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bye bye johnny
Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart remember Phil with Anthony Mason of "CBS Mornings"

Video is private ...(sad emoji)

How I love Box of Rain. What a beautiful piece. RIP

I read the book "Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead's Long, Strange Trip", by Joel Selvin. He is the longtime rock critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. He takes a pretty dim view of Phil Lesh in the book. He portrays him as selfish and arrogant, and alienating his fellow band members.

Among other things, he writes, "How could Lesh excuse the unfaithful behavior he had showed his brothers-in-arms? He had been at points cold, uncaring, even cruel, but he didn't seem to hesitate. One by one, he had discarded the drummers Kreutzmann and Hart, and, now, Weir. His actions disguised a moral superiority that could have never existed in the group under Garcia's egalitarian leadership. He had long before abandoned the one-for-all/all-for-one philosophy that had sustained the band through long years... Lesh, it seems, had become the dark knight of the kingdom."

I guess this explains why Lesh was not included in Dead and Company with John Mayer...

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roundnround
I read the book "Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead's Long, Strange Trip", by Joel Selvin. He is the longtime rock critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. He takes a pretty dim view of Phil Lesh in the book. He portrays him as selfish and arrogant, and alienating his fellow band members.

Among other things, he writes, "How could Lesh excuse the unfaithful behavior he had showed his brothers-in-arms? He had been at points cold, uncaring, even cruel, but he didn't seem to hesitate. One by one, he had discarded the drummers Kreutzmann and Hart, and, now, Weir. His actions disguised a moral superiority that could have never existed in the group under Garcia's egalitarian leadership. He had long before abandoned the one-for-all/all-for-one philosophy that had sustained the band through long years... Lesh, it seems, had become the dark knight of the kingdom."

I guess this explains why Lesh was not included in Dead and Company with John Mayer...

While, according to publicist Dennis McNally, 90% of the book is true, it does have a tabloid element, and the author does seem to have it in for Phil and his wife Jill, but no one comes up smelling like (ahem) roses here.

While it seems Jill took her manager job a little too seriously at times (the Kimock incident for one, but there's another side to that story) there are others, like Furthur's John Kadlecik who said he never had an issue with her the whole time. I also never heard any gripes from folks who went to Terrapin Crossroads, but custies are their bread and butter.

It does seem Phil was kind of taking the Captain Trips reins when he realized he could get an equal or bigger crowd on his own, than the core 3 together (at the time). There are hints in the book he was never really taken seriously in some ways during the GD, and now he was exacting his revenge. Who knows, though. After that long together it becomes a brotherly love/hate relationship that only they truly understand.

It is something of a miracle the 2015 FTW shows happened at all, given the acrimony after the 2009 tour, and to hear they were planning on getting together for the Kennedy Center Honors and the 60th anniversary next summer makes Phil's passing even more poignant.

Phil didn't join DeadCo because he didn't want to. The payday was there, and they all knew it, but he chose another path.

Dead and Co are an absolute joke, just listen to versions of great songs they ruined. And John Mayer is a complete @#$%& that thinks he is bigger than the Dead. I am so happy Phil never took part of any of that. I have known John Mayer since I was 8 years old growing up in Fairfield. He always made fun of my friends for being Deadheads while he was trying to sing like Dave Matthews.

Phil was nothing but a gentleman.

Apart from whatever else there may have been, as far as I know also Phil's health issues kept him from large-scale touring, at least in his latter years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-12-07 10:00 by doitywoik.

He did some duo shows with Bob Weir at least semi recently. So I don't think there was really any bad blood between Phil and the rest of them. At least no more than any of them have with each other. Bill isn't there anymore either and I don't think there's ever been a full explanation of what exactly happened.

Funny how it was Phil who first jammed with Mayer at TXR and got all excited about it.

I guess at some point Mayer drank the Kool-Aid and 'got' the GD. I suppose his guitar playing is 'passable', but his vocals ruin the whole thing.

The Sphere thing is a joke, with Mayer having a 51% share of DeadCo and is listed as 'creative director'. There are rumours Bill quit because of this, but health and insurance issues are also likely.

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RollingFreak
He did some duo shows with Bob Weir at least semi recently. So I don't think there was really any bad blood between Phil and the rest of them. At least no more than any of them have with each other. Bill isn't there anymore either and I don't think there's ever been a full explanation of what exactly happened.

I’ve heard some chatter that one of the main reasons Bill left was that he couldn’t stand the slow tempo that BW was laying down. To your point, it’s probably a combination of reasons.

The tempos actually picked up when Jay Lane took over for Billy K. behind the drum kit. Kreutzmann was having trouble physically making it through a whole tour. He had missed out on several shows the year before.

As Phil stated in his autobiography “Searching For The Sound”, his goal was to follow his “wyrd”. He was hoping to continue creating innovative music, and from his efforts with the Q, various other friends, his homegrown Terrapin Crossroads enterprise, and his transcendently beautiful final “Darkstarathon” clubhouse jams, he largely succeeded.

Billy and Phil had their beefs. Jill Lesh didn’t want Phil playing with Billy and Steve Kimock because she thought their lifestyle was a bad influence on Phil as he was just returning from his liver transplant. It was pretty clear that Phil was done with the big circus at Fare Thee Well in 2015. It’s not unprecedented. Bill Wyman walked away from The Rolling Stones.

The poignant, and a little bittersweet coda is that some sort of reunion was in the works. At the very least, the Core 4 were all scheduled to meet just 5 days after Phil passed, presumably to discuss how to handle their upcoming Kennedy Center honor, and the approaching 60th anniversary year. We’ll never know what may have been.

Believe it if you need it, if you don’t, just pass it on.

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Lamorinda

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RollingFreak
He did some duo shows with Bob Weir at least semi recently. So I don't think there was really any bad blood between Phil and the rest of them. At least no more than any of them have with each other. Bill isn't there anymore either and I don't think there's ever been a full explanation of what exactly happened.

I’ve heard some chatter that one of the main reasons Bill left was that he couldn’t stand the slow tempo that BW was laying down. To your point, it’s probably a combination of reasons.

Love Bobby, but god damn it really is slow. I saw Dead & Co once and its hard to ruin Jerry Garcia songs for me but Loser was so painfully slow and not sung well by him that I just didn't think it was for me. Bob is best to me when he is on his own with the Wolf Bros or who he chooses. When he tries to do the upbeat Dead thing it usually falters. Mayer is carrying him in my mind, and again I say that loving what Bobby does outside of the Dead. Phil, for better or worse, did seem to follow the path he wanted. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. As always with that music, it had a lot to do with who he had surrounding him. But my in laws were so much bigger fans of Phil than Bobby doing his thing. Phil was hit or miss, but when it was hit it was out of sight. Bob was consistently fine or just slightly disappointing.

But hey, they all exist in the forms they do and seem happy. Sad that they couldn't have had that last get together with Phil, but at least they had the 50th and hard to say Phil was tragic. Guy looked like a gust of wind could blow him down. He and all of us were lucky he got so much mileage in the last 25 years.