Anthony Phillips
@ Wiki
Anthony Edwin "Ant" Phillips (b. December 23, 1951, Chiswick, West London) is an English musician, best known as a founding member of the band Genesis. He played guitar and sang backup vocals until leaving in 1970, following the release of their second album, Trespass. He is known for his twelve string guitar work, and his influence can be heard throughout Genesis's early output.
Genesis's first album after Anthony’s departure, Nursery Cryme, featured two songs which were holdovers from the days when Anthony was in the band: The Musical Box and The Fountain of Salmacis. The Musical Box especially remains a favourite of fans, but few recognise Anthony’s contribution to the composition.
After leaving Genesis, Phillips studied classical music (especially classical guitar) and made recordings in collaboration with Harry Williamson, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins, among others. His first solo album, The Geese and the Ghost, was issued in 1977. Filled with pastoral ballads and extended compositions, it was considered out of place with the rise of punk music and was not a strong seller.
Phillips released his second album in 1978, entitled Wise After the Event. This was followed the next year by Sides. Both of these albums were produced by Rupert Hine and were intended to reach a mainstream audience, though neither album was successful in that regard.
In its initial release in the UK, Sides was accompanied by a more experimental album entitled Private Parts and Pieces; in the U.S. and Canada the two albums were issued separately. Private Parts and Pieces II: Back to the Pavilion followed the next year, and several further sequels were issued in the 1980s and 1990s.
Phillips began writing material with Andrew Latimer of Camel in 1981, and was a featured performer on that band's album, The Single Factor (released in 1982).
Phillips released a mainstream pop album entitled Invisible Men in 1983. He later claimed that this project went "horribly wrong" as a result of commercial pressures, and would subsequently eschew mainstream success in favour of more specialised material.
Phillips remains involved in a variety of musical projects, including extensive soundtrack work in England. In the mid-1990s, he released an album entitled The Living Room Concert, which featured solo acoustic versions of his earlier material. He also provided archival material for the first Genesis box set, Genesis Archive 1967-75, released in 1998. =>>>>>>>>>>>
Bruce Eder @ Allmusic
Anthony Phillips was one of the founding members of Genesis, having attended the Charterhouse School in Surrey with Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Michael Rutherford. Phillips and Rutherford (who had played together in another band before linking up with Gabriel and Banks), were the principal composing members of Genesis during their formative years, right into their first recording venture on English Decca ("Silent Sun" etc.) under the aegis of Jonathan King. Much of Phillips' and Rutherford's music was too subtle and introspective to work for the fledgling band on stage, and eventually composition became more of a shared effort. By the time the group cut its second album, Trespass, however, Phillips had receded into the background, propelled by a crippling onset of stage-fright that forced him out of the line-up following the album's release. His influence, ironically, was felt very strongly on their subsequent breakthrough third album, Nursery Cryme, the title track of which (the band's first number to attract a wide audience in progressive rock circles), for its introduction and opening minute, used material that Phillips had written and recorded (as a demo) as early as 1969.
Little more was heard from Anthony Phillips until 1977, when he favored us with his first solo album, The Geese and the Ghost, followed by Wise After the Event a year later, and then a collection of early demo recordings, Private Parts and Pieces, also issued in 1978. Phillips has re-emerged periodically, working in a style that is much closer to the classically influenced original Genesis sound than to the work of the current version of the group. He retains a cult of fans, similar in certain respects to Peter Banks of Yes (another guitar player who quit an art-rock band at a critical early juncture in their history), but recording more frequently. He also writes a considerable amount of music for television and movies, and remains a guitarist of supreme skill and confidence, steeped in classical, pre-Baroque, and folk influences, able to record entire albums featuring only his acoustic instrument. Phillips' skills on the keyboard, principally synthesizer and Mellotron, are more limited, and were never exploited within a group context, but his studio recordings reveal a distinctive character to his compositions on those instruments as well. =>>>>>>>>>>>
Anthony Phillips @ You Tube
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