Get the latest gossip
Phil Lesh Was the Grateful Dead’s Great Explorer
Ten songs that capture the late bassist’s genius.
Lesh, whose roots were in the avant-garde, was one of the first musicians in rock music to play the bass as though it were a lead instrument — ironic in that he was trained in violin, trumpet, and modern classical composition before Jerry Garcia asked him to join the pre-Dead band the Warlocks and fill that position. Recently, he began posting “clubhouse sessions” to YouTube with a rotating door of younger players, including a series called Darkstarthon that used the signature Dead exploration jam “Dark Star” as a launching point. This one section called “The Phil Zone,” where you’ll hear Lesh strumming the bass, plunking harmonics, and launching arcs of feedback, reveals his kid-in-the-candy-store side amid all his high-tech gear and seems like the appropriate sampling.
Or read this on VULTURE
