Helpless Dancer

• Performances
• History
• Lyrics
• Artist
  • Phish
  • Fish
  • Mike
  • Page
  • Trey
  • All

Originally Performed By	The Who
Original Album	Quadrophenia (1973)
Appears On
Music/Lyrics	Pete Townsend
Vocals	Trey
Historian	Craig DeLucia

History

At Halloween ‘95, Phish avoided this dark, eerie song about giving up by only playing a few lines from each verse and building them into a crescendo of inaudibility as Trey tried in vain to keep pace with Page’s rapidly accelerating chords. Arising out of the horn fanfare that segued out of “The Dirty Jobs” (mimicking the version recorded on Quadrophenia to a note), the band seemed to regard “Helpless Dancer” in an off-kilter, joking manner. Still, the key to the song is a response to the age-old question “What happens to a beaten man,” and Trey belted that line out in all its glory: “you stop dancing.” This song, like much of Quadrophenia, only “danced” once on stage with Phish.

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