Phil Lesh Quotations

Because, first of all, we were becoming aware during that tour that there was a group of people that was following the band around, and they weren't interested in coming in to the shows, they were just interested in hangin' out outside and tryin' to break in.

And there was a movement afoot to take another year off, and if we had been able to do that, and rethink everything, I think when we came back it would have been very different.

Especially in the realm of bringing an opportunity to do something creative to people, as I said, who wouldn't ordinarily have that opportunity. I think that's very important.

Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s.

Michael is the kind of guy who has rhythm; he has rock'n'roll in his soul, whether he really plays it or not.

And the input that we always got from Deadheads, at the moment of making the music, was always a factor.

And that format was - we'd been using that format, I guess, since the late '70s, and it was starting to get very predictable. In other words, certain songs would surface in the same points in the set every so often; it was like rotation.

The decision to change the name meant we were getting serious, because we couldn't make a record if some other band had the same name as us. I told the boys I was in a record store, thumbing though 45s, and I'd seen a record with the name the Warlocks on it. I've often wondered whether I hallucinated it, because I never saw the record again and I never heard a word about any band called the Warlocks.

I mean, sports are big, big, big business.

Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing.