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Anthony Phillips

A co-founder and original lead guitarist of Genesis who left in 1970 and made The Geese & the Ghost, a debut solo album whose centerpiece is the seven-part Tudor suite "Henry".

Origin
Chiswick, London, England
Years active
1967-present
Genres
progressive rock, folk rock, neo-classical, electronic
Labels
Hit & Run Music, Passport, Arista, Virgin, Voiceprint, Esoteric
Also known as
Anthony Edwin Phillips

Genesis and after

Anthony Edwin Phillips was born on December 23, 1951 in Chiswick. He co-founded Genesis at Charterhouse in 1967 with Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, and played lead guitar on From Genesis to Revelation (1969) and Trespass (1970). He left in July 1970, his last show being at Haywards Heath on July 18. Steve Hackett, who replaced him, has said Phillips deserved more credit for architecting the sound of Genesis.

After leaving he studied harmony, counterpoint and orchestration part-time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, qualified as a music teacher in 1974 and taught at Reed's School in Cobham and, from 1975, at Peper Harow. Library music has been his main income since the mid-1970s, with his first commissions from Riverside Studios in 1976 and a deal with Atmosphere in 1981.

The Geese & the Ghost and what followed

Within ten days of leaving Genesis, by Wikipedia's account, he had completed 12-string arrangements of "Which Way the Wind Blows", "God If I Saw Her Now" and "Henry: Portraits from Tudor Times", and he demoed them at his parents' home between late July and early August 1970. Recording ran from October 1974 to November 1976 at Send Barns in Surrey and Argonaut Galleries, a floating studio on a barge in Little Venice, London. The album came out in March 1977 on Hit & Run in the UK and Passport in the US; it reached number 191 on the Billboard 200 and did not chart in the UK. Phillips said it sold just under 100,000 copies worldwide.

A three-album deal with Arista produced Wise After the Event (1978) and Sides (1979), and the first volume of Private Parts & Pieces appeared in 1978; the series reached twelve volumes with The Golden Hour in May 2024. Other albums include 1984 (1981), Invisible Men (1983), Tarka (1988, with Harry Williamson), Slow Dance (1990), Field Day (2005), Seventh Heaven (2012, with Andrew Skeet) and Strings of Light (2019). Esoteric Recordings began a reissue series of his catalogue in 2014, which won the Storm Thorgerson Grand Design Award at the Progressive Music Awards in September 2016 and concluded in 2025. In January 2018 Martha Argerich premiered his Gemini for two pianos in Valencia and Barcelona.

Records

Songs

Barclay James Harvest, Caravan

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Sources

  1. Anthony Phillips, Wikipedia
  2. Anthony Phillips biography, anthonyphillips.co.uk
  3. The Geese & the Ghost, Wikipedia
  4. Anthony Phillips: The Geese & the Ghost 2008 remaster, Genesis News (2008)