“All of a sudden, this punk rocker is deemed the man who does prog-rock - or jam bands, if you will. What a U-turn! But you know, I love all art forms, the exception being opera. Opera I probably wouldn’t be very good at.

“Phish, for me, are the musical equivalent of watching a flock of birds fly across the sky: They don’t scatter every which way, but rather, they move with each other; they dip and dive, they go up and down; but at all times, they seem to have this radar, this instinct, for where the bird in front or in back of them is going. Musically, each member of Phish knows what the other is doing, which then carries over to the whole.

“The band can play anything, which then raises the question: Well, what should they play? With Billy Breathes, it’s the closest they got to making what I would say is a good stoner album.

"You know what I mean: you put on the CD, you fire up a big one and you just go down that road. There hadn’t been a good stoner record since Dark Side Of The Moon. Billy Breathes got close. I keep telling Trey Anastasio we can make a better one.”