Phil Miller a self taught musician (original) (raw)

Phil working in his studio
Phil was born into a musical family. His mother Mavis had gained a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in Music History at the University of London in 1937 and his father David was a talented pianist. At their home in Sawbridgeworth they had a baby grand piano formerly owned by Dame Nellie Melba. His brother Steve who was Phil’s senior by five years, took up the piano and Phil first took up the guitar aged eight and began playing seriously at fifteen.
By the age of seventeen he was already playing in his first band – Delivery, comprising Phil, his brother Steve, his best friend Pip Pyle on drums and their friend Jack Monck on bass. They were heavily into the blues and played their own versions of tunes gleaned from the various records they listened to. ( See Jack Monck’s interview with Aymeric Leroy elsewhere on this site.) When Jack left the band his place was taken by Roy Babbington from whom Phil learned a great deal. Phil started writing his own tunes at this point and this continued throughout all the bands he played in.
When he was in Matching Mole with Robert Wyatt he came under the influence of the keyboard player Dave MacRae who introduced Phil to the Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organisation which had a big influence on his writing. Other great influences were the music of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, Alan Gowen whom he considered his mentor and Paul Hindemidth whose battered paperback copy of Craft of Musical Composition was in Phil’s pocket whenever he had any long distance to travel.
When Phil was playing in Hatfield and the North he was living in Pip’s flat in East Sheen that Pip’s father had bought for him. Phil later moved to Hackney where his sister Jane had bought a house but as she was still living in Jersey had asked Phil to move in and babysit the house until she came back to England. When that happened Phil moved into a squat in Cadogan Terrace, Hackney with Jack Monck.
When Phil was squatting in 1977, the Greater London Authority announced an amnesty to all squatters in their properties and Hackney Council offered council flats to all the squatters in Cadogan Terrace. Both Jack Monck and Phil were each given their own council flat nearby. Phil moved into a flat in Watermead, a council estate near to where I lived.
By this time Phil and I had developed a very close friendship. Hatfield and the North had ended in 1975 and by 1980 so had National Health. In 1980 I moved into a new flat in in Colvestone Crescent, Hackney, and not long after that Phil gave up his council flat and moved in with me.
Colvestone Crescent proved to be the ideal environment for him. It was more central than Homerton and close to the notorious Walford Road – home to so many musicians including Elton Dean. Phil set up his studio in the spacious front room and began writing in earnest.
By 1982 he had written “Above & Below”, “Second Sight”, “Eastern Region” and “Hard Shoulder”. He realised he needed his own band to play his music and formed the Phil Miller Quartet with Elton Dean saxes, Richard Sinclair bass, Pip Pyle drums and himself on guitar. Rehearsals began in Covestone Crescent and the band had its first gig at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town on 9th November. After Pete Lemer was added on keyboards in April 1983, the band changed its name to In Cahoots.
Originally Phil wrote all the band parts by hand on manuscript paper but soon realised just how much time it was taking, especially when he decided to change/evolve his compositions which meant rewriting all the band’s scores. Home computers had recently been available so he decided to buy one and learn to use Notator so that he could print out band parts. He was interested in new music technology. Midi had come along which Phil was very interested in. He bought an Atari computer which was the only computer at that time that could work with Midi via its dongle and he bought the very first Midi guitar. He didn’t go on any courses or anything for any of this but figured it all out by himself just as he had from the very beginning, teaching himself the guitar.
When he was compiling the first In Cahoots LP, Cutting Both Ways (yes, in those early days Phil’s music came out on vinyl,) he worked in collaboration with Dave Stewart (Hatfield and the North / National Health) to record 2 pieces utilising the latest developments in music technology: “Hard Shoulder” and “Figures of Speech”. The name Cutting Both Ways refers to the split in the music: some of it produced by the band and some of it produced with music technology see elsewhere on this website. His second album Split Second refers to this same split in production. For some reason the album came out as Split Seconds – a mistake that was only spotted after the LP came out, too late to be changed. As Phil became more adept and music technology advanced, he acquired more sophisticated recording and performance equipment, and later used Avid’s Sibelius software through all its updates.

HERM

(to be continued)