Phil Miller – A Simple Man (original) (raw)

Phil with Jack and Kizzy
Phil wrote this piece for Pam Howerd, formerly married to Pip Pyle and before that to Robert Wyatt. Phil met Pam when she left Robert and, with Robert’s son Sam, moved in around 1970 with Pip Pyle, who was Phil’s best friend, to Pip’s flat in East Sheen that Pip’s father had bought for him. Alice was born subsequently and they moved to a cottage in Hatfield Heath – also provided by Pip’s father – close to Pip’s parents (and Phil’s parents) in Sawbridgeworth where Phil and Pip had grown up. Later Jo Jo, Kizzy and Jack were born. Phil was very close to this family, loved Pam from the very beginning, adored all her children and spent a lot of his time with them. And they all lived happily ever after.
Except they didn’t.
In the early eighties Pip started an affair with Sophia Domancich – a French keyboard player. Early in the affair Pip had made Phil promise not to tell either Pam or me about the affair because he didn’t want Pam to hear about it from anybody else and wanted to tell her himself. Phil gave Pip his word without realising that Pip would carry on with the affair for a whole year, becoming more and more involved with Ms Domancich, before he eventually told Pam and the bombshell struck.
Pip was determined to move to France where he would remain for the rest of his life. He left Pam and all the children and departed. Pam was devastated and very upset that Phil had known about it all the time and had never said a word to her and I don’t think she really believed that Phil had not told me.
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Phil wrote A Simple Man not long after that. He used it as the last tune in his Medley: Green & Purple, Hic Haec Hoc and A Simple Man. It was the first track on Cutting Both Ways – the first record he made with In Cahoots and he used it throughout his life, rewriting it through all the changes in the lineup of In Cahoots. It was on the playlist of countless concerts and he recorded a final version of it as the first piece on the last CD he made: Mind Over Matter.
It was probably 30 years after he wrote it that Phil told me he had written A Simple Man for Pam. I didn’t think anything of it at the time and it was only recently that I put together the date and the circumstances when it was written and understood its significance. Phil was a simple man – he had given Pip his word and was bound by it.
I have never spoken to Pam about this and I don’t know if Phil ever told her he wrote this composition for her.