After 40 nights of U2 at the Sphere, Phish's Trey Anastasio talks about taking over (2025)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Phish has been performing for decades, but never has the band played the same show twice.

Over the 40 years since the band was formed at a Vermont college, Phish has amassed a reputation for its dedicated legion of fans and the dazzling light shows that accompany the improvisational jams. It follows, then, that the next stop for Phish is the new temple of immersive performances: the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Inaugurated with U2's 40-show residency, the $2.3 billion arena will offer Phish fans something they've definitely never seen — or felt — before.

Mind-blowing visuals run up, down and across the floor-to-ceiling screen, designed to be manipulated in real-time during the band's long jams. A sound system features more than 1,600 speakers, allowing for a Trey Anastasio guitar line in one spot and a line from Page McConnell's keys in another. Seats make you feel like you're inside every drum kick from Jon Fishman or bass bomb from Mike Gordon.

Starting Thursday, Phish will play four shows, with new visuals each night — and no repeated songs, of course. Anastasio, the band's frontman, says fans will be able to discern a theme across the shows … and find lots of Easter eggs. The shows will be the first to be livestreamed from the Sphere as well on LivePhish.com.

“I love getting up in the morning and creatively thinking of another cool thing to blow people’s minds,” Anastasio says.

Anastasio talked to The Associated Press this week about the teamwork that goes into these shows, how their "giant rolling family" of fans keeps them going and whether there will ever be another Gamehendge.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

AP: How much different is the Sphere, both from a sound and visual perspective?

ANASTASIO: It’s extremely unique to any venue that we’ve played before. One of the things that we’ve tried to do is sculpt our show so that we can be the band that we always are and play to our strengths while simultaneously using the technology to kind of expand the elements of the show — like the adventure and the breaking free of boundaries.

AP: What has the planning process been like for these shows and were there things you decided not to use along the way?

ANASTASIO: Constantly. Daily. Yesterday. We dropped some things yesterday. It’s a constant process of waking up in the morning and looking for areas that we can improve. Everyone on the team is incredible, but the level of communication and proactive teamwork is hard to describe. And that’s what it takes to get something like this mounted. But yeah, there were ideas on what the thematic narrative that was going to run through the four nights that went on for a month. Then we landed on one. Then it was what songs we’re going to play, what the (visual) content was going to be, how literal we wanted to make it. The answer to that is not very literal. Our fans are really smart and really involved, and we wanted to take a night or so for people to figure out what we were doing, plant a lot of Easter eggs and things like that. But it’s a never-ending daily improvement.

AP: U2 played 40 shows here that were mostly the same set list and visuals. Why was it important for you that the four shows be unique?

ANASTASIO: We’re a very different band. We’ve never repeated a set and we didn’t want to start now. So we created four unique Sphere shows, top to bottom. There was a moment where we were discussing adding shows, because the tickets blew out pretty hard. And we decided as a team that they would be good, but not necessarily astounding — which is the level that we wanted to operate at — unless we just repeated the exact same show over again. The other thing is that Phish is such a wacky community that it kind of set up this scenario where a lot of people would probably want to come back. It’s just the way our fans are. It’s kind of like a big, giant rolling family or community or something like that.

AP: Have you always felt the same need to be creative and do new things, or has that changed as the band has kept going for four decades?

ANASTASIO: Always. Always. I just love the feeling of being part of a group, working on something creative, especially when it’s firing on all cylinders and people communicate well. It’s been one of the great joys of my life. That’s what a band is. A good band is a family. It’s a team. It’s communication and listening and it’s hard to describe what a joy it is when you spend almost a year working on — like what we did last year (with a New Year’s Eve performance of the band’s epic set of “Gamehendge” songs, complete with stage actors and puppets). It’s like you feel like you’re alive. And the Sphere has been like that, too.

AP: What role do the fans play in what you’re doing?

ANASTASIO: Huge. It’s everything. The fans and the community are everything. We have intelligent, focused fans and we have to honor that. You know, they’re not casual fans and that’s really cool. It’s an honor and it’s a massive responsibility. I feel like the longer this goes, the more we owe. The fans have supported us for 40 years — it’s our responsibility to keep raising the bar. Which is a great challenge. And it’s very unique. If you really look at the series of events that we continue to put on, that’s the thinking that goes behind it. You know, the fact that there were people in the audience last New Year’s Eve who have seen Phish 300 times, who were crying according to what I heard — and I was too, by the way — meant so much to all of us. It’s everything that we want. Which is to honor and respect the people that have been coming to see us for years. We feel like they’re family and they deserve our care and attention about every detail.

AP: So, will fans get to see another Gamehendge?

ANASTASIO: I don’t know, I actually don’t know. ... OK, first of all, I wanted to improve it. As soon as it was over I was like, “Oh, I know what I could have (changed).” So then I thought, “Oh, we should save all these props that are really — they’re really expensive.” But then it was kind of like, if there is, it’s going to be better, or it’s going to be built upon. Sort of the way this one was built upon. The previous one, even though it was 30 years ago. I hope it’s not 30 years. I’d like to do it. In the Phish world, it’s like the second it’s over … the next morning you wake up like I start working on the Sphere. Go meet (co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes) downtown at a coffee shop with a laptop and start riffing. I mean, I’m here in Vegas, and yesterday morning I was on a call (about this summer’s Mondegreen festival) with the coolest, smartest people who are working on that. Oh my God.

Credit: AP

After 40 nights of U2 at the Sphere, Phish's Trey Anastasio talks about taking over (2)

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

After 40 nights of U2 at the Sphere, Phish's Trey Anastasio talks about taking over (3)

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

After 40 nights of U2 at the Sphere, Phish's Trey Anastasio talks about taking over (4)

Credit: AP

After 40 nights of U2 at the Sphere, Phish's Trey Anastasio talks about taking over (2025)

FAQs

How was Phish at the Sphere? ›

Still, as Holmes explained, the Sphere run was designed to “use all of the opportunities of the building – the audio, the visuals – and do it while supporting Phish truly playing music the way Phish plays music.” Phish's run was revelatory in terms of production, but those bells and whistles only enhanced the music ...

Is Phish playing at Sphere? ›

April 18 - 21, 2024 (4 Shows)

These shows mark the beginning of a new relationship between Phish and Sphere, but, they will be the only shows Phish performs at the venue in 2024.

How much did Phish make at the Sphere? ›

Phish sold ~$30m in tickets for 4 shows at the Sphere (~$400 ticket x 18,000 seats x 4 shows) with some fans paying $10k+ in secondary markets. Of note: U2 did 40 shows at the Sphere but Phish only did these 4 and one reason why is that the band wants to keep its promise of every live show being different.

What were the Phish Sphere themes? ›

The Phish Sphere theme is land, sea, air and space. Last night was land. Today is sea. Tomorrow air.

Will Phish sell out the Sphere? ›

Phish sold out its four shows this week within minutes and considered doing more, but decided they wanted to create four unique visual and music experiences to match the band's history of never repeating the same show twice.

How much did Phish Sphere tickets cost? ›

Phish Las Vegas tickets
Phish Sphere datesTicket prices start at
April 18-21 Four-day passes$1,939
Thursday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m.$642
Friday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.$636
Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m.$721
1 more row
Apr 12, 2024

How many people fit in the Sphere? ›

The Sphere can accommodate a whopping 20,000 people in standing capacity and 18,600 with just seating capacity. Haptic technology is incorporated into 10,000 of the venue's seats — allowing audience members to "feel" various atmospheric effects.

How many songs did Phish play at the Sphere? ›

(And to your bottom — the seats vibrate along with the bass, and Mike Gordon's has an extra string!) And for the Phish crowd, which was promised no repeats among the nearly 70 songs the band played (68 songs was the official count), that alone was worth the steep price of admission.

Who did the visuals for Phish at the Sphere? ›

Moment Factory played a central role in the co-creative direction of the four shows of Phish Live at Sphere, collaborating closely with Show Director/Co-Creative Director Abigail Rosen Holmes.

How many times did Phish break up? ›

In October 2000, the band began a two-year hiatus that ended in December 2002, but they disbanded again in August 2004. Phish reunited officially in October 2008 for subsequent reunion shows in March 2009 and since then have resumed performing regularly.

Why did Phish break up the first time? ›

But one of the most important reasons for the breakup, as Trey revealed in later interviews (commenting to the effect that he assumed people knew the "real reason"), was his need to get clean. As he told Charlie Rose 1/2/03, "... I wanted to tell people, 'Hey, it's OK.

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