The following are taken from the book of tributes at Phil’s funeral along with transcripts of some of the speeches that day. If you would like us to include yours, please feel free to contact us with the form at the bottom or on the left.
PS on the above – in particular Dada Soul (the only thing Phil and Herm wrote together?) was a direct inspiration for my novel What a Carve Up, as I said when I played it on the Stuart Maconie show a couple of years back I first met Phil, (and Richard and Pip) when I was very young, at the second Hatfield rehearsal at Jubilee studios in Covent Garden, we were due to be the next band in for rehearsal. Dave was mending his organ but I knew who all these guys were – had already heard theIr Music. In fact I was born not far away from Phil and his dearly remembered brother Steve’s home. (About 10 miles away and some years later.) As a 16 year old, young guitar player, in my first pro band, I had listened and heard something I wanted to be; as many 10’s of thousands of other players, even up to today’s ‘Math Rock’ bands, still do. Phil and I used to call each other most months, for years, to talk guitars, music and friends. My visits to Colvestone Crescent to play together and Phil & Herm’s kind hospitality, I will always remember with deep fondness. Always an honour to have him in my studio. The benchmark of Musical perfection that Phil reached is still unmatched today. A beautiful, bright and stunning Autumn day to say farewell Phil. To fully appreciate Phil, both as a composer and instrumentalist, probably required a musical taste somewhat to the left of mainstream, since he rarely took the simplest, most obvious route to make his statements. Yet he was also able to reach the more casual listener’s soul, most memorably in the songs he co-wrote with his Matching Mole bandmate Robert Wyatt, « God Song » and « Calyx ». He could also come up with a classic power guitar riff like « Nan True’s Hole », and even such intricate pieces as « Aigrette » or « Underdub » had an almost singalong quality, provided you could follow their many twists and turns. The musical genre Phil came to be associated with, which is commonly referred to as the His final album, in 2011, was entitled « Mind Over Matter ». I do hope – and trust – that Phil’s music will transcend his physical being and presence among us. I also hope there really is a heaven, because with those who preceded him on this journey – his brother and earliest musical associate Steve, his brothers in music Pip Pyle and Alan Gowen, fellow In Cahoots members Elton Dean and Hugh Hopper, and not forgetting his former Delivery bandmate Lol Coxhill, there certainly is potential up there for some smokin’ jam sessions ! So farewell Phil, and thanks for all the music ! My musical journey with Phil was long, eventful and rewarding. It got off to a slightly bumpy start – when I auditioned for Hatfield and the North in January 1973 Pip impulsively offered me the gig on the spot, but Phil sensibly wanted time to consider. The two of them went off into the kitchen and had a heated sotto voce debate, leaving me and bass player / vocalist Richard Sinclair foolishly grinning at each other. With hindsight, Phil and Pip’s disagreements were to be expected; they were like family, having been friends and attended the same nursery school from an early age. With typical honesty, Phil later remarked, “I didn’t really know Pip well then, but you don’t know anybody that well when you’re only four.” I like to think that the inevitable loud arguments started by a four-year old Pip (a frightening thought) would have been quelled by Phil’s superior height and powers of sarcasm, but sadly no video footage of these squabbles exists. Prior to joining Hatfield I’d seen Phil play with Matching Mole at Kingston Poly in March 1972. Much of the jazzy improvising went over my head, but I was impressed by the chiming guitar figures in Phil’s composition ‘Part of the Dance’, and also by its unusual structure, which seemed to consist of a repeated series of building waves which climaxed each time in a triumphant, descending major-scale figure (sorry, bit of musicology there). Soon after joining Hatfield, I asked Phil if we could include the tune in our set list, and after a bit of cajoling, he graciously agreed. I loved playing over that chiming guitar sequence. It’s fair to say that Phil’s soloing was an acquired taste – it had to be: nobody else played guitar like that, and in any field of music, it takes time to come to terms with a genuinely original style. On early Hatfield gigs I had my head down trying to remember the material, but gradually Phil’s serpentine lead lines began to seep into my consciousness. When we played at The Roundhouse in February 1973, Fred Frith (guitarist of Henry Cow) pointed out Phil’s remarkable solo on ‘Lything and Gracing’, a fantastic, unbroken line of chromatic intervals, melodic leaps and bent notes, all played with his trademark liquid fuzz tone, which spiralled up into the big room’s echoing rafters. From that moment, I began to recognise Phil as a special musician. He was a fearsome improviser: having carved out a piece of musical territory and marked it as his own, he would investigate all of its abstruse harmonic possibilities like a man cataloguing life forms on an alien planet. Guitarist Allan Holdsworth, another deep musical thinker, once said to me he never thought a note could be ‘wrong’ – it was merely a question of how to make it work in a musical context. Phil championed that philosophy; he was forever in search of the next mad note he could work into a solo, and the effort of that intense melodic invention was written all over his face. Pip used to rib Phil about his on-stage ‘gurning’ face-pulling, which was as much a part of his unique style as his exploratory, utterly unpredictable soloing. Phil blossomed as a composer and player over the time I worked with him, and when Alan Gowen and I formed National Health in 1975, Phil’s name was first on my team sheet. Though our heavily written charts sometimes impinged on his musical freedom, he gave the band unwavering commitment and stuck with it through numerous difficulties and personnel changes. When I finally left in 1978, Phil stayed on and led the band through US and European tours – he was not a quitter, but was one of the most steadfast, reliable and loyal people I have met. Held in affection by his bandmates, Phil was a great friend to Barbara and myself, always generous, kindly and supportive. When Barb expressed concerns about leaving the UK music scene to travel overseas in 1975, Phil reassured her by saying, “Don’t worry, you can come back to it. You’ll always be a musician.” Though our respective musical styles diverged in the eighties, Barb and I continued to work with Phil; one notable collaboration was the magnificent ‘Dada Soul’, featuring another beautiful chiming guitar intro and an intriguing, developing chord sequence and melody line. Phil’s wife Herm wrote the song lyrics, an affectionately quirky tribute to Richard Sinclair, who performed the song with his usual effortless, debonair charm while Barb and I did our bits and pieces in support. A fabulous composition, and a great way of bringing everyone together. After our years treading the boards with Hatfield and National Health, Phil and I would occasionally meet in the West End, starting with a coffee in Ray’s Jazz Shop above Foyle’s and, following a leisurely stroll through Soho, a couple of pints at the Dog and Duck. We’d sit in the corner chuckling over old road stories (usually involving atrocities committed by Pip and/or Benj), comparing notes on new musical ventures and laughing at the sheer, ongoing hopelessness of the music business. Phil was always great company – I’m going to miss our catch-ups. Our last meeting was in September 2017, when I dropped round to Phil and Herm’s flat for a short visit. Phil was in remarkably good spirits, sitting up in bed in a nice warm room watching arts programmes on a large TV, comfortable, content, lucid (though a little tired), chatting and laughing as ever. He was at ease with his condition, saying if a cure was feasible he’d be happy to take it, but if not, he’d had a good life and felt there were others much worse off than him. He praised his local health team, and said he was lucky to have Herm taking care of him round the clock. It was clear to me that whatever happened, Phil was at peace with himself. Outside, leaves were beginning to fall in the streets, and I went away reflecting how fortunate I was to have had this big, warm-hearted man as a lifelong friend. Dave Stewart, November 10th 2017 Phil Miller, musician, was born on January 22nd 1949. He died from cancer on October 18th 2017 aged 68
I got to meet him properly when In Cahoots appeared with Caravan at the London Astoria sometime in the late nineties. We had a lot in common and got on well. He invited me round for a ‘cuppa’ and I was delighted to find that my positive instincts about the man behind the music were correct and so we became very good friends. I insisted upon it!
Musically he became something of a mentor to me. I was determined to learn something from his advanced harmonic systems in particular and really loved to play his compositions that he would tutor me through with endless patience and good humour as I waded through bar after bar of finger knotting chinese puzzles. He enjoyed my phrasing, and I was thrilled and honoured that he wrote Delta Borderline for me and employed me to play on various other tracks where he had crafted bespoke parts that were often complex but always beautifully logical. I have the happiest memories of recording those parts and hearing the music come to life. I have equally happy memories of his wild eyed expressions of maniacal glee accompanied by his trademark faux sadistic cackle as these increasingly fiendish parts were presented.
The man was absolutely indivisible from his music. To go for a walk with Phil was like enjoying one of his more serpentine pieces or solos. He would always want to take a less obvious turning just to see what was there. You could end up somewhere quite unexpected, or even jumping on a bus to somewhere of such dubious glamour as Romford on the pretext of going to a guitar shop, but really just for the pleasure of the trip out, the passing scenery and musings on lives glimpsed from the top deck. He took an almost incandescent delight in the most simple, mundane things. Parks, canals, railways stations, grey London streets… It was all grist to his creative mill. He was an earthy man, very connected to his environment and in tune with the pulses of life. At the same time there was an ethereal quality to him with a sense of awe and wonder at the depths and mysteries of the universe, underpinned by a keen intellect that he kept politely and very humbly hidden. He was not naturally demonstrative … but its all there in the music.
Phil’s working method was usually painstaking and methodical and he was full of gratitude to the extent that Herm (a fine artist in her own right) supported him in this. Indeed it was abundantly clear how much he appreciated her and her boundless love and support generally. She was a major contributor the the fact that I would grade Phil as a basically happy and content person, and also that his music could be bought into existence at all.
Yes, Phil was a truly loving and beautiful soul first and his music sprung organically from that. You could never think of him without affection and the most vivid metaphor I can think of for him was as a warm heater in a cold room. His energy was such that his very presence would improve the general sense of well being in any gathering. His vibes were inspiring and you wanted to spread them far and wide. He didn’t think of himself as a spiritual person but he truly was, in that deepest sense, and I honestly cannot think of a finer tribute to anyone than to be able to say that.
We met when I was 16, that’s 50 years ago. You’re my number 1 longterm friend, for ever. We played Gary Burton music, one of your favourites at that time. Some years later I gave a Hatfield record to Gary Burton personally, in Boston. He smiled. Quite often life shows a cycle. Sometimes life is linear because I’m convinced that the biggest luck for you is Herm.
Some years later, we shared a room, staying at Daevid Allen’s home in Sens, during an early Hatfield tour of France. Over hours of conversation, you analysed the creation of your songs Calyx and Underdub, how it came about. We agreed, for a big part, it is by coincidence.
Tomorrow, at the end of the afternoon, you will be walking in a heavenly atmosphere, strolling on a beautiful road, flowers, perfume, left and right a country side full of weed, free bags of it, all over the place. You’re holding your guitar, it’s a country without carnet papers, no work for Benj here, no passport needed, no wifi, no income tax. But, you’re a bit nervous, because you have to hold and show a stamped certificate proving it was you Philip Paul Brisco Miller who wrote God Song.
What on Earth are you doing, God?
Is this some sort of joke you’re playing?
Is it ‘cos we didn’t pray?
Are you just hot air, breathing over us and over all?
Is it fun watching us all?
Where’s your son? We want him again!
Dear Phil, I know you wonder, you doubt, will He, the Big Man be furious?
And then, all of a sudden, you see a bar. Right there, along that road.
There’s Pip, waving at you, cheerful, holding a triple times five Belgium beer. Also Hugh is there, mister Hopper, and Elton, Lindsay Cooper, brother Steve, Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Alan Gowen, and of course Lol.
Pip is yelling ‘hurray! Phil! Here! Where is Benji?’
‘Oh well,’ Phil says, ‘he is still too busy, maybe next year, or another ten-twenty years from now. Who knows. God knows. Chance mate. It’s all chance.’
Pip is smiling, having a great time, free drinks.
Pip’s thinking God Song:
‘And next time, you send your boy down there
Give him a wife and a sexy daughter
Someone we can understand.’
Hugh Hopper points at the counter. ‘There Phil, that’s where they check your documents. This here, it’s only a waystation. And, more important, if you want to get on, along the road, you have to choose only the single happiest memory of your life, all other memories will be gone, forgotten. And then you vanish to whatever unknown state of existence…’
Phil is doubting, he likes this bar here.
Elton looks a bit angry. Too much memories.
‘I don’t wanna enter that door,’ he mumurs, ‘stupid Brexit. It’s also boring here, bloody Heaven, I want a Hexit, out of here.’
Phil is hiding his certificate about God Song, slighty nervous. All of a sudden he regrets he has no carnet papers. Where is Benj?!
Pip takes a gulp, smiles and points at his selfmade poster behind the bar. It says:
God is dead, but just to be sure, I hate him.
Dear Phil
It does matter anyway
We’ll meet again some other day
The time has come to leave you
There’ll will be a way to reach you.
He was the kindest, most supportive person you could ever wish to meet. He has left a great musical legacy over the decades.
I have many happy memories from the first time I met Phil at a rehearsal and meeting Herm and how welcoming
they both were, which turned out to be the long lasting friendship I cherished and enjoyed.
I always eagerly awaited Phil’s new compositions of intrigue and mystery and what places they might take us to.
I also always enjoyed the touring, recording and socialising with Phil in general.
He wrote some of the most beautiful and challenging music to grace the earth, some of which he specially wrote for me and which I have loved playing over the years and will be playing
till I can’t hold an instrument anymore.
I’m deeply missing all aspects of our friendship and feel eternally thankful for knowing and working with him all this time.
I hope his music will be enjoyed forever and new generations of musicians will discover and carry it into the future by listening to all the marvellous catalogues of recordings and performing it live.
I joined Bruno’s Blues Band on bass, having been a bad bedroom guitarist but sharing a love of the blues with Steve, Phil and Pip. We would rehearse in Pip’s garden shed in his garden which backed onto the garden of Orchard Cottage where the Millers lived.
When Roy took over from me me in what had become Delivery, Phil told me much later that he (Phil) took every opportunity to learn from a more experienced musician like Roy. And this was a pattern that would repeat itself with Dave Macrae (in Matching Mole) and John Mitchell (who worked with Phil on Split Seconds) among others.
Strong musical relationships were features of Phil’s entire career starting with Steve, Pip of course, Dave (Stewart), Richard and many others.
In the mid 70s, I was lucky enough to share a squat at Cadogan Terrace, Hackney, with friends Ben, John and Phil. John recently told me has a memory of looking out of the window and seeing Phil playing cricket in the park opposite, with some locals, wearing a multi-coloured chunky jumper, hippie style still being current. He also remembers Phil explaining interval theory to him which has stayed with him ever since. Ben remembers the constant foot-tapping from upstairs as Phil practised, and telling him there were keys other than E to play in!
It was around this time that Phil and Herm met. This was the start of a relationship in which Herm turned out to be so good for Phil, and he for her, from then until now.
A few years later, after the formation of In Cahoots, another long and illustrious partnership began, with Fred, recommended to him by Elton. Phil later told me that one of their first gigs was a BBC session when Fred read Second Sight straight off the page! With Phil as band-leader, In Cahoots amassed an enormous body of work with various line-ups and to which from the mid 90s, Benj made such a significant contribution.
In the late 80s, Phil introduced me to Willem and later Henk, both of whom turned out to be very important relationships for me. Thank you Phil! This culminated in Phil (at Henk’s suggestion) calling me in 2010 to say “would we like him to play with the Relatives?” (we said yes). This lead on to a continuing musical relationship with myself, Marc and Paul which only ended on our last gig in July of this year.
In conclusion, I would like to highlight three aspects of Phil’s personality: firstly, his fertile, unique and prolific compositional output. He always seemed to have musical ideas forming in his mind to which he would then apply a forensic attention to detail and his formidable work ethic.
He loved team-work, being part of the creative process and finding new ways of keeping himself interested.
Thirdly, and I was struck by how many people who knew him have said this, I must join them in mentioning his own personal warmth, despite sometimes appearances to the contrary. He was the most loyal of friends. Once you were a friend of Phil’s, you were always a friend.
Canterbury Scene despite many of its exponents having no particular association with the city, has been noted for the frequent absence of electric guitar as a lead instrument, Soft Machine and Caravan being prime examples, which left him a notable exception and the one undisputed exponent of the « Canterbury » guitar style. Another defining characteristic of the scene was that it sat, somewhat uncomfortably, somewhere between rock and jazz, which made it difficult to sell, but also ensured that Phil was appreciated and recognised as a major musical figure both in the rock and jazz fields – in the former case on account of this 1970s bands, and in the latter for his work with In Cahoots in the decades which followed.
Years later, I ended up playing with Elton Dean in one our regular afternoon improvising sessions. One day said “we should invite Phil Miller – he’s a fantastic free improviser, although he doesn’t get to do that much of it”. So it came to pass in Jim Dvorak’s front room, and that was the start of occasional get-togethers.
This led to the Progman Cometh Festivals in Seattle where Phil appeared with InCahoots and I was with Pip Pyle’s BASH, where I gained access to the exclusive Miller Dean Pyle club and the eventual invitation to join a reformed Hatfield and The North.
This led to a few brief years of, for me, unalloyed pleasure. It was remarkable how Phil, although he knew the tunes from all the hard work thirty years before, approached the material as if it was brand new – another example of his formidable work ethic – a finely balanced of inspiration and perspiration. Among the pieces we played was Phil’s composition “Finesse is for fairies”, and it’s only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I can see what a self-deprecating title that is. For Phil, finesse was the most desirable quality in a piece, and when critiquing a composition, I can hear him now saying “Well done, Al. Very good work……..but I think you’ll find that it needs a bit of finessing.” Even on the road, Phil could be found, hunched over the guitar, refining, adjusting, looking for something new; never accepting a piece as actually finished, but more as a fluid project, ever-ready for adjustment, refinement and……yes, finessing.
But it wasn’t all work – as you might imagine – and I remember taking a break from one of the gruelling rehearsals and sitting in the garden in Joy Lane in Whitstable supping oysters and Chablis and I stepped outside myself and surveyed the scene. Here were these dear boys (Phil, Pip, Richard) still enjoying the music and each other’s company, still trying to get it right and breathe new life into compositions they’d known for a generation.
I last saw Phil about a fortnight ago, and as always we discussed music….not only our own and that of our friends, but also Messiaen and Bartok, composers we both admired. The importance of a strong structure, of the architecture of a piece, how it sits in the landscape of our lives, was of paramount importance for Phil as a man and as a musician, although of course it’s hard to separate the two for Phil was always working, always had a new collection of ingredients bubbling away on the musical stove.
Our conversations often returned to the theme of “getting the music out there” which these days seems to require a biography, a video, a fancy wardrobe and a mission statement outlining your core values….all stuff which, for Phil, was a distraction from the real core business – that of making music. Taking a bunch of tones, arranging them horizontally and vertically, adding some oofle dust, making a musical stew whose ingredients were never quite fixed in stone, but always retained a capacity for new flavours, a new tempo, a different chord voicing
Alas, now, there is a finality, if not an ending, because, of course, the legacy remains and the music lives on. While getting a couple of tunes ready for what Herm has called Phil’s Afters, Mark and I both discovered new things, unexplored corners in what were otherwise familiar pieces.
Of course, in addition to all this, he was a thoroughly nice bloke, a diamond geezer, a gentleman in the original sense of the word, tolerant of one’s failings as well as encouraging in the face of difficulty and more than generous with his time, expertise and experience.
Phil, my dear friend, I’m grateful to have known you, to have played with you and to have shared in your magnificent compositions – I’ve been so lucky, in that it was living a dream for me – nothing equals the thrill of playing with your adolescent musical heroes, and I was blessed to be able to see from the inside, what made these remarkable pieces tick, and I give thanks to you Phil.
Godspeed – we’ll meet again another time.
As a guitarist he was one of kind. Really. A unique sense of melody, improvised or composed. I always liked the way that the boisterous, belligerent Pip would write seductive, dreamy pieces while Phil, the quiet man, came up with the tough stuff to make your skeleton quake. (Though of course he could be achingly tender…) He was grand. He’s gone. I regret the many years we were far apart. He was my friend. I’ll love him forever.
Michael and I have had the privilege of spending a lot of quality time with you and Herm over the years and we were so happy to celebrate with you in the summer. I hope you know that your advice will be remembered, your laughter celebrated and your music played long and loud in Australia for many to hear and for many years to come.
I hope that you and my dad, Steve, are somewhere now, making music together again.
After Matching Mole rehearsals at Robert’s St Luke’s Mews house 1971, Phil and I would enjoy jamming together in the evenings, with me on my upright piano ( that Robert had kindly shipped up to his place from Canterbury for me ). We would play a completely different style of music of our own making that didn’t resemble anything as complex as what we’d been doing with the Molers ! e.g. bossa nova, pop ballads etc ………. and it was at times like that I realised just how gifted and versatile a player he really was!
He’ll surely be missed by many, but never forgotten.
I will always keep deep in my heart – like a treasure – all those magical moments you gave me at home in London with Pip but also without him.
Phil, I remember our first meeting in London, then in Venice and our last meeting in Paris. All these moments are printed forever.
You and your friends, you immediately adopted me. You, Phil, seduced me with your quickdraw, your kindness and your attentions towards me.
Phil, you’ve always impressed me with your talent, your great size, and that quiet strength that you released, which made me think you could be immortal. You leave me your music. Will she console me?
One thing is certain, your wonderful music will survive you.
This music that I discovered with you, this band of musicians and merry friends. I had never heard such music from my small Caribbean island where I listened to the biguine, salsa and especially jazz.
It was a revelation, a nugget. Pure talent.
Phil, I’ll miss you. You deserved to be known. I love you as a little sister who loses a big brother. You will leave a big emptiness in my heart.
I think of you, Herm,
I’ve always seen you and Phil like those inseparable birds. Be brave Herm. I know the pain of losing a loved one.
I love you too, and I have an infinite tenderness for you.
I remember that you and Phil supported me when I was in pain and suffering the loss of a very dear being. I will try to live up to everything you have given me. You can count on me.
I kiss you very strongly Herm and send you all my energy and my strength. The boys Jerome and Thomas join me in conveying our condolences.
Unfortunately I can’t get over to the U.K. But I would love to make a donation in Phil’s name. How do I go about that?? I will be with you in my heart.
I have so many beautiful memories of Phil. Both as a child at home and in your home. But also living as your neighbour so well looked after by you and your people close by.
It warms me to think of Phil and pip up there reunited in all of their glory.
What fun they must be having. But what painful loss we feel.
I love you Herm.
Sending so much love from Copenhagen.
As we all know the heydays of Canterbury music and its offspring lay in the Seventies so there was a long time we did not hear from many of its musicians, including Phil. Until one day somewhere around 1995 at a concert of Hugh Hoppers Franglo-Dutch band in Holland the inevitable Henk Weltevreden approached us. He told us Phil was doing concerts with Fred Baker in small venues and was looking for some extra gigs. And so it came about that we were finally going to meet our almost forgotten hero.
We decided to contact Phil and ask him if he liked to play a bit of the old music we loved so much. As it happens we had our own amateur band and of course we could not play the complicated Mole or Hatfield stuff, but we managed to rehearse some bits and pieces in advance.
When Phil, Fred and Herm arrived we set up their equipment next to ours in the small venue where we would play together later that night. As it turned out these two friendly British blokes Phil and Fred were very quick to understand what our musical attempts were all about. At the concert later that evening they showed us their enormous musicality, gave us wings and took our band (and the audience) on an unexpected journey.
There is a recording of the music that was played that evening. We more or less dragged Phil back into the past of some Matching Mole music that he had almost forgotten himself and also made him improvise on some of our own tunes. Nevertheless he showed us great authority and craftsmanship along with an unexpected dose of soul. Although many listeners in the audience were unfamiliar with the material we performed, it was clear that the magic and emotional impact of Phil’s playing touched us all.
And all the while we felt the presence of this big, almost endearing and certainly unpretentious man. Yes, maybe unintelligible, mysterious and certainly miles ahead in musical ideas but what a lovely and perfectly amenable person.
You will not be forgotten, Phil.
I got to know the guys over the next couple of years and Dave Stewart became the best music teacher I ever had (although neither of us realised it at the time). I’m still in fairly regular touch with Dave and with Richard Sinclair, with whom I’ve played a few times in his adopted Puglia and Rome. We even joined the Marines together one wine-fuelled afternoon. Phil was always very nice to me, very kind to this then teen and although I didn’t see him these last 35 years or so, he left an indelible mark upon my own playing and somehow we managed to get the odd message to each other, often through Fred and I always wanted to see him face to face again. I believe he kept an eye on my career which blossomed after the exposure to the Canterbury lot.
I know Phil had been unwell for some time but even when expected/inevitable, the news always comes as a shock. I was in Lisbon when I heard the news and my heart goes out to you. He will remain a constant inspiration to me on my own journey.
In the intervening years we met at family parties, then ,sadly, at funerals as the older generation faded away. It was always a treat to see you, and I was especially touched and grateful that you came to Iain’s funeral. It was the last time I saw Phil, I know how fond and proud Iain was of his only two male cousins.
You must be in pieces, there’s no way to comfort you, but I will be with you on Friday to share your sadness and to honour the quiet, gentle man I knew Phil to be.
Phil, you will be remembered as a giant in so many ways. Your approach to the guitar, your chord voicings, your phrasing, your sound, your facial expressions! your talents as a composer and skill in leading the bands you assembled to bring them to life. I will remember you also as a kind and warm person who I am proud to have had the opportunity to spend some time with. Thank you. We will all miss you. A giant.
We shared a house along with Jack in the mid seventies and I always remember his tapping foot above the kitchen for hours and hours…….he eventually came down for the odd cup of tea.
What dedication and what a legacy he has left us all.
I grew up in a house full of musicians. I would climb over them sleeping on our living room floor. Him and Herm were like a warm comfy sofa. Always around, making us tea and toast, painting, whispering through our house like a warm, comforting breeze.
Phil taught me how to use a kitchen knife properly ….while tried to cut cheese with ‘The sharpest knife in Hatfield Heath!’ (his words) when I was 8 years old. I’m sure he saved me from a trip to the Emergency.
Much of my dads music, sounded like hippy noise to me. However, ‘In Cahoots’ was a band I actually loved. I went to see them play as a teen and later as an adult in London. There were melodies….Pretty melodies. I truly love your writing Phil, it is the music that brings me back to my happiest times with Pip.
It brings back memories of late, late night gigs in London, the smell of beer mats and hippys, roll up ciggies. I can smell my Pip’s well used, drum kit and equipment; like warm wood and purple crushed velvet.. Musicians, you know the smell I mean right? Such a comfort.
Anyway. You were such a constant Phil. With you, dies someone who knew Pip better than anyone, which makes me sad. I will listen to your music and imagine the wild faces you would pull as you played guitar exquisitely.
Rest in Peace dearest Phil. Give Pip and Elton, and the rest of the gang up there, a huge bear hug from all of us. The planet is losing an era…..Thank goodness we have your music to listen to. You will never be forgotten.
Posting publicly about a funeral feels slightly odd, but it seems remiss not to mark the passing of Phil Miller, a giant of the Canterbury scene, with as many respectful words as this forum will allow.
Whilst hardly claiming to know Phil well personally, I was lucky enough to meet him enough times to feel that I could at least pay my respects, and so my travel plans to get down to Canterbury for the Sound event the day after were hastily re-arranged on hearing that Phil’s funeral would be held in Plaistow last Friday.
The crematorium service was a simple one, presented by a neighbour (and apologies for not catching the name) with both a sensitivity for Phil’s qualities both personally and as a musician. Whilst the service was topped and tailed with extracts from Phil and Fred Baker’s beautifully gentle album ‘Double Up’, the centrepiece of the ceremony was a series of speeches, including an opening from Aymeric Leroy, providing something of a tribute to Phil’s musical pedigree. A series of more personal thoughts and reminiscences followed from many of Phil’s friends and collaborators such as Hatfieldist Alex McGuire, Caravan guitarist Doug Boyle, bassist Jack Monck (who accompanied Phil at the start and end of his musical career with Delivery and the Relatives); and musical soulmate Fred Baker. Mark Hewins gave a very moving off the cuff speech, whilst musician and author Henk Weltewreden read his own bitter-sweet and very funny piece based around the lyrics to Phil’s ‘God Song’. The prevailing themes of the speeches were Phil’s loving gift of music; the meticulous nature of his playing and composing, his striving for the perfectly fine-tuned arrangement in both him and others; his fierce loyalty; and his enduring love with Herm.
The wake was a beautifully informal affair at St Barnabas Hall in Dalston, with fine food downstairs and a succession of musicians playing the best of Phil’s music upstairs, such as ‘Underdub’, ‘God Song’, ‘Above and Below’ and ‘It Didn’t Matter Anyway’. I lost some of the detail of the particular denominations who played whilst chatting to various guests including the likes of Bill MacCormick, Yumi Hara, Geoff Leigh and Rick Biddulph, but there were combinations of In Cahoots musicians including Jim Dvorak and Pete Lemer; a fabulous reprise of a Miller/Baker duo number with Fred taking Phil Miller’s guitar line whilst Jack Monck played bass; Phil’s most recent collaborator Marc Hadley on sax; Theo Travis on flute; Mark Hewins on guitar and many many more. I felt very privileged to have been there – the mood was sombre but Phil’s spirit prevailed….
All imaginable clichés are applicable …
An Era has ended. You leave behind a void, Phil …
Miss you … Phil Miller Forever …!
It must have been round ’72 that I entered “De Toverbal”, Maassluis’s local alternative venue, on a quiet weekday evening, when I saw four blokes, close together, crosswise sitting round a little table. Just “over from Dover” (or Harwich?), probably tired. No one was speaking a word, no drinks, all leather and hair. You could barely see a face ’cause you could only see them on the back ’cause the heads seemed to be knitted together within a little cirkel of communal consciousness. Dead silent. It did look like a sectarial brotherhood. Then still it did … Quite an impression … For me an iconic image as a landmark of a continued musical fascination.
It appeared to be the newly formed band “Hatfield and the North”. One guy, the tallest one (only 22 years then, can you believe it!), I did recognise from a “concert”, about a year before, at “De Doelen”, a big and important concert hall in Rotterdam, with Robert Wyatt’s band, Matching Mole. The guitar player struck me by means of his unconventional, off-the-track, maverish, fat, sometimes lightly overdriven and sustained sound at guitar playing: Phil Miller! That tone would almost always be his “signature sound” except for a short stint with the thinner sounding Stratocaster.
The subsequent concert in the Toverbal hit me as a confluence of diverse musical inspired directions. A collision between cerebrality and intuition, a multi-layered intricate eclectic melting-pot of melody, harmony and rhythm with heavenly vocals on top, a juxtaposition between order and chaos, tightness and lightness/looseness, that I partially knew from all the, then well known, records of what later appeared to be known as the “Cant-scene”. It was clear immediately that this was another new phase in the development of the music of which I dare not express the name (Canterworry?). A short-lived renaissance never to be repeated.
Already then it struck me that Phil was sometimes retiring to the fringes or the back of the stage, playing in the dark or even with his back to and avoiding any visible communication with the audience (Later he got over it). But’s let’s be fair … it wasn’t a band like that. So it was only later that I could be aware of the characteristic grimacing facial expressions that were almost a part of his playing. Also they were weaned from any inclination to stardom or importance, some of them intermingling easily with the locals, others a bit aloof …
In subsequent (passed) 45 years I visited a countless number of concerts and gigs all over Holland, (and one at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London), but mainly in the environment of Rotterdam where Phil was a part or inciter of, but mainly with his own bands or Duo. Often/mostly including Pip, Elton, Hugh, Fred. Sometimes Richard, Didier, John Greaves and Alan Gowan and others. Sometimes playing beautiful but always struggling with his instrument. His own involvement and the struggle were part of the appreciation he aroused. Many of his compositions and concerts were always a joy and highlights for me and would always be a benchmark, leaving me in high spirits. Thanks, Phil …!
It was about 22 year ago that the Miller/Baker Duo had a gig in a, yet demolished (or sanitized if you like), pub in Crooswijk somewhere in the North of Rotterdam. Herm, Elton, Pip and Henk were also present. Because a local harmonica player was bound to be fitted in, the gig seemed to be destined to contain a high amount of blues-induced fuelling. Because Phil and Pip, at young age, used to accompany transatlantic blues artists like Lowell Fulson, I could guess he might be seasoned with a bag full of Millerish blues – clichés, although I never heard him play the blues before because that was what Phil was to be avoiding all the time. Before at the end of the gig the local students were dancing on the tables (quite uncommon for Phil’s “self-indulgent” music [sorry, …critics), Phil delivered such a terrible fierce ferociously intense bizarre, squeezing-his-guts-out (let’s “pyle” up the adjectives) (calm down, Peter!) heavey-strummed rhythm part, of which I knew he never played before and that I never heard before of him or any guitarist and probably would never hear from him or any guitar player afterwards. Just like a prematurely swan song. Although this was a kind of guitar playing that was completely a-typical of what Phil was known for, I instantly realised then that this would be the first moment I would memorize at Phil’s passing, and I did.
Last time I saw Phil, was at a gig by the river “Maas” on a sun – drenched day as temporarily part of the “The Relatives” together with, among others, his old childhood friend Jack Monck at the Rotterdam Round Town jazz festival on 11/7/10. Afterwards he kept sitting down on his chair at the stage peacefully with a smile on his face. That’s how I like to remember him. And, of course, all the other moments … How he could smile …!
All imaginable clichés are applicable …
An Era has ended. You leave behind a void, Phil …! Miss you … Phil Miller Forever …!
I still have great memories, and one thing in particular that always sticks in my mind is that after rehearsals, and in the evening, at Robert’s St Luke’s Mews house 1971, Phil and I would enjoy jamming together, with me on my upright piano that Robert had kindly shipped up to London from Canterbury for me. We would play a completely different style of music of our own making that didn’t resemble anything we had been rehearsing with the Molers… ‘normal music’ if you like ! and it was at times like that I realised how gifted a player he really was !
One of the speakers last Friday described Phil’s natural and endless curiosity, his desire go a little further and always seek new experiences and perceptions. One schoolboy adventure we shared illustrates this. We were no more than 16 at the time, and he and I snuck out of school on Saturday, hitchhiked down to London(about 100 miles away), went to the Scots Hoose in Cambridge Circus to see and hear Bert Jansch, then hitchhiked back to school, arriving less than hour before everyone was roused to go to mass…and totally got away with it!
Although I am blessed/cursed with something of an adventurous spirit myself, this was I’m sure, Phil’s idea, and I doubt very much if I’d have done it without him.
We were at school together for 3 years. I ran into him a handful of times in the next few years, but mostly remained aware of his progress indirectly through Jack, Pip and Benj. The last time I actually saw him was probably some 40 years ago. Yet thanks to our shared schooldays, something of his unique spirit has remained with me. There is no doubt that he was an early and enduring influence on my own musical journey. So thank you Phil. I will always love you.
The person who influenced me the most was Phil because of his beautiful compositions such as ‘God Song’ and ‘Underdub, with those particular jazzy guitar and flute arrangements.
The Hatfields came over to Holland at least twice a year and I often helped Henk organising the gigs and tours and of course we always were hanging around at the gigs.
Quite a few times Henk and I went to England to meet the musicians and we always went to see Phil, sometimes we stayed over at Phil’s in Dalston.
When I, years later in 1987, got a job in London (as architect) and I needed a placet to live,
I went to see Phil and asked him if he could help me to find something. ‘Don’t worry’ , he said, ‘I have my good friend Jack Monck living around the corner who is renting out rooms. And he is more sociable than I am’, he was saying these unforgettable words to me.
So I came up to live in Hackney at Jack’s.
It’s was funny to discover that Jack and I had a same musical interest without knowing each other and not having the same nationality Not very surprising because we had the same musical backround and references.
We both were into writing and arranging for bands, and we started exchanging ideas. While I lived in London I sometimes went to see Jack’s band (the Chan-Monck Group) gigging and I was impressed by altosax player Marc Hadley in the band.
So as a fact my landlord became the more and more a musical partner.
When my 2 month period of working as an architect was finished and I decided to go back to Holland, I said to Jack: ‘I think we should start a band together. You could bring in youre nice and catchy songs and I’ll bring in my instrumental compositions to have a balanced repertoire’.
So Jack and Marc came over old years eve 1987 and we started working and rehearsing with trombonist Kees Meijlink and drummer Gert van Seters the 2nd of January 1988. We finished recording a demo at the end of that week, and that was the moment the Relatives were born.
For at least 3 years the Relatives did twice a year several gigs during some short tours around Holland and Belgium and started recording in London in 1990 to complete an album.
Phil, always interested, came over sometimes always with good advices and inspiration.
After a break of 10 years the Relatives reunited on 04 04 04 for a big party for my 50th anniversary, and everybody, musicians friends and audience, were so enthousiastic that we decided to record
an album and finish it this time. The CD ‘Trans Europe Connection’ was released in 2007.
We also started our own label http://www.relativesrecords.com
After producing our own CD we had to try and sell it and do some more gigs.
In the summer of 2010 I organised a mini festival around Northsea Round Town Rotterdam
and we had the budget to invite a ‘special guest’ for a special Relatives gig.
Who else could that be ? Of course Phil…!
It was big fun, we had a nice (and hot) week of playing, rehearsing and doing some gigs with Phil, not only as a special guest, but he inspired us to perform our music better than we ever did before. We recorded some live tracks with Phil and togheter with some other recordings later on in the year, we released the CD ‘Live in de Tuin- Rotterdam’– with special guest Phil Miller (2011).
A few years later Jack and Marc decided to record some songs in Cornwall at drummer Damian Rodd’s studio this time. We asked Phil to put in guitar tracks, which he recorded at home. His sounds an d his playing gave the songs an extraordinay ´Canterbury´ flavour.
For Marc´s song ´On my mind´ it was Phil who was convinced that Richard Sinclair would be the best vocalist fort this kind of song and he asked Richard to do so.
In 2013 RelativesRecords released the CD Virtually – with Phil Miller featuring Richard Sinclair.
‘On my mind’ must have been one of the last recordings with Phil & Richard together….
It was broadcast on several radiostations (BBC6, VPRO (NL), USA, & Italy)
We did a couple of gigs in Cornwall with Phil at the end of 2013 and we had a great week, although he already had some health problems.
Looking back, Phil has been of an incredible importancy in my life, not only as muscial inspiration,
friend and great personalty, but also because of connecting me to Jack, which lead to a special musical co-orporation for many years. Running an (overseas) band, writing music, organising gigs, producing CD’s, running a record label, became part of my life. And finally doing gigs with one of my heroes of earlier days in the same band, is something I never could have imagined.
Funny how things work out in life… Perhaps I wouldn’t have been into music anymore nowadays
if I wouldn’t have gone and see Phil about 30 years ago, looking for a place to stay…..
His music (and i mean exactly his compositions and his unpredictable way of playing the guitar) has always been a point of creative reference to me … although i pretend to be a keyboard player. I listened to every single musical project available in which Phil has been involved always finding great inspirations and new ideas … and always enjoying his writing and guitar style.
… and i also might say that when i first met him in Venice with the Hatfields back in 2006 it was like meeting an old friend obviously thanks to his incredible kindness and goodwill manners with which he provided lots of interesting comments about music and life in general.
My friend Phil Miller who has died aged 68 was one of the most distinctive and original guitarists and composers England has ever produced. His prolific output is testament to a man who was indivisible from his music.
Philip Paul Brisco Miller was born on 22 Jan 1949 to David Noel Miller, wartime Royal Marine Lieutenant Colonel and later Head of Commodities at the Stock Exchange and his librarian wife Mavis. He was educated at Blackfriars School Laxton where he occasionally truanted at night, hitch-hiking to London clubs to hear his musical heroes play, returning un-missed in time for early morning Mass.
He taught himself to play guitar at 15. At 17 he formed his first band Delivery which had the distinction of playing regularly upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, backing visiting Blues legends. In 1971 he quickly became a vital figure on the ‘Canterbury Scene’ when he was recruited by Robert Wyatt, who had just left Soft Machine, to join his new band Matching Mole.
Phil’s next band was Hatfield and the North with Dave Stewart. Launched in 1973, the band demonstrated not only his development as an emotive composer but also as an incisive soloist. Phil’s compositions were sophisticated but his solos were deeply Blues rooted. He had a tumbling sense of timing that was impossible to replicate. Effortlessly hurdling over time signature changes like a world class show jumper; you would have felt like applauding if you had not been so enraptured by the engaging elegance of it all. Early on he developed a unique tone that was like pale blue ice, but that could turn shockingly crimson when a gale came up and the terrain turned from pastoral to something more rugged and challenging.
Hatfield morphed into National Health but the heavily written repertoire of the band left Phil feeling creatively stifled. Eventually in 1982 he formed his own band In Cahoots as a vehicle for his compositions. It became the band that, with some fluidity in the line-up, Phil would lead for the next three decades. With his wife Herm, they sound-proofed part of their Dalston flat which he used as a studio to practice, compose, rehearse and record his music. With the various line-ups within the band including Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Pip Pyle and Fred Baker, In Cahoots toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Japan and the USA and produced eight albums under Phil’s own Crescent Discs label.
One of Phil’s last acts before he died from his battle with cancer was to release the contents of these albums free of charge on YouTube under the title Phil Miller Musician – a typical example of his generosity of spirit.
In reality it was his meticulous and technically precise playing that held audiences spellbound over more than 40 years as a member of several of the most adventurous and outré exponents of brain-scrambling prog rock, including Matching Mole, Hatfield & The North and National Health.
A stalwart of the extended musical family known as the “Canterbury Scene”, Miller hailed from the backwaters of Hertfordshire rather than the cathedral city in Kent, but the branding became synonymous with a distinctive fusion of rock, jazz and Anglo-Saxon whimsy after seminal prog acts Soft Machine and Caravan emerged from Canterbury in the mid 1960s. The groups went on to spawn a complicated family tree of inter-related bands in which Miller Played.
Yet Miller was not a musician who could be easily pigeon-holed, for he developed a unique, cliché-free style of guitar playing so singular that it was hard to detect any obvious influences. He would “rather play a wrong note than a note somebody else had played”, according to Robert Wyatt, the former Soft Machine drummer with whom he formed Matching mole in 1971.
His compositions were sometimes so cerebral and complex that that they were sometimes impossible to play. Some pieces had “so many notes you couldn’t ask somebody to do it live, so I got a machine to do it” he confessed.
Off stage he was warm, mild mannered and self-effacing. John Greaves, a close friend who played bass with him, described him as “ a gentle, taciturn man whose shy demeanour belied an unerring instinct for what’s right and what isn’t”. Another friend
Was Johnathan Coe who named his novel The Rotters’ Club after a 1975 album Miller made with the band Hatfield & The North.
He was born Philip Paul Brisco Miller in Barnet in 1949, the son of a coffee borker, and grew up in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, where he lived next door to PipPyle, the group’s drummer, who died in 2006. Educated at a Catholic boarding school and then at Cambridge Technical College he took up the guitar at the age of 15.
He formed his first professional group, Delivery, in 1968 with Pyle and his older brother Steve Miller on keyboards. A popular fixture on the university circuit, Delivery broke up in 1971, when Miller joined Wyatt in Matching Mole, a band noted for their fiendishly complex time signatures. When the group had run their course after recording two albums, he teamed up again with Pyle, his brother Steve and Richard Sinclair of Caravan to form Hatfield & The North.
Named after a sign on the A1 in north London, the group was promptly signed by Richard Branson to Virgin Records, which at the time was awash with cash from the unexpected success of Mike Oldfields Tubular Bells and was boldly spending thewindfall on the most experimental and uncommercial acts it could find. When the group broke up in 1975, he formed National Health before taking the plunge to become a band leader by forming the Phil Miller Quartet, later renamed In Cahoots.
Uniting jazz and rock musicians, Miller led the band through twelve albums, although he was not always enamoured with every aspect of the leader’s role. “ it’s what you have to do if you want to hear your music played, but you have to do the chores – get the gigs,book the rehearsal room and incur the phone bill” he noted.
He was married to Herm, a painter who did some of the artwork for his albums. He supported Tottenham Hotspur FC and enjoyed boating on the Thames in a Fleetwind 12 foot sailing dingy built by his father for his 14th birthday. His dedication for his music, however, left little time for much else. “He played the guitar from the moment he got out of bed until the moment he went to sleep and never stopped working on his music until his illness prevented him.” said Benj Lefevre, a lifelong friend. “He was just one of those rare individuals who never got bent out of shape.”
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