Phil 85, Part 2

Rich Mahan (0:00)

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The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of The Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of The Grateful Dead For The Committed And The Curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 11 of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. I'm your co-host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, we continue our tribute to bassist Phil Lesh. We couldn't squeeze everything we wanted to into just one episode, and part two, which you're about to dive into, is itself a nice long look at what made Phil's approach to playing bass and music in general so unique. Hot off the announcement presses, our two new Grateful Dead releases headed your way. First up is a massive new Grateful Dead box set, Enjoying The Ride, a limited edition 60 CD, that's 6-0, box set celebrating the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary, with unreleased performances from 20 legendary venues the band played throughout their career. This one's going fast, folks. If you want a copy, make sure to head to dead.net now and reserve yours. With the exception of a few tracks from earlier releases, virtually all of the music on Enjoying The Ride is previously unreleased, spanning more than 450 tracks and over 60 hours of music. Of the 20 shows in the collection, 17 are presented in full with some featuring additional material from the same venue. The remaining three, Fillmore West, Fillmore East and Boston Music Hall, are curated from multiple performances at each venue, capturing key moments on those legendary stages. This 60 CD box set is limited to only 6,000 individually numbered copies. ALAC and Hi-Rez FLAC downloads will also be available on release day, which is May 30th. Enjoying The Ride is available exclusively from dead.net, and you can pre-order your copy today. Also available on May 30th, The Music Never Stop distills Enjoying The Ride into a shorter route through the band's Diamond Anniversary Celebration. Featuring at least one song from every venue in the deluxe set, it offers a briefer but no less illuminating journey through the music that shaped The Grateful Dead's live legacy. It will be available on May 30th from rhino.com on 3 CDs, 6 LPs or digitally. Make sure to visit dead.net for more info on both of these not-to-be-missed releases. Head on over to dead.net/deadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 10 You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting the like button and leaving us a review. Thank you very much. Hey, we need your stories for The Deadcast. Do you have a great tour story you'd love to share? Well, head over to stories.dead.net and record yourself telling about that epic road trip or the best show you ever saw, and you just may hear yourself on a future episode of The Deadcast. We have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available now for your reading pleasure. Those are available at dead.net/deadcastdashindex.

Check them out. In this episode, part two of our tribute to bassist extraordinaire Phil Lesh, we have some very special guests who really help us drill down into what made Phil's approach to playing bass so special, and how his unique musicality contributed to making the Grateful Dead's music as unique and timeless as it is. Here's Jesse Jarnow.

Jesse Jarnow (4:58)

Phil Lesh contained multitudes, multitudes that rearranged themselves molecularly and unceasingly. We'll be using the August 27th, 1972, playing in the band as our first casting off point today. And what we'll be hearing from, unless otherwise noted.

Here's how Jerry Garcia described Phil to David Gans and Blair Jackson in 1981, now included in David's marvelous book, Conversations With The Dead, which we've linked to at dead.net/deadcast.

Jerry Garcia (5:47)

Phil is an incredibly complex guy. He's an incredibly brilliant, incredibly complex guy. And it's like, he does things for reasons of his own that are just like his music, are not easy for me to understand. I mean, I don't know why he is the way he is, or why he does what he does, or what kind of thoughts he thinks on and off.