Phil Lesh Remembered By Pierre Robert
Shortly after Pierre Robert jumped off the airwaves on Friday, October 25th news came down the wire that Grateful Dead founding member and bassist Phil Lesh had passed away. In a statement from his Instagram account “Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love. We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time”. He was 84.
Pierre and Phil Lesh Chat in 2013
On Monday, October 28th Pierre dedicated a nice, long Workforce Block of twirling Grateful Dead tunes to commemorate the life and legacy of the legendary musician. Throughout the block Pierre flashed us back to 2013 when Phil came into the WMMR studios for a conversation. He was in town performing as Phil Lesh and Friends with 3 MMR concert events, November 11-13th, at the Tower Theatre.
At the time, Phil was touring with his sons Grahame and Brian which brought him immense joy. Asked about touring with his songs “It is the best thing in the universe. I I mean, I can’t even … words fail me. It’s magical. It’s totally fulfilling. And when we sing together, we have this genetic harmony blend it. It’s sometimes … It’s really creamy and then sometimes it’s really edgy. Tough. But it’s always this unique kind of beautifully colored blend”. Pierre comments “Some people have called it the Phil Harmonic … a take off on Philharmonic” to which Phil, with great humor and wit, says “Yeah…I just think of it as the Lesh genetic blend”.
Box of Rain
To conclude the block, Pierre went into a beautiful and poignant Dead song from American Beauty called “Box of Rain”. Phil, who wrote the song, commented “It turns out I was writing it from my father, who was passing at the time. [Robert] Hunter somehow intuited this because I all I I just wrote. I just wrote the accompaniment and the melody. And so I sort of went recording and saying and gave it to Hunter. And he and he came up with these words which were … They still send chills up my spine … You feel that love will see you through box of rain will ease the pain”.
The full interview is available below as we say: God Bless the Grateful Dead and God Bless the incomparable Phil Lesh!
