Author Topic: Phil Lesh in Bass Player magazine (Read 117 times)

hieronymous · « **on:** April 08, 2008, 10:08:18 PM »

In the April issue of Bass Player there's a transcription of Phil's part in Scarlet Begonias and a short analysis. Has anyone ever seen a musicological analysis of his playing? That would be something!

Then, I discovered that an older article from 2000 is available over at the Bass Player website:
Lesh is More!
Anthem of the Tone

They even mention Alembic in part 2! Every now and again people complain that Bass Player ignores Alembic, but they couldn't for this one...

bassman10096 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 12, 2008, 05:20:24 PM »

Good link. I think I might have seen the earlier article years back, but I think BP did Phil a fair turn as his own musician - not as a representative of the whole GD phenomenon.

glocke · « **Reply #2 on:** April 13, 2008, 11:12:22 AM »

I have those issues. They published it over two months.

Phil is great. I gotta admit though, looking at that transcription of scarlet makes my head hurt. Im glad Im able to pick his stuff up by ear.

hieronymous · « **Reply #3 on:** April 13, 2008, 04:04:06 PM »

I gotta admit though, looking at that transcription of scarlet makes my head hurt. Im glad Im able to pick his stuff up by ear.

I enjoyed reading along while listening to the track - let's you pick out some of the cool little things he does in there.

glocke · « **Reply #4 on:** April 14, 2008, 07:07:11 AM »

I did that also Harry, it does make it interesting. I just cant read the more complicated, syncopated rythyms very fluently, at least not without getting frustrate after about ten minutes.

hieronymous · « **Reply #5 on:** April 14, 2008, 07:42:40 AM »

Yeah, it goes by pretty fast huh?!! I definitely got lost a bunch of times!

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the first article:

?I went in with the idea I didn?t want to be a standard bassist,? he says. ?At that time, who played anything interesting in rock & roll bass? There wasn?t anything going on, and I didn?t want to be relegated to the role of just thumping along. I wanted to bring a more fluid, melodic approach to the instrument.? With little background in pop music, Lesh drew instead on his classical training?particularly contrapuntal composers such as Bach and Palestrina?for inspiration. ?In counterpoint the bass line is a melody, as are all the other lines, yet they all fit together. They move at different speeds sometimes, but it?s always interesting, and it?s always linear. The voices always lead somewhere.?

There were at least a couple of people doing interesting things on bass - not sure exactly when he's talking about, maybe 1965 or '66? But Paul McCartney was definitely not a standard bassist even at that time. But like the article says, Phil wasn't listening to pop music, which is part of his charm as a bass player.

glocke · « **Reply #6 on:** April 14, 2008, 07:53:22 AM »

That qoute threw me off a little also, as jamerson was around at that time. But like you said, maybe its due to Phil being isolated from pop music. But than I recall another interview where he said he was driving a postal truck and would listen to the beatles on AM radio. Who knows....

One of my favorite qoutes from Phil is when asked if he had any interest in teaching or writing about his playing style, and basically his reply was that he didnt, and that most musicians would be able to figure out what hes doing by listening anyway.