Warren Haynes is one of many in the music world grieving after Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh died on Friday at the age of 84. The Gov’t Mule guitarist had a special creative bond with Lesh, playing with him for years onstage for Lesh’s projects Phil Lesh and Friends and the Grateful Dead offshoot The Dead.
Hours after the news of Lesh’s death broke, Haynes spoke with Rolling Stone, reminiscing about Lesh’s artistry, his distinct sound and his ability to let the music take over while he was onstage.
I got a text from the tour manager; she reached out to the [band] to tell us so we didn’t hear it in the press. My heart stopped. He’s had a lot of health challenges, and I guess in some ways we knew, but not as imminent as it turned out to be.
The last time we really spoke was a few months ago. But playing together earlier this year was really fun. Just being able to play with the quintet again was something we all needed to do. It was just a beautiful heartwarming experience.
I got a call from Phil in the late Nineties saying that he’d made a list of musicians that he wanted to play with — a pretty extensive list — and that I was one of those people. He asked if I’d be interested in coming to the Bay Area, doing a couple dates of rehearsal, and a couple of shows. I said absolutely. That was the beginning of our relationship that lasted for decades. It was a really life-changing experience.
He was always forward-thinking, always wanting to push himself and never wanting to rest on laurels or dwell on the past.
That was at a time when Phil was telling everyone he was working with that he didn’t want anybody to play or sing any of the Jerry Garcia signature stuff in the songs. He wanted everybody to bring their own personality in and take a fresh approach to all the music. He had this idea that it would be really cool to interpret Grateful Dead songs in a whole new way. That was his mission at the time. It was really fun.
The first shows that I did with him were me and Steve Kimock and Merl Saunders and Donna Godchaux and John Molo. I knew Kimock a little bit at that time, but he was the only one. But it was a wonderful experience, and it’s interesting to look back on now. He and I played together so many times, and especially with the quintet that just did tons of shows together.
It felt very natural and comfortable and inspired from the very beginning, but that world was somewhat new to me. Each time we got together, I felt more and more comfortable. In the beginning, I didn’t know a lot of songs but I loved the idea that he wanted to reinvent everything. And then later, when the quintet started playing together, we had the opportunity to keep an incarnation of Phil Lesh and Friends together for a long time, which allowed that band to really blossom and for the chemistry to just expand and get better on a nightly basis.
He was always forward-thinking, always wanting to push himself and never wanting to rest on laurels or dwell on the past. Even though we were playing that music, he was looking to take it into completely new directions. He was completely open to any suggestions that anybody had. His whole thing was always to just let the music be what it’s going to be. For him, it was always leaving everything to chance, throwing caution to the wind and letting the music go where it’s going to go. The only rules were that nobody played or sing like Jerry at that moment.
I soon discovered his open-mindedness about music surpassed just about anyone that I’ve ever met. He put less pressure on the music than just about anyone I’ve ever worked with. Sometimes the jams would get so out there, and he just loved it. When it was on the risk of falling apart, or even when it did fall apart, it was just as fun for him. There would be times when I would maybe think that something was not clicking, not working. And I would look over at Phil and he would just have a huge grin on his face; it was just about chasing it.
His approach and his outlook are totally unique. I’ve been very lucky to have experienced magical improv with a lot of different ensembles. But his approach is unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. I remember when we did the Rothbury Festival, we played that festival with the Dead and there was this version of “Viola Lee Blues” where there was about an eight-minute segment that was as avant garde open improv as any music I’ve ever been a part of. In some ways it sounded like Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew.” We all felt that same segment as being equally mesmerizing, but it was because we were just lost in the music, riding the wave and not thinking, and just letting the music push us.
The Dead – “Viola Lee Blues”
Phil had such a big heart. He came so many times to the charity show I do Christmas Jam in Asheville, North Carolina. I could never expect anyone to keep coming back and giving to the cause to the extent that he did. It was so gracious, and we had so many great experiences, musically speaking, as a result. But for him to make that trip from California to Asheville, which is no easy journey time after time after time, I was so touched with his generosity for that.
He had a distinct and unique sound, but also the approach. It was almost like he was part of an orchestra and he was playing in addition to a bass part that wasn’t there. He was so experimental and so unorthodox, that nine out of 10 other great bass players would have played something completely different, and that’s what made him him.
He had this saying, “there are no mistakes, only missed opportunities.” And what he meant by that is if you play a wrong note, you let that influence what comes next, and then, in a lot of cases, it’s going to lead to something better than what you were going to do. And that’s what performances with Phil were continually about. It was taking something that might not be instantly working, and letting that be the new path, and exploring that. There was no right and wrong in his way of looking at music. And as open-minded as I consider myself to be, I had never looked at things quite to that extent before, and it was such a joy playing music with it for that reason, because the experiment was a huge part of the picture.
There was no right and wrong in his way of looking at music.
From Phil, I learned to let it go and about relaxing and letting the magic happen. I was used to pushing to make the magic happen. I remember Dickey Betts and I had a conversation one time where he said the difference between the Allman Brothers approach to jamming and the Grateful Dead approach to jamming was that the Allman Brothers would force the magic to happen, and the Grateful Dead would just relax and let it happen. And he was saying that both are equally beautiful in their own right.
I was more used to the Allman Brothers way of making it happen, and had to gradually be baptized by the whole concept of letting it happen. In some of the early live shows with the Grateful Dead, it would take a long time for the for the magic to hit, and when it did, it was so amazing that it was worth the wait. And that’s something I had never experienced before.
Phil’s mission was always to make the music the best it can be from your own perspective and not care about what someone else thought about it. it was strictly for the moment, in the moment, and we’re here to make magic and not concern ourselves with how it’s perceived.
I’m gonna miss him immensely. I’m grateful for the time we spent together.
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