Introduction

Born on 23 December 1951, Anthony Phillips spent his earliest years growing up in the London Borough of Putney until he was packed off to prep school at eight years old. To be suddenly marooned at St Edmunds School, located at Hindhead, in the depths of rural Surrey and far from his parents seemed, to the quiet youngster, a draconian experience to endure. Ant has compared it to being stuck in a horror movie or a POW camp! However, with impressive resolve, he soon buckled down and dug deep to survive this daunting childhood experience. Music only became a passion to him with the advent of The Beatles, at which point he took to the guitar with gusto, inspired by The Shadows' guitarist Hank Marvin. Thankfully, Ant's parents were fully supportive of his musical ambitions, ensuring that he was soon equipped with a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and a Vox AC30 amplifier, gear of this quality being a rare thing for a soon-to-be-teen back in those days! He also undertook a series of lessons on guitar basics from another of his early musical heroes, classical guitarist Dave Channon. With his new school buddy, Rivers Job (whose surname was pronounced as Jobe), who was already the proud owner of a Fender Precision bass guitar, Ant formed his first band, which came together in 1964 and rejoiced under the name of The Spiders. Copying Beatles tunes provided a good musical grounding for the young band.

Later that year, Rivers Job was relocated to Charterhouse Public School near Godalming, a town situated 11 miles northeast of Hindhead on the A3. At 13 years old, Ant followed suit, being inducted into Charterhouse in April 1965 to be once again reunited with his bass-playing pal. The pair of them soon became part of a new band, The Anon, along with Rob Tyrell on drums and Richard Macphail on vocals. This new outfit were also soon joined by Charterhouse rebel Mike Rutherford, initially playing rhythm guitar on a Rickenbacker six-string borrowed from school friend John Alexander. The first significant gig for The Anon took place on Thursday 16 December 1965 at the Charterhouse 'School Entertainment' multi-media event, held in the school hall. With seven bands on the bill, The Anon only had a three-song set, showing a heavy reliance on The Rolling Stones' Out Of Our Heads album. Shortly before the curtain was due to go up, a potential disaster was narrowly averted when it transpired that Mike Rutherford had no guitar lead and a mad scramble ensued to furnish him with one before the curtain rose. Happily, The Anon duly dispatched an enthusiastic set, consisting of 'We've Got A Good Thing Going', Chuck Berry's 'Talkin' 'Bout You' and the well-covered deep soul classic 'That's How Strong My Love Is', all previously covered by The Rolling Stones. Meanwhile, Ant was having a bash at writing his own songs, and in the spring of 1966, The Anon decided to record a demo of Ant's new song, 'Pennsylvania Flickhouse'. This demo would see the light of day 56 years later when Esoteric Records issued the Anthony Phillips compilation The Archive Collection Volume I & Volume II in 2022 (see later chapter). For the demo session, the band cajoled Ant's mum into transporting their gear in her Mercedes while the band travelled by bus to record at Tony Pike Sound Studios in Dryburgh Road, Putney.

The Charterhouse end-of-term concert in July 1966 proved to be a watershed moment for Ant when The Anon performed with fellow Charterhouse band, The Garden Wall. This latter aggregation included older pupils Peter Gabriel on vocals and Tony Banks on piano, along with trumpeter Johnny Trapman and drummer Chris Stewart. To bolster up their sound, The Garden Wall, who were performing first, invited Ant on guitar and Rivers Job on bass to join them for the set. The Anon, who were headlining the school concert, followed next and started off well with covers of The Beatles' 'Drive My Car' and The Yardbirds' 'Mister, You're A Better Man Than I' before encountering a technical issue which, while it was being corrected, resulted in Richard Macphail making a stage announcement to introduce Ant's latest song, the recently demoed 'Pennsylvania Flickhouse'. However, stage announcements had been forbidden by House Master Geoffrey Ford, who pulled the plug on the concert following the band's rendition of Ant's song. Charterhouse school rules were generally harsh and were strictly adhered to under the threat of physical punishment. This, however, didn't deter the future members of Genesis from periodically sneaking off to Record Corner in the nearby town of Godalming to check out the latest hot sounds!

By the end of the year, The Anon petered out as Phillips and Rutherford became a songwriting collective with Gabriel and Banks. With the inclusion of Chis Stewart on drums, this aggregation would later be christened Genesis. Brian Roberts was a boffin friend of the nascent band, and he invited them to his homemade studio in Chiswick, West London, to record some demos. The first session took place on 26 March 1967 when they recorded, among others, a composition of Ant's called 'Patricia', an instrumental melody which would later be rewritten to appear on the first Genesis album as 'In Hiding'. Further demos were completed by May 1967, and these were touted to Charterhouse 'old boy' Jonathan King during the summer months. Luckily for them, he showed interest, mainly because he loved Peter Gabriel's voice. This led to him booking the band into Regent Sound A Studios in London in December 1967 to record the Banks/Gabriel song 'The Silent Sun', a purposeful nod to the style of King favourites The Bee Gees. He also named the band Genesis, and the first single under this name, 'The Silent Sun' b/w 'That's Me', was released by Decca on 22 February 1968. Both tracks were credited to Genesis, although the B-side, 'That's Me', was a Phillips/Rutherford composition with a prominent electric guitar contribution from Ant. Although the single wasn't hugely successful, King had booked Genesis back into Regent Sound A Studios by May 1968 to record a follow-up disc, and 'A Winter's Tale' b/w 'One-Eyed Hound' was released on 10 May 1968 to a blank reaction from the public. Undeterred, by August 1968, King had the band ensconced in Regent Sound B Studios - with a new drummer in the shape of John Silver - as they recorded their debut album, From Genesis To Revelation, in three days. The band were disappointed when they heard the final mix, as King had ordered it to be smothered in cloying string arrangements. Ant hit the roof over this and was embittered by this early experience of the machinations of the music business. The album finally emerged in March 1969 to very poor sales, but the band resolved to carry on and progress.

After regathering themselves, they concentrated on rehearsing and refining a more sophisticated style of music inspired by the advent of King Crimson's iconic 1969 album In The Court Of The Crimson King. Ex-lead singer of The Anon, Richard Macphail, became the band's faithful road manager as they sought live gigs going forward. Macphail's parents allowed the band to live and rehearse at Christmas Cottage near Dorking in Surrey and it was here that the unit began to gel and produce some exceptional music. Ant and Mike had started to experiment by combining two 12-string guitars and playing picked chord arpeggios in different inversions. This meshing of 12-strings became a signature sound of early Genesis, which the band would carry forward after Ant had left them. Macphail also provided them with a much- needed bandwagon, a distinctive blue and white Hovis van, to transport the gear to and from their live gigs, which were slowly increasing in number. This formative period at Christmas Cottage, from November 1969 to April 1970, saw the evolution of much new material, and having secured a deal with Charisma Records - via producer John Anthony, who recommended them to Charisma boss Tony Stratton-Smith - the future looked promising.

Ant, however, was quietly having a meltdown. Firstly, his health began to deteriorate, and secondly, he began to encounter intense stage fright, which froze him up, making performing live an unbearable ordeal. Gamely, he held on until the band had completed sessions for their second album at Trident Studios in Soho, London, during June and July 1970 despite him suffering a bout of bronchial pneumonia, but the end was nigh. Immediately after completing the album, he informed a shell-shocked band that he was leaving, which he duly proceeded to do after his last Genesis gig at Sussex Hall, Hayward's Heath, on 18 July 1970. The new Genesis album, Trespass, was released in October 1970 on Charisma Records, by which time Ant was considering studying music more seriously and learning classical guitar.

Trespass was a testament to Ant's influence on the Genesis sound, especially his 12-string adventures with his old writing partner Mike Rutherford. This influence would carry forward into the band's classic string of early 1970s albums as they built on the legacy of Ant's contribution. Genesis' follow-up to Trespass, 1971's Nursery Cryme, had several major tracks, later regarded as Genesis classics by the band's fanbase, that incorporated some of Ant's earlier compositional ideas. Both 'The Musical Box' and 'The Fountain Of Salmacis' deployed themes originally penned by the Phillips/Rutherford team. The first half of 'The Musical Box' was entirely based on...