Profound Architecture and Multidimensional Depth: Jorma Kaukonen on Phil Lesh
photo: Jay Blakesberg
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In the December issue of Relix we celebrated the life and career of pioneering bass icon Phil Lesh through reflections from his friends and collaborators (as well as a previously unpublished interview). We will continue to share these over the days to come, joining reminiscences from Jimmy Herring, Mike Gordon, Dave Schools, Oteil Burbridge, Eric Krasno and Jason Crosby.
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The Hot Tuna guitarist was a member of Jefferson Airplane when he first saw Phil and their friendship spanned six decades.
When did you first encounter Phil and what were your initial impressions?
My initial impressions would’ve been him with the early Grateful Dead back when they were called The Warlocks. I suspect we’d previously crossed paths because San Francisco was a small town back in those days. I don’t remember though, probably because I was so tied up in my own evolution at the time.
What I remember about the first time I saw Phil play is watching his right hand. He had the most interesting right-hand style of any bass player I’d seen at that time. I can see it in my mind’s eye right now. It was like a spider attacking the strings. I remember asking myself: “How’s that working?” But it worked really well.
When I’m teaching fingerstyle guitar playing, I say that the rhythm section is the most important part of the band. If you’re playing fingerstyle guitar, it means your thumb. But in a band, if there’s not a solid pad for all the other parts to rest on, it’s not going to be a great band. Yet Phil was serving as a solid bass player without resorting to previously defined styles.
He came out of the classical world and hadn’t even played bass until Jerry made that suggestion.
The Grateful Dead, if I’m going to use a horrible mixed metaphor, always marched to their own drummer. When I first saw The Warlocks, I was a nascent electric guitar player and I remember thinking, “Man, what a great rock band this is.” I remember seeing Jerry with that Guild Starfire playing this great stuff, but more important than the leads were his rhythm chops. I think that when Phil got co-opted into the Dead family, he brought these profoundly different concepts of a bass sound. I’m not even going to say bass player, it was more of a bass sound positioned in a band, but it just worked. They were like the Airplane in that we all wanted to excel, but it was always about the band. I think all of us were aware of the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Something else that I think needs to be noted, especially if you think about later Dead shows, is the physical power the band had in terms of their gear, the PAs and stuff like that. We can always remember Phil dropping the bomb and everybody just losing their shit when those subsonics ran through the room. But in a way, that’s the least important thing that he did because he was always covering the bottom in his own idiosyncratic way. The genius of the Dead is an incredibly disparate group of characters who somehow managed to play some of the most amazing American music ever played.
Can you recall the first time you played with him?
There are some tapes floating around of a show in Rochester [on 11/20/70]. That one is pretty well-known. Both Jack [Casady] and I were jamming with Phil, which is an interesting thing because I don’t think any traditional bands would’ve thought about two bass players playing together at the same time. But Phil is just a melodic cat. He also played a six-string bass, so he had two extra strings to do that kind of stuff.
Moving forward to the late ‘90s, you began performing with him in Phil & Friends. What comes to mind as you think back on those gigs?
The first time was when he was recording a live album at the Warfield [Love Will See You Through on 6/4-5/99]. I think Kimock was the other guitar player in the band. Phil’s organization flew me out, and we rehearsed quite a bit before that show because you really have to know how to play Phil’s material. You can jam on it, but you have to know how to play it.
We rehearsed a lot, and I remember being intimidated by the multidimensional depth of his music. When people talked to me about the Grateful Dead back then, they often assumed I’d listened to a lot of their music. The truth is that while I don’t think that the Airplane and the Dead competed, I had enough on my plate just trying to figure out my role in the Airplane as opposed to analyzing one of my buddy’s bands like the Grateful Dead.
So to be thrust into that position, it was intimidating, but I was honored to be cut into that because Phil was a really thoughtful guy, and he knew that I didn’t have the slightest idea how to play any of those tunes. I remember when we were doing “The Eleven” on stage, going over to Kimock because of how those jams went, and saying, “I can’t think of one more thing to play.” I remember Steve said to me: “Neither can I, don’t stop playing.”
Phil was a very thoughtful cat, and he could blow with the best of them, but also he knew a lot about music. He knew a lot more than many of us and I think his musical architecture was very profound.
But at the same time, Phil had a musical sense of humor, and a personal sense of humor too. He was a funny guy. I would consider him to be a heavy intellectual cat, but he never burdened you with that. If he needed to explain something, that was fine, but he never weighed you down with his heaviness. He was fun to do stuff with.
The last time that I played with him would’ve been The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester maybe four or five years ago. Every time I had previously played with him he’d tell me the songs that he wanted me to play on so I could review them. But on this date, he refused to tell me anything.
If it hadn’t been for Rob Barraco and Phil’s son, Grahame holding my hand on that, I would’ve completely been lost at sea. But I think that I accomplished what Phil wanted from me, which was to turn me loose and enable me to be able to be myself in the context of his music without architecting or scripting a solo.
As an occasional participant in Phil’s world, my take was Phil always made everybody feel at home in his house. It was Phil’s band but when he had guests, he gave them the keys because he wanted to get the most out of them. He very subtly made compartments for each artist to feel comfortable in.
