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Q: Who wrote lyrics for Phish songs?

"Writing is easy.
All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper
until drops of blood form on your forehead."
-- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

Besides Mike (e.g. "Foam"), Fish (e.g. "Faht"), Page (e.g. "Magilla"), Trey (esp. TMWSIY, though at least 268 are registered in his name), and collaborations within the band (e.g. on Ghost ), lyrics to Phish songs have been penned by:

Tom Marshall, lots
Susannah Goodman, "Bathtub Gin"
"Daubs" Daubert co-wrote, e.g. "Curtain"
Richard Wright (aka Nancy Taube) wrote "Haley's Comet"
Dude of Life - three tunes on Junta
the "8th grade songwriting team" including Szuter and Woolfe, on Golgi Apparatus
J. Linitz, co-credited for "The Train Song" on Billy Breathes
Scott Herman: "Cavern", "Limb by Limb", and the second verse of "Squirming Coil"
list terribly incomplete -- please submit others! and see The Phish Companion for a complete list

"I was a little sick of the goofiness, to be perfectly honest. I wanted to say things that were closer to my heart." - Trey to Aspen Times, 6/23/06

"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)"

"Trey had this book called the Dictionary of Clichés and that's how AC/DC Bag' was written." - Mike Gordon on Jambands.com, 8/29/03

Thanks also to CJ Manza and Josh Soper.

We also are people who appreciate simple songs with lyrics you can sing and relate to. I don't think it's for the sake of commercial success. It is more that these are the things we like to listen to ourselves. It would be good to do a combination of that and keep trying to do different things." - Mike in Billboard, 12/21/02

This page last updated January 04, 2009.
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