Tuesday, March 16, 2004
…And All the People In It Merely Players….
It started with my first dead concert – Ventura ’83. They opened with Shakedown Street, and the initial note tore through me like nothing I’d ever heard before. The sound – roaring and rumbling, subsonic and swirling through the Leslies – I was moved to a core I didn’t even know I had. I knew the lead guitar player was named Jerry but I’d avoided learning any more about the band before the concert for fear that I’d turn into an addict or something. But as that undulating disco funk anthem rolled over me I had to ask a friend who’d brought me, Who’s playing bass? He told me, “Phil." I’ve pretty much lived in the Phil Zone ever since.
Over the next several years I saw a bunch of shows, then eventually started staying away – the crowd was getting too rowdy. I still loved the music, though, and especially Phil’s orchestral, sophisticated bone-rattling bass. I was a deadicated Phil-side head and that was the way I liked it. He could simultaneously blow my mind with complex musical constructions, and literally shake my body from the inside out with sheer sound energy.
A year or two after Jerry died I unleashed my thesbianic muse and took a small part in a production of Twelfth Night, the only show I’ve been in twice – and both times, the smallest roles I’ve ever played. This time I was the sea captain and Antonio (Sebastian’s stalwart friend), which put me on stage for about ten minutes of quality time. Compared to the first time I’d done this show, it was a big step forward, and I pitched in while off stage with prop setup and set handling work.
The show was at Stinson Beach, on a new outdoor stage a few stones’ throws from the ocean. The audience brought folding chairs and picnic suppers and lounged on an open lawn. The light was starting to fade as actors and crew scurried around backstage getting everything set in advance of the curtain.
About fifteen minutes before the call for places one night, my sister (who was stagemanaging the production) suddenly ran up to me, eyes wild, face both pale and flushed. When the SM looks like that, it usually means disaster – the female lead is in labor, or someone stole the lighting board, or something of equal gravity. She grabbed both my forearms in a steely, sweaty grip. “Phil is here.” I smiled happily. Phil B, a friendly deadhead of our mutual acquaintance? “No, Phil.” She was leaving off the surname. That meant Phil Lesh.
I blanched, headrushed, went giddy with excitement. She walked me up on stage behind the rotating mirror units and I peeked out through a crack. There he sat, blonde and lanky, with a woman and some kids. Evi seemed to know their names but her words bounced off my ears. He was close enough to have heard me talking about him - one of the finest creative artists I’d ever been privileged to appreciate, lounging front and center with a bottle of wine and an enormous goofy grin on his face, just like a normal. But in actuality, he was Phil. A founding member of one of rock’s greatest icons. My favorite musical genius. In my audience.
I stepped out soon thereafter to start the show with our lovely leading lady, pretending we’d been shipwrecked. “What country, sir, is this?,” she asked me. It’s not really a straight line but Phil was sitting only fifteen feet in front of me. “This is Illyria, lady,” I replied, gesturing to the bulk of Mt. Tam that loomed immediately to the east with dismissive irony. Phil laughed from his belly and so did everybody else.
From then on everything went according to some cosmic script. As I took a brief ensemble bow two hours later I glanced down to see the Leshs, clapping and cheering. If I never tread the boards of a stage again, this I know for sure – I gave something back where I owed it most. Giving Phil Lesh the giggles was my greatest theatrical triumph. It was a small part of a small role, but it felt like a very great thing.
