You're not there to spread any particular- if you're Bob Marley you're there to spread a message, but very few people can do that effectively without shoving opinions down someone's throat.
— Jon Fishman
When I was seven or eight I was really into Cream, really into Led Zeppelin.
The Grateful Dead were an influence on our music but they weren't by a long shot the biggest influence.
Nirvana was like that- Nirvana was like the only band to come out of that- it was like the same thing, Seattle was like this whole scene and it was like this big scene that was thrust upon America.
I think that you really don't have a choice, when you see that things are wrong the only choice you really have is to just do what you can to make it better.
I think it's like music for the sake of music, and a lot of the words stem from liking music a lot, wanting to be a good band and having a good sense of humour, and living in a situation where we're free to pretty much do what we want.
I don't know how you can go your whole life and not listen once to Bob Marley - what's the point?
You look at the fact that for millions of years species on earth have been developing and we've been knocking them off at like a hundred a day.
When I go on stage man I just want people to have fun, I don't want people to think about their problems, I want people to get energy and nutrition and food from that so they can go back into the real world and work on their problems.
Phish has never had anything to do with any trends at all in America.
Madonna is a pro. I don't like her and have no respect for her but- I don't think she should be called a musician or a dancer or whatever you know, but I do have, well I do have respect for her ability to completely manipulate the media and have them work for her.
I think that Phish has been a band, we've all had- I've had a great life growing up and everybody in my band's had a really good life, none of us have got anything to complain about at all.
I mean people have compared us to like the Grateful Dead and all these like psychedelic sixties bands.
For me from a pretty young age up until about 21 years old hallucinogenics had a huge place in my life.
Where we're living we have a certain amount of our profit every year it's like a percentage 5 or 7% or something like that that we set aside specifically for charity things.
We like where we live and we wanna participate in our neighbourhoods and communities and stuff and try to- we're not like benevolent- it's pretty basic.
People are trying to live freely outside of, or within a system that maybe for them on a day-to-day level isn't as free... I definitely think we're positively orientated.
Led Zeppelin was pretty much what made me pick up drum sticks.
I think that generally music should be a positive thing, I like Bob Marley's attitude: he said that his goal in life was to single handedly fight all the evil in the world with nothing but music, and when he went to a place he didn't go to play, he went to conquer.
I just wanted to say one more thing: I also think that when you go to play music, you're there to play music.
But I do think that we approach music, in of itself, with a religious attitude.
