Dan Gladman's Interview with Tom Marshall

Thanks to Rosemary. You're the best! To appear in Fantastic Voyage System, March issue Interview with Tom Marshall, by Dan Gladman Tom Marshall writes lyrics for Phish. Many of the songs fans sing at shows are word concoctions of his. Yet, does anybody know anything of the man? The one and only time I met Tom was in Amsterdam in July, 1996. I bumped into Phish singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio in a coffeeshop where he, Tom and several fans were hanging out, smoking marijuana legally and discussing the band and that night's show. I, travel-weary and wearing my Phish tour hat, purchased in Canandaigua, NY in 1994, spoke to Tom for several minutes, never realizing he was the man behind the words. The guy doesn't look like he has anything to do with a rock 'n' roll band. Of course, no one in Phish does either. Our interview was conducted over email exclusively from Sept. 28 - Nov. 11, 1996. I have not spoken to him since our short meeting in the summer. To conclude an email response in October, Tom simply closed with "you the man." I responded, "I know." When I received my copy of Doniac Schvice for Late Fall '96, I was surprised, amused and honored to see that two questions from this very interview were included in the 'Letters' section of the Phish newsletter. It is true I am a fan of Phish, but I also have taken this interview quite seriously. As did Tom, or it appeared on occasion. Some of his answers gave some true insight into Phish. Other answers were downright hilarious. And some were absolutely useless. I have not included these answers in the interview, though I admit, some of my questions were probably stupid too. Tom Marshall is a biology professor, family man, humorist and songwriter. His heralded sense of humor comes through in his lyrics and his emails. I was easily confused and intrigued by him at the same time. He is part of the insular Phish organization though few interviews of him have been published. As a friend, contributor and rare performer, he has an unmatched insight to the band. DG: Is Free going to be a single? Why was that particular song chosen? Is it not a little "trippy" for mass consumption? Has the album version been shortened? TM: Yes - I don't know really, it always just was 'the single.' I don't think it's too trippy, although it is certainly Phishy, and it remains to be seen if radio listeners can digest Phish this time around. No - the single version hasn't been remixed in any way that I know of. DG: What is Theme from the Bottom about? I figure it is a drug message song (Don't you see anything that you'd like to try). TM: It's sort of about a relationship that became easy to think about in the 'bottom-feeder/top-feeder' motif. You know, the top feeders are the fish with their eyes oriented looking downwards for prey - like some sharks. Bottom feeders usually subsist on morsels that sink to the bottom for whatever reason... they have flat bellies and their eyes are on top, forever looking upwards for that scrap of food with their name on it. Not really drugs, you take it out of context and it can mean anything, but the whole quote may be easier to understand: "I ask you why if I'm swimming by/ Don't you see anything you'd like to try." DG: Theme from the Bottom is about scuba diving? TM: No - I wrote it using the bottom feeder/top feeder fish reference as a metaphor to describe a particular relationship. Certain fish hover around the surface of the water and are usually the more aggressive hunters as opposed to the bottom feeders that rely on camouflage and consequence to eat. DG: I was surprised to hear Theme was included on the album. How did the band decide on a definitive version of a song that has endless possibilities on stage? TM: I don't think they were worried about this becoming a 'definitive' version - I think they were striving for a great version which was similar to the idea they had for it when it was first written. DG: Why was Strange Design not included on the record? TM: It was scrapped at the last second. The band was touring in Europe at the time and made the painful decision there - in Italy or France I think. The album was complete and about to be mastered. Design was the last song on the album - after Caspian. It was a bizarre version that no one ever really got used to. It was funny though - the second they got back to the states and played it in their new acoustic setup it was as strong as ever. It just couldn't be captured in the studio for whatever reason. Cutting it was one of those great decisions - after working so long and hard on the song, sacrificing it for the good of the album took a very wide focus - as much thought went into cutting it as went into recording it. DG: Will Elektra be hyping this album more than previous Phish albums? Is the record company looking to sell a million copies? Is the band? TM: No idea. DG: Was Elektra satisfied with sales of "A Live One"? Rolling Stone wrote last year that sales of live records were down considerably, though it appeared "A Live One" sold a lot by Phish's standards. TM: I don't have a clue what record companies think - there's so much psychology involved in trying to market to such a young demographic. You have to be 'hip' and yet be 'business people' at the same time. I was on the VIP platform at The Clifford Ball when a bunch of Elektra people squeezed by. My friend Richard Gehr, who is a music writer [for Rolling Stone] and is always very tapped into what is going on turned to me with a "who was THAT?" kind of look on his face - I mouthed "Elektra" to him and he nodded and said, "They had a record company 'vibe'." He was right. I know the vibe now and recently found myself awash in it again on a subway in New York. DG: Is the following anecdote correct: Trey once had you say something into the microphone during a band practice. Your words were "Marco Esquandolas." Was it The Dude of Life who said that? TM: I said that in the song Run Like an Antelope. The lyrics are otherwise entirely by the Dude. It wasn't a band practice - it was in Trey's basement when he recorded the first version of that song. DG: Do you tour with Phish? Just on special occasions? TM: The latter - I wouldn't want to tour all the time. I would wear out my welcome (if I haven't already!) - everyone on tour is working all the time. It's kind of weird to be the only guy floating around the tour with NOTHING to do. The band gets really weird on tour too. I'll give you an example. Most people think of the tour bus as a fun place to be, it's actually anything but! After the bus drives away from the venue, [bassist] Mike [Gordon] meditates in his bunk for the whole ride no matter how long it is | - it looks like sleeping to me, but he claims it takes the place of sleep and is much more efficient. Fish [drummer Jon Fishman] on the other hand has quite a rigorous regimen. He gets into a skin suit and folds the armrests up on the seat next to the driver, swivels it around backwards and 'mounts' it. I can't think of a better word for it. It's an embarrassing thing to watch because he does this thrusting motion with his hips for at least an hour. The other band members completely ignore it, but I haven't gotten used to it yet. He says it's the only way to stretch his back after drumming a whole show. [Keyboardist] Page McConnell jumps on the cell phone and vanishes into the back room for the entire trip... leaving me to deal with Trey. Trey sleeps in a vertical bunk in a 'low pressure/high oxygen' atmosphere. You've never seen anything like it. It's a sealed tank that he hangs in using those gravity boots that hook onto a bar in the tank. He wears three donut-shaped cushions around his knees, hips and shoulders to prevent him from hitting the sides of the tank when the bus is moving. I (or Brad [Sands] the tour manager) help him get in, then dial the external oxygen tank to the right setting and then turn on the vacuum pump to decrease the pressure in the tank. Then I turn on the CD player that blasts his choice of 10 CDs into the tank at high volume. I usually play cards with Brad (who's quite awful I should mention) or watch videos and wait for the trip to end. DG: New Year's 95 at Madison Square Garden - I was not there but I've heard the tape. Was it you who sang "Shine"? Why was that song chosen for that moment? Was it to make fun of all the teeny-boppers in the audience? TM: Yes I sang it. No - I sang it in protest of [Collective Soul's] Dean Reynolds ripping off those lyrics from me. I mean, who is he fooling? "Heaven let your light shinedown" ... Anyone who knows my lyrics should recognize my style in that song instantly. I was hoping that the New Year's performance would be the impetus for a huge public outcry, but it just fizzled. DG: Did you enjoy The Clifford Ball? Had that weekend been planned months in advance? TM: The weird thing was that it was actually all set up for a Penn and Teller show. Penn lost his voice on the previous weekend and suggested to Fishman's mom - whom he has dated on occasion - that perhaps Phish should just take over. The rest is history. No one told Teller's grandfather however, and he flew a small plane up from Indiana to see his grandson perform. Unfortunately he arrived right in the middle of the last song of the whole show, Harpua, and he started to shower the crowd with deadly sparks from the plane's carburetor (an old World War I pilot's trick). Trey tried to cover for this embarrassing episode by incorporating it into his story, but he became flustered and eventually walked off the stage in disgust, vowing to never perform for a 'magic show crowd' again. DG: Who is Tom Marshall - the man? TM: A competition vacuum specialist. A condensed version of my former self. A gorky mother-fucker that doesn't really ever know what to do with his hands. DG: What is your occupation? I have been told you are a biology professor. TM: Oh, and that too. DG: Does it bother you or the band when your name is mentioned in the same breath as [Grateful Dead lyricist] Robert Hunter? Are Grateful Dead references just a huge pain-in-the-ass by now? TM: I think they might have been to the band but not really to me. I mean, no one in the band is insulted by being compared to the Dead, it was a period they went through when they needed to distance themselves from the Dead in a way that they don't really feel the need to do as much anymore. I remember also a couple years ago at most where there were no articles written about Phish that didn't mention Blues Traveler. I think it's appropriate to compare bands to other bands, but wake up! Phish is NOTHING like either of these bands. The scene and the audience do overlap however... As for being compared to Robert Hunter, again, it's similar circumstances that are really all that can be compared, although I take it as a compliment when I hear it no matter what context it was mentioned in. DG: What are your influences in songwriting? Tolkien? Hunter? Collective Soul? TM: David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, maybe. Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge certainly. I need a female on the list... oh Emily Dickinson and her fear of death. There's two. Umm... Neil Young... the list changes constantly. Poe stays on it though. DG: The lyrics credit in Golgi Apparatus on "Junta" states you are part of the immortal songwriting team from the eighth grade. Does your friendship with Phish, ie. Trey, really go that far back? TM: Yup. The team that was mentioned was Bob Szuter, Marshall (me) and Aaron Wolf. We all were in the same grade with Trey along with Marc Daubert (who was briefly in Phish and wrote The Curtain) and Dave Abrahams (who wrote Runaway Jim among other numerous contributions). DG: Yesterday was Anastasio's birthday. How does the Phish family celebrate such an occasion? Is it more festive than Rosh Hashana or did you even know? TM: I can't think of anything more festive than Rosh Hashana - I mean that guy could party! He even has 'hash' in his name! They celebrate by spending time hanging out, you know, vacuuming and doing dishes. Family stuff. Boring holes in tables. Honing the cutlery. You get the picture. DG: In Amsterdam, I don't know if you remember, I don't know how I do, you, Trey, myself and about 4 other fans smoked hashish. I don't expect you to tell about personal usage and its impact on your creativity (you can if you want), but I want to ask about the heavy drug use at Phish concerts. What is Phish's feeling about it? Mailouts really stress staying away from nitrous oxide, but there isn't much literature about the other prevalent narcotics (THC, LSD, ecstasy, etc.) TM: Right. Don't stay away from that other stuff. Unless perchance you are driving that night, or know someone who is, or are blessed with a relative who drives or operates heavy machinery in his or her spare time. Phish's feeling on drug use at their shows is, essentially, one of sympathy. DG: Do you do email at 11:00 p.m. eastern standard time every other night? TM: Yes. It's the only time I have entirely to myself... DG: You didn't confirm if you are a biology professor or not? What school? UVM? TM: I'm sort of a freelance biology professor, between jobs at the moment, but willing to conduct impromptu seminars on the peltate leaf of the pennyroyal at the drop of a hat. DG: Do you live in Burlington? Have you always lived there? TM: No. Yes. DG: Are you married with children? Page and Trey are married - does that interfere with being a "rock star?" TM: Yes - I'm married with one child, my almost three-year old daughter Anna, who's about to be joined by another (hopefully though with a different name) sometime right around New Year's Eve - which, alas, might cause me to miss my first New Year's appearance onstage for three years in a row... Do I think marriage interferes with being a rock star? Yes. I think it interferes with everything. I think it's a bogus institution, a leftover biblical remnant which has no basis in how we really should live. Look at primates - our closest ancestors in the wild - the males have several mates. Who said we should have only one mate for the rest of our lives? Was it Jesus? What did he know about mating? DG: Do you write your lyrics independently of the music then send them to Trey? Do you have books of literature which he leafs through and selects his favorites from? TM: Mainly, yes. I fax stuff to Trey, or give him a bunch of my recent work if I happen to see him. Then I forget about it. I'll go visit garage sales looking for antique butterfly collections. Then on some later day, out of the blue, the phone will ring and Trey will call with a song partially written needing some word rearrangement. Better still are the times I come home and find a new song on my answering machine. Trey works best at his own pace - suddenly he'll come up with some great riff and he'll work it out and then flip through his stack of my lyrics until he finds something that works. That's part one. Somtimes that's all it takes, but often he'll call me and we'll spend the remainder of the day or week putting the finishing touches on it. DG: My favorite song on"Billy Breathes" is Character Zero. Could you tell me what the lyric is when it goes: "I-i-i-i-. . . ?" What is the song about? I interpreted it as a response to all the free advice people give each other. Your message seems to be: "Fuck 'em. I'll do my thing." TM: I guess it's kind of about that - if you listen to other people enough, eventually they will contradict each other. "I, I ought to clean the Manmahr Cave" (a cave in southern Italy where Fishman was born). DG: When you're backstage at a Phish show do you dance to the jamming or do you inhale nitrous and mingle with 14-year old Phans? Basically, what's a show like for you? TM: Well, during the music I'm out there in my seat, or in a general admission show I take refuge at the soundboard. Before and after the show I hang with the band or friends backstage, but after the first set I stay out in the crowd and I try to meet everyone whom I told I'd see at the soundboard. If you want to meet me, that's where I'll be. By the way - don't think I haven't noticed your skillful placement of "the drug question" here and in that other question... Why don't you just come out and ask the question you've been dancing around: "How do you unfreeze Fishman's lips from the nitrous tank before the second set?" DG: How was your day? Any interesting conversations? Who else do you converse with on email? TM: Robert Hunter and I have emailed. I asked him some lyricist-to-lyricist questions. He wished me "balance..." I chat with [producer] Steve Lillywhite online now and again. I haven't yet figured out a skillfull way to get him to talk about Peter Gabriel's third album - my favorite. He's hung up on "Billy Breathes" lately for some reason. DG: Why were the lyrics to "Rift" more serious than those of the three previous albums? TM: I was going through a dark stage I think. I actually like being there because it's much easier for me to write when the abyss beckons... but it's harder on my family, so now I can only vacation there once in a while. DG: I find the lyrics to Down with Disease to be cryptically prophetic. "Waiting for the time/ When I can finally say/ This has all been wonderful/ But now I'll find my way/ Children dancing on my lawn/ Stealing all my lines." Did you write these lyrics? Are these the most auto-biographical Phish lyrics there are? TM: I wrote these. They work for Phish but weren't necessarily intended to tell their story in any way. I actually had mononucleosis - it was my favorite sickness ever! I'm not trying to trivialize what I understand can be very serious for some people, but it was great for me - I got to hang out in my apartment for three weeks and do nothing. My mind spun about my little apartment in an increasing-radius spiral. My arms were so heavy one day I couldn't lift them - it was a trip! I wrote these words in the height of my delirium. DG: "Hung those nasty fliers/ On all the buildings in town" Did that really happen to you or someone or is it just a magnificent image? TM: Just a magnificent image - a 9 or 10 on the Beaufort scale - enough to 'cause slight structural damage.' DG: Do you follow new music other than Phish? I'm talking new, new music. Not 'alternative' music but groups like Dave Matthews Band, Rusted Root, Blues Traveler and newer entities like moe., Medeski Martin and Wood, Leftover Salmon. TM: Yes I follow DMB, moe. and Blues Traveler - in fact I've met every member of each of those bands and am even friendly with a few! My musical taste is weird - I listen mainly to Phish, but at work I'll borrow other people's CDs and that's how I keep up on some of the newer stuff. Rusted Root, and MMW I haven't been blessed with yet. I saw Leftover Salmon in NYC somewhere | - a funny bunch. DG: Do you think this new direction represents progression in rock 'n' roll? Is rock a dying art? TM: You mean - is this kind of "back to basics," "retreading old ground"? I don't think so. I'll just talk about Phish OK? - I can't lump those other bands with them even if you try to force me to. I hear newness and oldness in Phish. They're forging ahead on one hand yet are using their vast knowledge of musical styles to do so. What does this mean for the future of rock 'n' roll? Who cares? DG: Is there an east coast sound vs. a west coast sound? Which one's better? TM: The west coast sounds slightly better I guess, but only because a kid broke my right eardrum with a coat hanger when I was three and I don't hear as well from the right side. DG: [Another] token drug question: Do you think Frank Zappa ever inhaled? TM: That sure is a tokin' question. DG: Last year, driving home from Sugarbush, [Vermont] I stopped at Nectar's for fries. It felt like pilgrimage. Were you around during those Nectar's dayzz? What was the aura like from 1986-89? Was every show at Nectar's a special occasion? TM: I only caught one Nectar's show. And one at Hunt's. And one on campus. And one at Hamilton College. That's all of the really early stuff I saw. DG: What do you think of the Phish.net? Do you browse or participate? TM: I participate now and again. I think it's really cool. If a subject title doesn't catch my interest I skip right on by. I read album reviews, questions about lyrics, interpretations of songs (my favorite!), etc. I'm not into any talk about which is the best tape or stuff like that. DG: I heard Free on a chessy local radio station today. Is Phish ready to have a "hit single?" Will they sell publishing rights? Will tablatures appear in Guitar World? Will Waste be played at Bar Mitzvahs in the year 2000? TM: "Bar" Mitzvah... another hidden party reference? Oh those wacky Jews! DG: What else was in consideration for Halloween '96 other than Talking Heads? TM: Actually letting the audience vote for it again, although when Alanis Morrisette was the first vote they got they decided to withdraw the offer. DG: Brother, Wedge, Tube and Sanity. Rarities. Why are these tunes being played commonly this fall? TM: To revoke their status as "rarities." DG: I broke up with my girlfriend last week. I can't stop referring to lyrics from "Rift" ie. "As if she were the last one she thought I'd betray." Also, Dog Faced Boy is quite stinging. Were these songs based on actual events? Yours or someone else's? TM: A lot of Rift may have been my relationship(s) rising to the surface... although Dog Faced Boy was primarily written by Fishman - I just wrote the "Dog Faced Boy" verse - he wrote all the sentimental shit. DG: The Europe '97 itinerary seems to be conducive to college and high school spring break. Does Phish want their hardcore fans flying over again? Will the fans come no matter what? TM: They'd prefer them not to fly over. DG: How can the band grab a European audience if Americans are buying all the tickets? TM: Discreetly. DG: Are you and the others aware that seeing a Phish concert in the Netherlands is kind of like seeing the Pope speak to heaven? TM: Yes - although most prefer when he gets an answer as well, otherwise it's just like watching someone talk on a payphone in the station while you're waiting for a train. DG: There's a lot of underground music publications springing up which cover "jam bands." Phish garners a lot of that press. What do you think personally about the following publications and their coverage of Phish? i)Pharmer's Almanac, ii)Fantastic Voyage Systems, iii)Relix (and their ancient Phish photo on a recent cover). TM: i) Parking lot shirt salesmen copy data from the Phish.net and hock it for profit. I'm not "allowed" to talk about them anymore please, next question? ii) One of the best titles available (I'm really just referring to the title). iii) Pretty decent in their own way - like watching the Pope playing poker with heaven. DG: Earlier I asked you how it was chosen who opened for Phish on certain dates. You replied "Open What?" What I meant was how are opening acts chosen? For example, in 1994, the Dave Matthews Band opened some shows. In 1995, Medeski Martin and Wood opened for Phish in New Orleans. In Vancouver, Baby Gramps has opened. TM: I think they go through an elaborate process which involves determining if there are any musicians in the area that night. Dan Gladman is managing editor at The Gazette, the daily student newspaper at the University of Western Ontario. He likes driving 8 hours before seeing a Phish show.