https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1377949824

From The Phish Book, p. 121:
Trey: "When someone asked how he felt about fame, Albert Einstein replied, "It sure gets in the way of your work." It's true, and sometimes I think, "Jesus Christ! I've spent countless hours the past two years dealing with my career, conferring with managers, and giving interviews when I should have been practicing the guitar and writing songs."

"Show me a genius, and I'll show you someone with a behavioral disorder." I don't know if someone else has said that, or if I just made that up, but Trey Anastasio fits the description. Trey has been able to compose all those classic tunes, crack the whip in band rehearsals and tour incessantly partly because he is immensely talented and creatively gifted, but also partly because he is hyperactive and manic. Trey's brain moves faster than most, pushing him to stay active, working feverishly through the night and into the next day; not to meet a deadline but to fulfill the vision in his head. It was this same characteristic that helped popularize the band over the 1990's, and eventually brought the band to a crashing halt in 2004.

Although the band finished their 1993 Summer Tour on the California Coast, they would take a few weeks' vacation before reconvening to record Hoist in Southern California from late September through early December. Mike's "Tracking" video captures the events of the sessions and provides a valuable snapshot of the personalities of the four band members. There are a couple of clips of Anastasio adding guitar overdubs in the evening hours, hamming it up for the camera. Those images display Anastasio's guileless charm in the face of recording an album of mostly untested new material, featuring a plethora of not-easily-impressed studio musicians and vocalists. Omitted from that portrait are all the hours Trey spent working on songwriting demo recordings, practicing guitar parts, and writing out the musical parts for all of the guest musicians to play from.

By April 1994 and the release of Hoist, there would be some phans who feared that Phish had peaked the previous year, and the Hoist release demonstrated that they were losing their edge, but at the time of the NYE '93 run, it seems that no one was concerned about a dip in the band's performance quality. The 12/28 show at Bender Arena can easily be seen as a "warm-up" for the NYE '93 show at the Worcester Centrum, particularly because the setlists for the two shows share no fewer than 11 songs in common. But listen to the fire in the playing coming off the stage, both in the intricate compositions like Split Open and Melt, It's Ice, and You Enjoy Myself, and the country-picking of Poor Heart, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony, and a wicked-fast Uncle Pen. Of course, the return of Peaches En Regalia was a symbolic tribute to the life of Frank Zappa, but Classic Rock was still in the band's blood with the awesome Kashmir teases in Possum and a "thank-you-very-much-good-night!" Highway To Hell closer.