SET 1: Down with Disease, Bouncing Around the Room, It's Ice, Ya Mar, Taste, Train Song, Reba, Character Zero, Sweet Adeline
SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Suzy Greenberg -> Jam > Prince Caspian > You Enjoy Myself, Theme From the Bottom, Golgi Apparatus
ENCORE: Good Times Bad Times
Phish had a busy day on November 12th, 1996. Early in the evening, they finally sang the national anthem at their first official sporting event, patriotically christening that night’s game between the Timberwolves and the Trail Blazers at the Target Center. But I don’t think they stuck around to watch Tom Gugliotta’s 26-point, 11-rebound performance lead the Wolves to victory over Clifford Robinson, Kenny Anderson, and Arvydas Sabonis. They had another engagement, over at Paisley Park.
Prince threw parties at his home compound/studio often, but this wasn’t just any night in Chanhassen. The occasion was a special pre-release party for Prince’s upcoming album Emancipation, with both triple record and performance celebrating the release of The Artist Then Formerly Known as Prince from his Warner Brothers contract. Despite Prince being a few years past his (admittedly massive) commercial prime, the event was simulcast live on MTV, VH1, and BET. He played a few new songs, a Joan Osborne cover (?), and “Purple Rain,” natch. Others in the crowd munching on dry boxes of Cap’n Crunch in lieu of cocktails included Boyz II Men, Donatella Versace, Mavis Staples and D’Angelo.
Phish, of course, showed up looking like dorks in Italian suits, according to Mike. But like probably everyone who ever saw Prince in the flesh, the night left an impression on them. As remembered in Rolling Stone:
The highlight for Anastasio was standing a few feet away from Prince in the studio as he plugged in with his band, who were all using see-through Plexiglass instruments and speakers. “It was really cool,” Anastasio says. “He was such a great guitar player, but people don’t point out he was a great rhythm guitar player. The band was playing this funky stuff. He had a woman singing with him, a kind of gospel singer, and she stepped out and started killing it. He stepped back, and I remember thinking that everybody tries to play like James Brown’s rhythm guitar player. Jammy guys do it a lot, and they all get it wrong, myself included. He was playing the most badass little rhythms with the drummer as soon as he got out of the spotlight. I was so fascinated by what he was playing. That’s when I noticed what a great guitar player he was.”
It’s an observation that says as much about Trey himself as Prince. Trey fixates not on Prince’s solos — and you know there was a good one in “Purple Rain,” there always was — but the moments when he steps back and plays rhythm, locking in with his drummer and letting other members of his band take center stage. There was no better time for Phish to have seen The Purple One, when they were mid-transition towards a more democratic and groove-based sound.
It’s yet another sign of where Phish needs to go, and they put it into action the very next night, back in the Target Center again. After a 2001 > Suzy Greenberg to open the second set, they hit the final “bergggggg” of Suzy and…just keep playing Suzy, for another 12 minutes. Like the 11/7/96 Gin a week ago, they don’t really transform the song, they just extend it. And it’s still 1996-y — Trey uses part of the extra-long outro to play his mini-kit for a second time in the same song.
But while he’s on his native instrument, you can imagine he’s doing his best impression of the performance he saw the night before. Trey spends most of the Suzy jam alternating between lead and rhythm, between bandleader and role player, emulating Prince’s ability to turn his ego on and off like a tap. It stretches beyond Suzy too, as Caspian gets its longest run out yet, with a dramatic solo that’s reaching for, if not quite grasping, the gravitas of a Purple Rain. It’s a little sad that they don’t haul out Fishman’s cover, though probably wise — you don’t disrespect the local hero.
Prince provided a well-timed role model that went deeper than his approach to guitar. The man did what he wanted. He didn’t avoid playing the hits live, but he also didn’t play greatest hits sets. Sometimes he would cover Joan Osborne, or the Foo Fighters on the Super Bowl. When I saw him in 2012, he orchestrated a gag that the show was over — the house lights came on, roadies started packing up band equipment — before running back out and playing a further 45 minutes. Prince made the audience come to him, he didn’t come to the audience; we still ate it up.
As much as anything musical, Phish probably needed to see that uncompromising stance firsthand. They had tried it themselves in the extended jams of Fall 1994 and Summer 1995, but backed off, perhaps out of a sense that those experimental journeys were a speed bump for those just looking for a fun night out. Prince offered a singular example of how to do both, to constantly challenge yourself as a musician while still keeping the party going. It’s another piece of the puzzle for what would come together over the next year.
[Thanks to Jambase for gathering the clips of how Phish spent their night at Paisley Park.]