“The Most Fearless Player I’ve Ever Been Around”: Eric Krasno on Phil Lesh
photo: Jay Blakesberg
In the December issue of Relix we celebrate 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of pioneering bass icon Phil Lesh through reflections from his friends and collaborators (as well as a previously unpublished interview).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 and Jason Crosby.
Eric Krasno was just 12 years old when his older brother took him to the Grateful Dead’s Rainforest Benefit at Madison Square Garden in 1988. Twenty-five years later, he and Phil became Friends.
You first performed with Phil in Central Park along with Joe Russo in 2013 as part of Jazz & Colors. What sort of conversation did you have with him in advance?
We were already playing when he got there. He plugged in, started playing and that was it. That’s when we met. You can see it in the video. He walked up, we played for 30 minutes and then he said, “Hey, how are you?” There was no discussion in advance.
We had a blast and it was one of those things where there was no pressure at all for it to sound any type of way. We didn’t play any songs, it was just improv. Then he instantly invited me to the Brooklyn Bowl, where he was playing with The Terrapin Family Band, and I ended up playing with them pretty much the whole show.
From then on, I was a regular member of Phil & Friends for the next 11 years. I can’t describe how special it was. Every couple months I received an invitation and I was dropped into this amazing world. It was like Santa Claus coming down the chimney every few months to ask, “Hey, you want to play the Warfield? Do you want to play The Cap? Do you want to do these festivals?” I was like, “Of course, let’s go!”
It was just such a treat and I loved that he never backed down to a challenge, even in his late ‘70s, early ‘80s. He would bring in new people and start rehearsing. Watching him and Grahame together, as father and son, was also cool to witness.
You mention bringing in new musicians. Phil felt something of an affirmative duty to introduce that music to a new generation of players.
The thing that amazed me about Phil when I came into his world was that he was not interested in doing the easy thing. That inspired me quite a bit, especially at that time in my life when I could do things easier than I once could. It was very clear to me that he didn’t have to go out and tour and rehearse new people every single time, digging into how we could approach this music differently. But he was always excited about it.
It was so inspiring for me to watch. I could tell that he always knew that the options were endless. We weren’t going out there to play a show, we were going out there to find something new.
At my first real gig, I was basically part of the Q without Jimmy because Jimmy couldn’t make it. I was plugged into this thing that was called the Q that I didn’t even know existed until that week was over. I knew Phil & Friends was a thing, I didn’t know the Q was a thing. He notoriously would send out setlists the day before a show, or in this case where we had a five-night run, I got an email at midnight with the entire week’s worth of music, which meant I was learning a hundred songs over the course of a day.
This was my first time ever playing with him besides Central Park, so I was really trying to nail things like the transitions. People don’t understand that the Grateful Dead music is not easy. There are very intricate things going on with some composed sections that then break off into all these interesting things.
I remember during the shows, I would nail something and have the tone and the whole thing together. Then I’d look back for a response from him and there wouldn’t really be much of one. But when I would land something that I thought was completely wrong, he would give me a huge smile and laugh.
It was the opposite of how I had been operating my bands. He wanted us to land something wrong and see how we got out of it. He wanted to see where we took it from that moment because what spawns actual improvisation and real creativity is when you do something wrong.
That was such a learning point for me. Then the other thing that took me a while to grasp was group improvisation. I don’t know that I ever quite got it, although I became better at it. I thought I knew what that was. With Soulive, we jammed for hours and the show was never the same. We listened to each other and we did group improvisation, but it was very different. It was more like, “Right now the guitar is featured… Now the drums are featured… Now the organ’s featured… Now we’re settling into this bubbling groove.” For him, he wanted everyone playing at once and then finding ways to make that work.
Everybody weaving with each other can sound really bad at times. There’s a way bigger pendulum swing, but when it goes the other way, it’s the highest you can get.
He was really ballsy. We would go out there and have no idea what was going on. He loved those moments that would make me squirm but then I learned to appreciate them more. It just broke down this whole wall for me of musician and audience. It was like, “OK, we don’t have to be this polished, presented thing. We’re all part of this just the way it is. We’re all experiencing this together.”
What direct guidance did he offer you?
In the very beginning, it was definitely, “Do you. Don’t try to be anyone else.” I was bringing a million pedals and I was trying to match sonically what Jerry did on certain things. He never said specifically, “Don’t be Jerry,” but he was like, “It’s all about finding new ways to play these songs. That’s number one.”
He didn’t give me a lot of detailed direction, although there were certain songs where he was very specific. A few times when we played “Dark Star,” he said to me, “Dark Star is not in a key. There’s no tonal center.”
What’s really interesting about him was that while he wasn’t giving me a lot of direction, every once in a while we would chat after and he’d mention something super detailed that I had done. I’d feel like, “Oh, my God, he’s listening to every single thing on stage and he knows exactly what’s happening.”
As you initially found your way into the sound, did you have a deer-in-the headlights moment?
It was hardest for me in the beginning. At the first handful of shows, when Warren was playing during the solo sections, I didn’t want to step all over him. So Phil had to push me to do so. He was like, “When he’s playing, you play too. We’re all doing this.” It took me a while to get that right.
Sometimes when I hadn’t done Phil & Friends for a while and I was coming back to it, on the first show, I would treat the solo improv things as, “Oh, it’s my guitar solo. Oh, it’s Rob’s keyboard solo. Oh, it’s Crosby’s violin solo.” But Phil never wanted us to do that. He wanted to make sure that we were all interacting at all times. It wasn’t like, “I’m supporting him and then we switch roles,” which is generally how the rest of us operate when we’re improvising. He wanted to make sure we knew that we were moving together as a group and not just here to support.
Phil’s approach on the bass also lends itself to that. I mean, he always said that he didn’t want to just be laying back in the pocket. He wanted the bass to move the way the other instruments do.
He told me that a lot of his basslines were inspired by classical music, specifically Bach, where it’s moving and it’s this counterpoint thing where it’s not just holding down one of the chords. In fact, a lot of times, he avoided that. He avoided the rhythmic one. He wasn’t just there to lay the one down and support you. He was there to play with you and dance. It was a dance. Except, when you’re dancing with eight people, it’s not something that comes naturally right away. You have to find your role and find how you flow with everybody.
Phil was such a huge part of the sound of the Grateful Dead, but I also think it’s really important what he did after Jerry died. He brought in so many different musicians and kind of injected these songs with all of these different perspectives. I think that was important for all the musicians who got to be a part of it because it influenced us and then we spread that amongst our bands and our friends and our approach to the music.
I also think that, in doing that and bringing all these new people to the music, Phil helped set in motion the idea that these songs are going to live forever. He solidified the Grateful Dead songs as part of the American Songbook because they got to live on for so many years through all these different people. Now we’re taking that music and we’re making it our own. We’re making it part of our repertoire.
That’s one thing, but also his approach to the instrument was so different and so brand new. For him, it was just music. It wasn’t like, “I am playing the bass so I will play the bassline.” He was like, “I am part of the music.” That changed my life and just being able to be a part of it in a small way was so huge.
Phil was the most fearless player I’ve ever been around. He would pave a path entirely his own. When you hear him play bass, it’s almost like he’s never heard another bass player. I always loved that about him.
