’s it going?” All is forgiven all the time.

So it was really keeping those four people and their four different worlds aligned. Also I did the guest list and was in charge of backstage and not-really-but-kind-of personal security. They never traveled with a bodyguard. They had John Langenstein handling security in the parking lots and different guys over the years doing interior security, but they never had anybody traveling with them.

So basically the road manager’s job is to put out fires all day. And no matter what’s happening, you have to remain calm. Because if you’re freaking out, everybody will start to freak out. I prided myself on retaining at least some semblance of calmness amidst chaos.

ME: It sounds like there’s a significant psychological component to the job.

BRAD: Very much so. And for better or worse, you’re often the only person on tour they talk to. It’s very much a mind game all the time—what to say when, listening. You’re like their counselor for everything, for right or wrong. There’s always a lot of moral dilemmas involved with the job. If you see somebody doing something they shouldn’t be doing, then do you talk to them about it or do you say something to someone else? It’s all that kind of stuff.

ME: Very complicated interpersonal dynamics, I’m sure.

BRAD: Exactly. You can almost get too close to it. For me, the hardest part was that Phish was so big that it became your identity. It became who you are. I used to find it was very hard to adjust to being off-tour, because when you’re out on the road, you’re part of this energy that’s churning. You’re at the center of it, and everything is just building around your world. Then you get home and you’re just another guy. It’s that high and low, the peaks and valleys, that kind of messed with your head. Being on the road is like summer camp. It’s so great, you’re with your friends, everything is provided for you. It’s like you’re in the World Series every day. Then you get home and it’s like, “What do I do now?”

ME: That may partly explain why they toured so heavily, because that life became their reality.

BRAD: I think that was part of it. In the beginning, there was a sense of purpose among all of us that we were trying to prove something. Even in the crew. Our crew—like the crews of Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, the Dave Matthews Band—always tried one-upping each other to be the best crew out there. The bands were like that, too. There was a sense of community, but the dedication the Phish guys put into stuff was crazy.

ME: I’ve never seen anything like their work ethic.

BRAD: When I first started, it was pretty intense. When I came up to work for them in Vermont, I stayed at Paul’s and Trey’s house. I slept on the couch. Those guys practiced for five hours every day in the livingroom. I was like, “Wow, those guys really do practice.”

ME: What were your favorite years for Phish?

BRAD: The year 1994 was a real turning point. I really thought they were hitting their stride that summer. There were just some great shows. The playing was a little different. That was the year
Hoist
came out, and that batch of songs was great in concert. I also thought 1997 and 1998 were great years.

ME: What about those two years did you like?

BRAD: This is sort of good and bad, but by ‘97 there started to be somewhat of a dark side seeping into the whole thing. That isn’t what you want in the lifestyles. But at the beginning, I thought it translated into some amazing music. To me, what made the Grateful Dead so great was Jerry Garcia and the fact he was this down-and-out character with a positive attitude, and he had soul. And I thought in those years, the soul came into Phish.

It was like this. People would ask why I thought Phish was a better jam band than, say, moe. or String Cheese Incident. My reply was that the other bands were like seeing
Star Wars
without Darth Vader. You’ve got the hero, you’ve Han Solo, and it’s all great, but without Darth Vader you’re not going to see
Star Wars
over and over. Because it’s the dark side, and it needs to be in there as well. It’s inevitable with anything that the dark side gets in too much and then ruins it. But in ’97 and ‘98 you can hear a bit more attitude in the playing, maybe some more confidence, and those were the years we actually—“we” meaning
the band—thought that we were the best band in the world. It was almost like a swagger, you know, from the fall of 1997 up until Big Cypress. That was the feeling.

ME: What did you do during the hiatus?

BRAD: I worked for Trey. One of the biggest problems was that a lot of the pressure of being Phish just got transferred to Trey. We all just started working for Trey. So I don’t think he ever really got a break from the whole thing until after the second breakup. Trey was doing good business, but the merchandise company and all that were still there. That wasn’t really addressed during the hiatus.

ME: Was it a matter of Trey not being able to put his foot down?

BRAD: I think he was always looking for [manager] John Paluska to do it, and John didn’t want to do it, for whatever reason. Because Trey never wanted to be the bad guy. That’s not in his nature. He wants to take care of people. He would’ve been happy for people to come in and say—and there were people saying this—“You need to get rid of a lot of this.” Maybe not all of it, but some of it, for sure. We didn’t need our own merchandise company. Because what happens is, these guys are humans and they’re great people. They go down to the office and see all these people working, and they don’t want them to lose their jobs. But at what point does it become an expense of your own? Not just monetarily but emotionally. It was hard because it was a big family, but where there’s big families, there’s problems.

It can go both ways. One of the reasons I was on payroll was that Trey wanted somebody 24/7 that he could talk to or do something with, hash out ideas or whatever. I was happy to be working for Trey. I loved working for Trey. It was great. I didn’t want to lose my job, either.

ME: Regarding the 2004 breakup, I’m drawn to the metaphor of the Art Tower they burned down at the Great Went. Phish had built up this incredible organization with all these super-talented people—some of the best in the business—and torched it. Do you have any theories as to why they—and, particularly, Trey—felt the need to end it so drastically and absolutely?

BRAD: It’s hard to say. There were plenty of times where I thought to myself—and I know everybody else thought to themselves—“Why do we have to break up? Why not just go away for awhile?” And Trey would
say, “I can’t do that.” I’d say, “Why?” And it was always that he couldn’t see it that way. He saw it in the way of “I’ve got to tear it apart” or “It can’t just be sitting there, too big.” I don’t know if I agreed with that, but it wasn’t my thing. It was his thing. I think when they got back together [after the hiatus], it was for all the wrong reasons. It just wasn’t good.

ME: I have to say, though, I thought they played well on the summer 2003 tour.

BRAD: Yeah, there were some good shows and good moments in ’03. The summer tour had some good stuff. The It festival certainly had some great playing. The Tower Jam was incredible. The Miami New Year’s run was good, too. But I think 2004 took a turn for the worse. Las Vegas was a disaster on all fronts, pretty much. There were some good shows at the beginning of the summer, but the last week was terrible. It was just like a wake. It was really depressing, to be honest. That was a point where the drugs really were a lot worse for everybody.

ME: I was there on the second night of the post-hiatus stand at Hampton in January 2003 when they had to start “You Enjoy Myself” over again. Didn’t you have to come out with a cup of coffee or something for Trey?

BRAD: Uh, I remember it [
laughs
]. I know that he was pretty hurtin’ that day. That was not a good run. There were a few moments with all of them that we kind of had to rescue them from themselves. And there’s probably a few times it looked like I needed rescuing as well. I think with Trey, though, it was more because he wears it on his sleeve so much.

Trey’s personality is like this. Say we find a pack of fireworks—you, me, Page, whoever. We say, “Let’s set these off. This will be great, right?” We set them off. Trey says, “There’s got to be more fireworks around here. Let’s go find more. Let’s find the factory.
And let’s blow them all up!
”

That’s Trey, and this is why he writes such great, amazing songs. It’s that kind of insane drive he has that will also get you into trouble. There’s so many greats that are like that. He’s the one who practices in his room for eight hours. He obsesses about stuff. So when it came to partying, the guy set the world on fire. And you know what? We were all happy to follow him as much as we could a lot of the time. Because Trey was our leader, you know?