Lesh Bounces Back After Transplant With His Other Friends

By G. Brown
Denver Post Popular Music Writer 

Oct. 23, 2000 - What a long, strange trip it's been ... and continues to be.

Following iconic guitarist Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, the Grateful Dead 
disbanded. But Dead alumni - guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Mickey Hart and 
bassist Phil Lesh with pianist Bruce Hornsby (who toured with the band in 
later years) - convened to hit the road circa 1997 as the Other Ones.

The group, named after an early Dead tune, didn't tour last year - Lesh 
suffered from hepatitis C and received a liver transplant in December 1998. 
By the time he had fully recovered, organizers said it was too late to play a 
road trip. After a two-year absence, the Other Ones revived with a new lineup 
that includes Weir, Hart, Hornsby and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, another 
longtime Dead member.

But Lesh opted out of this summer's tour. He's had problems with the group's 
philosophies, including management of the Dead's vast archive of live tapes.

As Phil Lesh & Friends, he's been on the road since Garcia's death with 
various Dead collaborators and members of jam-bands such as the Allman 
Brothers Band, the String Cheese Incident and Phish, tapping into the huge 
repertoire of Grateful Dead music in his continuing pursuit of improvisation. 
The group performs Tuesday and Wednesday at the Fillmore Auditorium.

"I have issues with the Grateful Dead on every level. But that's not why I'm 
doing what I'm doing. I'm doing what I'm doing because the music demands it. 
It wants to happen this way," Lesh, 60, says. 

Joining Lesh for the Denver shows will be guitarist Jimmy Herring (a member 
of Col. Bruce Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit and Jazz Is Dead before 
replacing Dickey Betts in the Allman Brothers), guitarist Warren Haynes 
(Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule), keyboardist Rob Baracco (the Zen Tricksters) 
and drummer John Molo (Bruce Hornsby & the Range).

According to Lesh, his set list has been expanded considerably.

"It's truly phenomenal. These guys take it to the limit every which way 
possible. I never dreamed it could be this profound, this fecund, this 
fertile. Every tune seems to generate new little baby universes of music.

"The concept is to allow the music to be interpreted by various groups of 
musicians. And each lineup has its own personality. This one, though, is the 
first one to really leap on this material and open it up. I hate to be too 
graphic, but I would say that these guys eviscerate these tunes and read the 
entrails, to find their new meaning. I'm the chief soothsayer, the rune 
reader, the tea-leaf shaman or whatever!

"In nine days we were able to rehearse 63 songs. Even beyond that, we've been 
adding other stuff - there's about 100 songs that we could do. The set lists 
are now turning into free association sequences where I'm starting to take 
all the old Grateful Dead content apart and use each piece as a module in a 
new sequence.

He noted, for example, that the Grateful Dead always played "China Cat 
Sunflower''/ "I Know You Rider" as a pair. 

"They're stapled together at the hip. But tonight we're going to do "China 
Cat" into "Unbroken Chain." This band has prompted me to approach this in a 
way I've always wanted to, to take each song as something that can connect to 
anything else within the constraints of key, lyric and rhythmic character." 

Blue Note jazz artist Greg Osby sat in with Lesh and his band in New York 
recently. As well as digging deep into the music of the Dead, they tapped 
into free-form jazz.

"Wagner said that music is the art of transition - if you listen to his 
music, there are very few resting points. This music is a lot like that. I 
see the whole evening as surfing through this sea of chaos and arriving at 
these islands of order, which are the songs.

"Some currents are stronger than others. For instance, if we have a song that 
ends in the key of D, and we're going to go to a song that starts in D, that's 
what I call a straight run - we just jam out, because we know we don't have 
to go any place in particular.

"But then there's the other end of the spectrum where the keys and rhythms 
are more distantly related. So we have to go through a series of stages - 
it's almost like an airlock or decompression coming up from a scuba dive, 
steps of getting nearer to where we're going to end up in the next song." 

Lesh has "different writing projects on the burner." 

"I want to have 50 brand new songs that I can choose from before I even think 
about making a record. Theodore Sturgeon, the author, said that 99 percent of 
everything is crap. So, you know ... I'm working on it." 

And Lesh's health?

"I'm in great shape. My doctors are saying my recovery is a textbook example. 
All my numbers are exemplary, and I feel like I'm 20 years younger.

"We were able to raise a quarter of a million dollars for hepatitis C 
research in March of this year. We're planning to do similar benefits 
annually. At every show I urge everyone to become an organ donor and to give 
blood