25 Years Later: Revisiting Phish’s The Great Went: A Bonfire At The Edge Of The World

There’s something special about a community gathering to see art. Hearts pulse together in a line at theaters, in galleries, at comedy shows, and concerts. The simple act of gathering creates the canvas where art can happen, where the shared experience of crowds can elevate the art to a divine realm.  

Shakespeare had his Globe. Mozart had symphony halls. Spielberg had movie theaters with lines around the block. People would gravitate to these places full of anticipation, wonder, and awe.  The ritual is timeless. And if the art succeeds, they leave these gatherings with elation… and the art stays behind.

On August 16 and 17 of 1997, Phish had The Great Went.

The ride up to Limestone Maine was long. Impossibly long. Cheers erupted in our car we crossed the Maine border only to realize we still have nine hours of driving ahead of us. Limestone is the nether reaches of the continental United States. If you had a map of the United States on your wall as a kid, it’s possible Limestone was to the right of the tack.  

But there was something essential about that journey. When the traffic of the northeast slowly faded away, all that was left was fellow Phish fans on their way. We began to pulse as one community, as one unified creature. The gathering started on the road.

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Locals waved from folding chairs on their front lawns. Beaming gas station owners happily pointed out bathrooms while they sold out of ice. Phish bumper stickers seemed to multiply all around us as this strange tribe convened.

And finally, when you were just close enough, this caravan heading north would be literally getting on the same frequency. There’s a gulping excitement that washes over you when you first hear Phish’s Bunny Radio in your car. It means the gathering is just there, right at the horizon, all that’s left is arriving.

The concert grounds were a simple airstrip with runways serving as boulevards. This wasn’t the cush environs of today’s festivals. There was no VIP, no water and power hookups, and if the port-o-potties were ever serviced, that would be news to me. But it didn’t matter. This was 1997 and every Phish fan there was probably 18 years old. We would manage.

The community would thrum around the grounds checking out what was now the largest city in Maine.  The driving, the radio, and the wandering all served a greater purpose.  We were all unifying ahead of the reason we came here.

That, of course, was the music.  

The first set was among the longest in Phish history. Clocking in at nearly two hours, it was full of long jams, inside jokes, and several songs you were sure would be the last of the set. Trey famously derided this set as a “bad set”, but he’s just plain wrong. The crowd was settling in, just like the band.  Page’s parting words with the audience at the conclusion of the set-ending “The Squirming Coil” seemed to slyly reveal the abundance that we all knew lay ahead…. “Stick Around”.

The second set on that first day is where the weekend truly began to unfold. “Wolfman’s Brother,: given new life in 1997’s new sparse jam style, opened the set with an all-time version. “Simple” brought us back to earth before segueing into an effortless and demented take on the “Odd Couple” theme. Later in the set, a transcendent “Slave to the Traffic Light” emerged out of a circus funhouse jam. You could sense why you came up to Limestone during this set. You felt comfortable. The band was in peak form and the possibilities for the rest of the weekend were endless. 

The third set was another one of 1997’s many peaks, a “Halley’s Comet> Cities” stretched out with slowed stuck-n-the-mud funk jamming and finally emerged to blistering rock with a fiery “Llama.” “Limb by Limb followed and Mike’s vocals, “And I’m… Taken…. Far Away” mesmerized listeners as Trey and Page floated above. The jam had several peaks and passages, finally fading away into the now-familiar Fishman drumbeat; at that moment, it was a masterpiece.  

The night ended with fireworks during “Funky Bitch” and communal hands-in-air swaying during “Contact “before bringing it all home with “Loving Cup.”  What says “community” quite like gathering to watch fireworks?

At 2 am, long after the concert grounds had cleared, you could see a little flatbed truck in the distance to the left of the main stage. We raced towards the spinning colored lights to find… nobody. What was going on here? Thirty minutes later, one by one, the band members came out to fiddle with strange synthesizers. What followed is probably the worst music Phish made in 1997, if not their whole career.   The Great Went is Phish’s most accomplished festival from a musical perspective, but the secret set just didn’t carry its weight. It was cool to see them up close and see that Page drinks regular ol’ Budweiser though. 

After a short rainfall overnight, the morning began with an unexpected sight. Hundreds of fully naked people walked towards the concert grounds to participate in the Spencer Tunick photo shoot. What a moment. This secretly might remain many a Phish fan’s biggest regret… not missing a show or allowing the fun to get too far ahead of me… it was this… stripping down at The Great Went. 

The opening set on that Sunday found a fully laid-back crowd ready for anything. “The Wedge” opener reminded us all we were in Limestone and an outstanding “Tweezer>Taste” set the stage for the rest of the night to come.  

What happens next is Phish history. The amount of ink spilled about this set is immense. It’s a single piece of art that hung in the air that night. A collective hum fell over the audience, an unheard frequency uniting the entire audience and Phish as they effortlessly moved from “Down With Disease” to a Trey and Mike jam to “Bathtub Gin.” To one’s ears, you can still hear that hum in Bathtub Gin. After a welcome rip through “Uncle Pen,” we heard the “2001” drum beat as Page and Fishman led the jam while Mike and Trey got their chance to paint some art on stage. If “Down with Disease” and “Bathtub Gin” had the crowd enraptured, “2001” was the release. It was a full-on dance party. The fact it just kept going gave everybody more energy. At the conclusion, we felt the fusion of band and audience as the band passed its art to the crowd to be affixed to a gigantic art tower on stage left.

In a set where we saw musical art and literal art painted on stage, it was in “Harry Hood” where the audience got their chance to make art. All night fans had been seeing glow sticks in the crowd, a relative rarity at Phish shows at that time. But when Trey asked for the lights to be turned off during the Harry Hood jam, there was a spontaneous repurposing of those glow sticks scattered throughout the crowd.  At first, a few went flying into the air. Then a few more. The crowd wailed. And soon, there were more.  And more. Thousands were tossed into the air, a collective improvisation for a crowd communicating as one.  It was a magical moment.  

With the deserved plaudits surrounding what was perhaps Phish’s greatest set, the third set often gets dismissed. The songs available for that set and not played are well known… “Mike’s Groove,” “Run like an Antelope,” “David Bowie”… and hell, EVERYTHING from Gamehendge. But this set was perfect in its own way.  Following the peak of the previous set, we got a set that could only be great at that moment. Not on paper and not on tape. You needed to be exhausted, your body and mind pleading for catharsis.  We needed that set to drift back to reality. “Buffalo Bill” clipped into “NICU” while “Weigh” created some laughs. “Guyute gave us some complexity.” “Scent of a Mule” gave us the most relaxed psychedelic jam of the weekend and a strong “Prince Caspian” brought us home. 

The community was soon to disband. Like all gatherings for art, the magic must be left behind.  The play ends without a recording. Mozart leaves nothing but sheet music. The crackling intensity of the first time you see a movie in a theater cannot be duplicated in a home. At the Great Went 25 years ago, the art tower, encompassing every physical piece of art made all weekend plus the band members’ contributions, was destroyed in a gigantic climatic fire following the encore. It burned as we all walked by, slowly watching the structure collapse.  

The art can never survive the night, but The Great Went lives on.  

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