As I got such a good response from comments I received when I wrote about the jumper Phil wore when we showed the video of National Health playing in Spain, I thought you might like to see him wearing another jumper I knitted for him. It was supposed to represent our neighbourhood just before nightfall when the skies turned a beautiful deep blue and the lights in the houses were turned on, plus the usual array of stray cats. I don’t remember when I took this photo or which band Phil was playing in but it was somewhere in England, probably London in the late 70’s or very early 80’s and I think it was National Health. The red and black scarf he is wearing was knitted for him by Ann Green, wife of the guitarist Jeff Green who was the first musician Aymeric Leroy interviewed in our series of interviews that Aymeric and I made after Phil’s death in 2017. You can find these interviews elsewhere on this site. Aymeric did the interviewing and I did the filming using 3 Sony camcorders. Unfortunately these camcorders did not all run at EXACTLY the same speed as each other, resulting in problems with syncing.
You will notice that Phil is playing his Les Paul type guitar, actually made by Sam Li.
Not so very long after this photo was taken the neck of this guitar got broken off by Pip Pyle who accidentally caused a studio baffle to fall on it.
Phil eventually took this guitar to the legendary luthier deeply associated with Denmark Street: Graham Noden (of Noden Guitars), who has worked on over 130,000 instruments and spent decades on the iconic street before neighbourhood redevelopments forced major changes to their workshops. Graham Noden fixed a new neck to the guitar and removed the awful varnish from the body.
In the meantime Phil was without an electric guitar and bought himself a sunburst Yamaha SA2000, which was his primary signature instrument for the rest of his career.
This guitar got off to a bad start: Not long after he acquired the Yamaha Phil went on tour to France with National Health and the guitar got stolen one night in Paris, from the bands’s van. On his return to London Phil contacted the insurance company and was told he could make a claim but on the same day he received a call from a friend in Paris saying the guitar was for sale at a second hand shop in Paris at a low price. Phil called his insurance company again who told him to get his friend in France to buy the guitar and the insurance company would reimburse him which would be cheaper for them than giving Phil the actual value of the guitar. So that is what happened and Phil got his guitar back, which was a great relief for him.
Phil eventually, just before he died in 2017, left the Sam Li to Fred Baker.
Herm
Loving these stories.