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This year's Phish reunion takes me back to a night in 1996, with the Vermont quartet sequestered in Woodstock's legendary Bearsville studios and playing down the "new Dead" tag everyone wants to pin on them. Says drummer Jon Fishman, "there is no next Jerry Garcia."--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

On this starry summer night in Bearsville, New York, the four members of Phish are bracing themselves for the inevitable Grateful Dead question. You see, folks have dubbed Phish "the new Grateful Dead." Some have even been tasteless enough to suggest that Jerry Garcia's death was the best thing that ever happened to them.

"Everyone was saying, 'God, you guys are really gonna go over the top now!" says drummer Jon "Fish" Fishman. 'And I kept saying, I really don't think that's going to happen--there is no next Garcia."

In fact, Phish are united in agreement that Deadheads have not defected en masse to the Phish cause. They concede that the same sort of people are addicted to the "nomadic lifestyle" of following a band around on tour, and if pressed will even admit that the Dead were "hugely influential on us." But they believe their music to be considerably more eclectic than that of Captain Trips and his pals.

A brief acquaintance with their output to date confirms that the Dead are merely one of several tributaries that flow into Phish's river. Frank Zappa and Steely Dan are just as evident in their sound, while a fixation with the late great Sun Ra (which saw Arkestra veterans Michael Ray and Marshall Allen guesting on singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio's recent solo project Surrender To The Air) remains a potent inspiration.

More to the point, there is something uniquely Phishy that's illustrated admirably on the new "sampler" album Stash, a highly agreeable tour through their jazz-funk-rock, banjo-driven bluegrass and ethereal balladry. "Fast Enough For You" and "If I Could" (graced by the pellucid harmonising of a pre-famous Alison Krauss) are two of the loveliest songs I've heard in a long while. "Scent Of A Mule" is a jubilant country-rock classic.

The band's journey began some 13 years ago at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Situated on the shores of Lake Champlain just 50 miles from the Canadian border, the town proved the perfect place for a young group to hone their sound. "It was like a womb for bands," says Fishman, who answered Anastasio's on-campus ad looking for like-minded musos in late 1983. "There was nothing to keep up with so there was no point where any of us was really concerned with being part of a scene."

"Vermont was just longhairs who lived out in the country and grew pot and hiked a lot," adds Anastasio, who also recruited bassist Mike Gordon and, two years later, keyboard prodigy Page McConnell. Umpteen gigs at a Burlington bar called Nectar's--homage to which was paid on 1992's Elektra debut A Picture Of Nectar-- led to the band's venturing further afield in New England and New York. When Elektra A&R scout Sue Drew stumbled on them playing Manhattan in 1990, the band already commanded a loyal following of blissed-out Phish-Heads.

Six years on from that fateful evening, Phish are one of the biggest live draws in America, co-partners in a multi-million-dollar corporation whose success, by their own admission, sits uneasily alongside their singular lack of interest in stardom.

Last December, the band sold out two nights at Madison Square Garden, the second a New Year's Eve spectacular boasting plenty of the "antics, gags and practical jokes" for which their live shows have become renowned. (At successive Halloween gigs they've performed the Beatles' White Album and the Who's Quadrophenia in their entirety; for their upcoming festival at an Air Force base in Plattsburg, New York, they're planning to suffuse their fans with perfumes.)

As we repair from the band's Bearsville guest house to the studio where Steve Lillywhite is producing their next album, Fishman tells me he attributes their success less to their considerable musical talent than to the work they've put into their personal relationships. "Everybody puts a lot of effort into their parts and stuff," he says "But I think it's the effort we've made over the years to get along as people that's really made the difference. After all, you can't have sex with people you don't like..."