Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 338
Printing Date: April 18, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 306295
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Product Description:
The bass player for the greatest improvisational band in American history tells the full, true story of his life, Jerry Garcia, and the Dead.
Amazon.com Review:
Right in time for the Grateful Dead's 40th anniversary, eccentric bass player extraordinaire Phil Lesh has delivered fans a most welcome gift: his autobiography. There are many books out there about the Dead told from the perspective of roadies, journalists, third party observers, and fans. However, with the exceptions of Jerry Garcia's ramblings in Garcia: A Signpost to New Space and Conversations With the Dead, Lesh's Searching for the Sound is the very first time a founding member of America's favorite band tells their own story of what it was like inside the Grateful Dead. And what a wonderful, strange tale it is.
Phil Lesh, considered the most academic of the group due to his avant-garde classical composition training, literate mind, and passion for the arts, decided to write his story himself. Written without the crutch of a ghostwriter, Searching for the Sound might be considered disjointed in places, but overall it comes across as conversational, intimate, informative, and candid (particularly regarding topics of drug use and death). If you are familiar with the band and their extended family, their history, the sixties' musical milestones and influences and all the band's famous tales (the Garcia/ Lesh 'silent' confrontation, being busted on Bourbon Street, the Wall of Sound), you may be a little disgruntled there is not much new here in the way of content. However, what is 'new' and totally satisfying is Phil's warm, optimistic perspective on the many events that helped shape his life. As described by Lesh, his life's journey, much like the Dead's music, is 'a [series] of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until it's ending has come and gone.' For the many fans who enjoyed the fruits of his life pursuit of sonic explorations, Searching for the Sound is a welcome addition to their Dead library. --Rob Bracco
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Rated by buyers 
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My very first review on Amazon; so, you know it must be imporatant. This book is terrific. I've read several other books on the Grateful Dead. The other books do not "flow" like this book does. Phil is less concerned with specific dates and more concerned with the overall feeling or "vibe" that was going on at the time. Its easier to read because it doesn't get bogged down in "which people were present at a specific meeting on what date." Its the only book written by a band member (so far). Because of that, it gives the inside perspective on events that others missed. Get into the "PHIL ZONE" and buy this book!
Rated by buyers -
Other than Sting & Sir Pauley, you're the greatest to ever touch the instrument!
XXXJer
Rated by buyers -
I've read at least 10 different books about the Grateful Dead. While many of these books are very informative, nothing comes close to Phil Lesh's book. It reads more like a day-to-day encyclopedia of Phil's perspective of his life before, during and after the Grateful Dead. No detail seems to be left out. His memory of the minutia of his life is staggering. If you really want to know what was going on with Phil before, during and after the Grateful Dead, this book is highly recommended. It is not a quick read but it is very informative: more so than any other book regarding the Grateful Dead. Budget between 15 and 20 hours to read this book even though it does not appear to be that long of a book. Phil, job well done! Bravo!
Rated by buyers -
I've read a few Dead books and this is by far the best insider's perspective. Phil was there from the beginning and vividly recounts what it was like growing with the band. Everything from the acid tests to the untimely death of their front man is covered in great detail. Surprisingly, through all the chemicals, Phil has a great memory of events and leaves nothing out. I was too young to experience the Dead very first hand, but after reading Searching for the Sound, I listen to them as if I had been there.
Rated by buyers -
I like Phil's book. I like it a whale of a lot more than I do Dennis McNally's egotistical cop-out from writing the "authorized biography" of the GD. Phil writes in a nice style, with not a touch of the supposed "arrogance" attributed to him in his younger years evident. In fact one could assume that, due to the changes he needed to make in his lifestyle just to survive in the past decade or so, that also included eating a few large pieces of crow-pie, washed down with genuine humility and probably at times some real tears.
Phil goes into the story of the band, and it's nice to her him speak of it in his own words and terms, as much as it is to read Jerry's account in "signpost to New Space." I'd rather listen to either one of them for what they have to tell than Weir's ideas of it, but that will be for another day in the far future, if indeed he ever gets round to it, as he is threatening to. He talks a bit about the pre-Grateful Dead years when the band were becoming acquainted socially and somewhat "extra musically" which as we all know, eventually led to the Warlocks and history. But it's nice to hear the things he has to say about those early years and times in Berkeley, Palo Alto, las Vegas and SF as though that pre-1966 magic- whatever real gem of magic existed in the Haight scene before the over-hyped "summer of Love" cast its fell shadow upon the city, and also the adventures or misadventures they had leading up to the formation of the band propre.
He also writes about the band as a musical experiment, or an experiment in more than music, as a psychedelic adventurer, and this actually to me is its real value as a book. That he obviously survived acid (some would argue "nobody could take that many trips and remain sane!" but you find the proof of it in his lucid writing, and his great memory.
I have always had something of an issue though with some of the premise he puts forward as one of the band's rasions d'etre, that at times, the audience reacts to the music and vibes of the hall as would a school of fish, in the "one-mind" or "group-mind" mode, and as if this is always to be viewed as a positive thing. Lemmings also react in a group-mind mode, and where does it ever usually get them?
Still, it is good to hear the words of one of the original participants in this "noble experiment" make his arguments and his judgements upon social idioms, and he really CAN write well about music itself, and about the actual mechanics of many of their great songs.
It's a shame we haven't got Jerry here to give his own thoughts about this book, but then, there's the possibility that with him here, Phil never would have felt the need to set it down like this.
I give it five stars- anyone who loves the Grateful Dead or San Francisco Rock & Roll and desires to know as much as possible about it's genuine sources and flavors owes it to themselves to pick it up. You might not put it down again until you're done.
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