I have a long, strange history with Phish. I’m an admirer—nobody dares do what Phish does routinely, which is to play a completely different show and challenge its audience—and a skeptic, because sometimes, they step on their dicks.

In 1997, after the August 10 Phish concert at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, I wrote one of the most negative reviews I ever wrote about anyone. The oft-quoted line is this: “To be blunt (and paraphrase the title of a popular book), Phish could urinate in its fans’ ears and tell them it’s music. The fans, in turn, would be there with tape recorders to capture the moment.”

There was not much Internet to speak of at the time, so the review made its way around the Phish world slowly. Angry letters trickled in for the next year or so.

But to his everlasting credit—and one of the reasons I’ll always be a Phish fan—Trey Anastasio responded like this.

At the time of this interview, in 1993, I was strictly an admirer, and Trey and I had a great conversation. The band had put out “A Picture of Nectar,” its third studio album, the previous year, and was about to play in Indianapolis at the 2,400-seat Murat Theatre. But most of our talk was about jamming and taping and the phenomenon that Phish was about to become. 

In rereading the transcript after all these years, it’s funny to think that Phish was, at the time, being compared with the Spin Doctors, a band that bit the dust (commercially) not long after. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that no one compares with Phish.