Lesh, Phil 1940–

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Lesh, Phil 1940–

(Phillip Chapman Lesh)

PERSONAL: Born March 15, 1940, in Berkeley, CA; married; wife's name, Jill; children: two sons. Education: Attended Mills College.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Little, Brown & Company, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Musician. Founding member and bass player for rock band the Grateful Dead, 1965–95; musician with offshoot bands the Other Ones, the Dead, and as Phil Lesh and Friends. Unbroken Chain Foundation, chief executive officer. Has appeared, as himself, in films and concert video recordings, including Gimme Shelter, 1970; The Grateful Dead Movie, 1977; So Far, 1987; Grateful Dead: Anthem to Beauty, 1997; and Festival Express, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (autobiography), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

LYRICIST, WITH OTHERS; SOUND RECORDINGS

Love Will See You Through, Arista Records (New York, NY), 1999.

There and Back Again, Columbia Records (New York, NY), 2002.

Searching for the Sound (box set), Simon & Schuster Audio (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Musician Phil Lesh is a former founding member of the Grateful Dead, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. As the Dead's bassist, Lesh was a consistent presence in the band for nearly thirty years, until the group disbanded after the death of front man Jerry Garcia in 1995. Originally a trumpet player with an interest in avant-garde classical music, Lesh studied composition and electronic music with Luciano Berio. While a student at Mills College, Lesh met Garcia, who was then a bluegrass banjo player. In 1965, he joined Garcia's band, the Warlocks, which was soon renamed the Grateful Dead, and he remained with the Dead for the group's entire existence. He learned to play bass as he went, and earned fan loyalty by his signature bass style, his devotion to the band's music, and his responsibility for the group's musical archives and quality of all legitimate live releases. Lesh became such a pivotal musician that his bass playing often became just as important to the group's sound as Garcia's talent was on the guitar.

The band built its reputation not only on the counter-culture scene of the 1960s, but also through extensive touring, improvised live musical sets, and rapport with the fans—the iconic Deadheads—who supported their music and turned traveling to concert after concert into a lifestyle. "It's an incredibly forgiving and at the same time demanding audience," Lesh said in a profile in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Times-Leader. "To me, they're the salt of the earth. They're the ones who really make the music."

Ultimately attaining a cult following, the band's appeal never waned over the decades; "The Grateful Dead were second only to the Rolling Stones in touring revenue for the 1990s, at $285 million," reported Ray Waddell in Billboard. More amazingly, that achievement came even after the band broke up following Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. After Garcia's death, Lesh reunited with band mates Mickey Hart and Bob Weir to form the Other Ones. The group occasionally toured simply as the Dead. In 1998 Lesh underwent a liver transplant, but a year later, he was back on the road, touring and recording. His live solo debut, Love Will See You Through, was released in 1999, and a studio album, There and Back Again, was released in 2002.

Lesh's 2005 autobiography, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead, covers his early life and childhood and focuses on his thirty years with the Dead. He describes in detail his early meetings with band mates and how the group's musical sound and improvisational genius developed. He talks about the drug scene and youth culture of the band's early days, and how the Dead came to know Ken Kesey and numerous other formidable Sixties personalities. Lesh, furthermore, details the infamous Altamont concert, where a fan was killed by members of the Hell's Angels acting as security guards; he and his band mates refused to take the stage because they were afraid of what might happen to them if they did. He discusses the bad luck surrounging the band's early keyboardists, the occasional changing of band members, the hardcore Deadheads who followed the band and kept the spirit of the music alive, and the repercussions of the death of charismatic front man Garcia. Lesh also ruminates on what it is like to have survived so long in an industry noted for colossal flameouts: stars who ascend phenomenally and crash spectacularly.

Entertainment Weekly contributor Michael Endelman called Searching for the Sound a "lively read, with just the right mix of dirt, drugs, and diligent tour diaries." Fans and "Deadheads will surely celebrate Lesh's honest, intimate remembrances," observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Mike Tribby, writing in Booklist, declared Lesh's autobiography to be a "literate piece of rock history by a genuinely historic figure in rock music."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bass Player, September 1, 2004, "Phil Lesh—Grateful Dead," interview with Phil Lesh.

Billboard, August 10, 2002, Wes Orshoski, "Lesh Calls for Fans to Become Organ Donors," p. 44; July 3, 2004, Ray Waddell, "The Dead Still Live for the Road," profile of The Grateful Dead, p. 18.

Booklist, March 15, 2005, Mike Tribby, review of Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead, p. 1244.

Entertainment Weekly, May 20, 2005, Michael Endelman, "Three New Side Dishes: The Who, the Stones, the Dead, and the Bass Player," review of Searching for the Sound, p. 76.

Kansas City Star, April 29, 2005, John Mark Eberhart, "Bassist Phil Lesh Relives the Grateful Dead," review of Searching for the Sound.

Library Journal, December 1, 2004, Barbara Hoffert, review of Searching for the Sound, p. 92.

Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, PA), July 20, 2000, "Phil Lesh Still on the Road Playing Music of the Grateful Dead."