Grateful Dead

Phil 85, Part 1

The Deadcast begins its 11th season with a celebration of the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, drawing on archival interviews to explore his unusual trajectory from jazz trumpet to avant-garde composition to rock and roll bass, and welcoming special guest Mike Gordon of Phish.

Guests: Mike Gordon, Oteil Burbridge, Sam Cutler, David Lemieux, Gary Lambert

Phil 85, Part 1, supplementary notes

by Jesse Jarnow

The late Phil Lesh was fond of confounding expectations and encouraging his collaborators to do the same, a musical life filled with surprises and exploration that followed the most unusual path from jazz trumpet to avant-garde composition to rock and roll bass. Lesh wrote about it in his wonderful memoir, Searching For the Sound, as well as reading the accompanying audiobook.

We were able to draw on several great archival sources to let Phil tell his own story. Thanks immensely to Gary Lambert for the audio from the Grateful Dead in the Gone World radio special, to David Gans for interview excerpts of Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia (available in full in Conversations With the Dead), and to Andy Childs, for use of his 1974 London interview (who contributes these days to Caught By the River).

The first part of Phil 85 also referenced several earlier episodes of the Deadcast, including Unbroken Chain and Pride of Cucamonga (both with stories about Lesh’s collaborator Bobby Petersen), Robert Hunter’s Silver Snarling Trumpet (part 1, part 2; exploring the early Palo Alto scene), T.C. (all about Lesh’s one-time roommate Tom Constanten), and Cumberland Blues (with more from our dear departed business correspondent Sam Cutler).