Features

Seven Significant Musical Hiatuses

When it comes to bands who tour regularly, it comes as a pretty big blow when these bands who invest their lives in their music and their fans announce that they’ll be taking a break in order to focus on their families and personal lives. With the announcement of Widespread Panic’s upcoming break, we look back at some hiatuses that may have broken hearts but were ultimately necessary for the success of the band as a whole.

1. Grateful Dead, 1974: In October of 1974, the Grateful Dead announced an indefinite hiatus from touring and played five nights at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco, a venue that they could call home. The early 70s saw the band facing a series of changes: Mickey Hart left the band, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died in 1971, the band created their own record label after their contract with Warner Bros. ended and Owlsey Stanley created the new sound system, the Wall of Sound.

The Winterland shows were billed as “The Last One” and were the last to feature the Wall of Sound. Mickey Hart returned to the band for these shows. The run was recorded and made into the live album Steal Your Face and filmed for the 1977 Jerry Garcia-directed music documentary, The Grateful Dead Movie.

2. Phish, 2000: In the summer of 2000, Phish announced that they would take an “extended time-out” following their fall tour. October 7, 2000, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in California, would be the band’s last concert for more than two years. The beginning house music included the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time, “ and following the show, the house music was the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

In an interview, Trey Anastasio said that their millennium concert at Big Cypress “was incredible, and it was, for me, it was the greatest, it was the pinnacle. And when we came offstage, I looked at our drummer, Fish, my best friend, and just a man I love dearly, and we looked at each other and we both had tears in our eyes, maybe we should stop? It just felt like the wave had crashed into the shore. But we didn’t. We went out for another year, then we took this hiatus as an attempt to revitalize.”

3. Phish, 2004: Coventry Festival, in August 2004, was technically the final Phish shows, but ended up being the last shows for over four and a half years. Following an announcement in May stating that after 21 years, 11 studio albums and 1,100 shows, the band decided to call it quits. The final Coventry show saw an emotional “Wading in the Velvet Sea,” a botched “Glide” and a “The Curtain (With)” encore, which was one of the first songs Anastasio wrote, nearby the site of the festival.

“When we lived and breathed Phish, was beyond intimate. It really was,” Anastasio said in an interview in May 2004. “And I don’t know that the people who didn’t see Phish really could understand that. But I know the people who did go see Phish do [understand]. And I know that there’s probably some anger now because we’re taking that away.”