Mickey on Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh changed my life. There are only a few people you meet in your lifetime that are special, important, who help you grow spiritually as well as musically.
He turned me on to the world's music, gave me my first Alla Rakha record when we lived on Belvedere Street, changing forever what I thought was musically possible.
Phil was foremost an improvisationalist and taught me, all of us. Phil was bigger than life, at the very center of the band and my ears, filling my brain with waves of bass. All those years we all rode the third rail together creating something that cannot be defined in words.
Phil was a master of a style he invented, he was singular, an original, nobody sounded like him, nobody. He had wisdom, was older and showed us the way. Later he became first and foremost a family man.. There is no one who loved his wife and sons more than Phil and no one was more dedicated to the Grateful Dead. His sound is indelibly embedded in my mind as is Jerry's sound... and always will be.
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<smartass comment about "liver of a jerk" from me deleted :-)