The moment could arrive anywhere, anytime, but you always knew it was coming. It was the moment, at a Grateful Dead show or on a live recording, when Phil Lesh and his bass would make themselves known.
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Most bass players in traditional rock & roll bands provide a solid low-end foundation for what’s around then. Maybe they sing an occasional harmony or are content with a supportive, background role. That was never the case with Lesh. At some point, whether in early jams on “China Cat Sunflower” or “Dark Star” or “Fire on the Mountain” or many other songs over the three decades before Jerry Garcia died, Lesh never settled for the conventional walking bass lines heard on most rock or blues records. Instead, his instrument would poke around the melody, pushing, prodding, and nudging the music out of one section and into a new, uncharted one. Sometimes he sounded as if he considered his bass, not Garcia’s guitar, the lead one. The idea, as he told me in a 2014 interview for my Dead biography So Many Roads, was to avoid doing “something somebody else had done.”
Lesh, who died Friday at 84, was never the frontman of the Dead, never its flashiest onstage presence nor its most colorful dresser. He rarely opened his mouth to sing, especially lead. Other aspects of the Dead — Garcia’s sweet, crinkled smile and lead guitar parts, or the immediately recognizable dual drumming of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — stood out more.
But Lesh embodied the Dead as much as anyone, maybe sometimes more. From its music to its fanbase, the band didn’t do anything the way anyone had done it before, and the way Lesh approached his instrument was of a piece with that sensibility. Starting with his distinctive, jabbing sound, Lesh didn’t just make us rethink the role of the bass; he helped the culture reimagine how a rock and roll band should expand and mutate. If Garcia was Captain Trips, Lesh could be General Trips: the band’s gatekeeper, mad scientist, and, ultimately, the fiercest defender of their mission.
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The late Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, who could be pretty cranky himself about various aspects of the Dead’s world, music, and culture, had no issues acknowledging Lesh’s presence. “Phil is one of the most accomplished instrumentalists in rock & roll,” Hunter told me in an unpublished quote from my 2015 interview with him for Rolling Stone. “Phil is a trained musician who could have expressed himself on any instrument he chose. But bass was what they needed for the band and he learned to play that. I have the most tremendous respect for Phil’s inimitable bass playing. If you take Phil out, you’ve just got the Garcia band, and that’s a whole different thing.”
When Lesh joined the Dead in 1965 (they were still the Warlocks at that point), he was pretty different from the rest of the gang. As he told me, he “detested” rock when he first heard it in the Fifties. “I thought it was totally infantile,” he said. “Three chords over and over again. I’m coming from Beethoven and Mahler.” No wonder he played trumpet and violin and focused on experimental contemporary music in his pre-Dead days.
FAQs
Q: What made Phil Lesh’s bass playing unique?
A: Phil Lesh’s bass playing was unique in that he didn’t settle for conventional bass lines but instead pushed the boundaries of the instrument, reimagining the role of the bass in rock and roll music.
Q: How did Phil Lesh contribute to the Grateful Dead’s sound?
A: Phil Lesh’s distinctive bass sound and experimental approach to music helped shape the Grateful Dead’s sound, allowing the band to explore new musical territories and expand their creative boundaries.
Q: What impact did Phil Lesh have on the music industry?
A: Phil Lesh’s innovative bass playing and fearless attitude towards music paved the way for future musicians to think outside the box and challenge traditional norms in the music industry.
Credit: www.rollingstone.com
