Were Phil’s compositions down to chance?

I keep this little snippet on my Walkman of an interview that Henk Weltevreden made many years ago because I have no recording of Phil’s voice other than of him announcing the musicians on stage at In Cahoots concerts. This is very sad for me because when someone you love dies, not being able to hear their voice again is a source of great sorrow. I do also have his announcement on our  landline phone saying “This is Phil Miller, Crescent Discs and Herm. Please leave a message.” I love hearing him answer the phone although I always use my mobile for calls, so very few calls are for me on the landline any more – only cold callers trying to scam me  So rather than being an irritant to me, these calls are an opportunity to hear Phil’s voice loud and clear and I always go and stand by the phone when it rings, just for the pleasure of hearing him speak and use my name. Sadly for me my phone is a BT phone taken over by EE who are in the process of changing everything to digital.  One of the changes it will bring is  removing the ability to have a personal message answering the phone. A robot will take over that role. Really EE! how can you possibly think this is a good idea?
This makes Phil’s voice in this scrap of an interview recorded by Henk all the more precious to me.
Although this little snippet of conversation comes at the end of an interview, it is all I have. I can find no trace of the rest of it on my computer. It says a lot about the characters of both Phil and Henk. Henk had always had a big thing about chance. In the interview you can hear him talking about Einstein who claimed that his big idea came to him “complete” early in his life and for the rest of his life he never had another idea.
For Henk, chance was everything. It was always his central idea. Even his music was largely based on chance He was always going on bout it and was determined in this interview to get Phil to admit that a lot of his own music was down to chance.
Phil on the other hand left nothing to chance, especially in his compositions. He was known, when searching for a note to complete  chord for example, to spend days going through all the permutations possible to a human being until he found the right one. His complex orchestrations were the result of intense working out. Most of his life was spent in front of the computer with his guitar working and working at his compositions. His life was the very antithesis of chance.
In this interview Phil says some very interesting things about his approach to music – especially at the start of this piece where he is talking about soloing during a performance. He is struggling to be agreeable in his answers to Henk’s questions – to phrase his replies so that they might somehow fit into Henk’s thesis, even though it’s obvious to the listener that they cannot. This is typical of Phil. He tries to be agreeable because he is a very kind person and doesn’t want to quarrel with Henk or dismiss his ideas. It is quite an amusing little battle. Henk is determined to get Phil to admit the overpowering effect of chance in his music and Phil is doing his best not to either have a fight or be dishonest but can’t bring himself lie about his music.
In the end Phil brings the rather uncomfortable session to an end by blaming the microphone which he feels is pointing at him. I would give a lot to hear the whole interview, meanwhile I keep it on my walkman and listen now and then just to hear him talking.

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