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Genesis co-ounder Anthony Phillips swaps his guitar for keys on Gemini – Pieces For Piano. His latest collection gathers recordings made between 2022 and 2025, including a piece written for Argentine concert pianist Martha Argerich. He tells Prog about his wrist injury, his contribution to Genesis’ early sound, and his friendship with Steve Hackett, the man who replaced him.
“I get told I sound like a toff,” says Anthony Phillips. “On the road with Genesis in the 60s some guy at Leicester University called us ‘snotty-nosed bastards’ – but at Charterhouse [famed alma mater of Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks et al] we thought we were pretty neutral. We used to take the mickey out of chaps we called ‘rip-snorters.’ They were really posh.”
Where Phillips is concerned, such digressions are common. He tells Prog he’s a fan of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, especially Casino Royale. He talks fondly of his friend and sometime collaborator Andrew Skeet, a longtime multi-instrumentalist with Neil Hannon’s chamber pop band The Divine Comedy. What’s more surprising, perhaps, is that Phillips – a co-founder of Genesis and the band’s lead guitarist until Steve Hackett replaced him after 1970’s Trespass – is a big fan of Jimmy Nail’s 90s work on BBC TV playing rough-hewn Geordie detective, Spender.
“Jimmy was really good in it,” he says. “I love the Newcastle accent; it really sings. I can’t do it, though!” He does, however, have a go at this correspondent’s Glaswegian accent. He also makes gratuitous reference to the word ‘bagpipes’ more than once. He’s old-school, but very charming and likeable with it. Mimicry, modesty and puns are Phillips’s currency.
He engages with questions thoughtfully and you get the sense he’d happily chat all day. Now 74, he hasn’t let his seniority or recent health issues derail the long, prolific career that has seen him release 40 solo LPs across various genres including prog, new age and soundtrack. A huge talent on both guitar and keyboards, Phillips has also excelled in the library music realm, and he’s collaborated with Mike Rutherford, Steve Hackett, Camel and others.
His latest release, Gemini – Pieces For Piano, brings together 44 new compositions that might broadly be termed ambient or modern classical music, and which he considers his best keyboard work since 1999’s Private Parts & Pieces X: Soirée. He recorded these new tracks between 2022 and 2025, as and when problems with a troublesome right wrist allowed.
“Basically, wear and tear kicked in,” he says. “I’d made the error of inputting data in the studio while my wrist was just sort of hovering, and it swelled up with fluid. Ice was my best friend and I tried every kind of painkiller. It was a bit like clawing yourself up a mountain. As we speak I’m juggling a possible operation, but I’ve got three different specialists giving me three completely different views.”
Fortunately the injury hasn’t affected his guitar-playing. “With guitar, your left hand is wrapped around the neck – it’s protected, if you think about it. If I did a few Pete Townshend windmills I might be in trouble, but generally speaking I’m still fine with guitar, which is an absolute mercy.”
From its opener River Of Serenity onwards, much of Gemini is unashamedly melodic and hooky. Philipps’ love of French impressionist composers such as Ravel and Debussy peeps through; and some of the compositions have a deeply personal side, since both Piece For CS and Pablo Farceur are named for late friends.
He confides that finding evocative names for the tunes was challenging, hence he sometimes solicited help from the album’s engineer James Collins and others. There’s a pleasing, ‘come hither’ aspect to Odyssey Of A Somnambulant and Fathomless Caverns – their titles, at least, seemingly nodding at the new age vibes prominent on 1987’s Private Parts & Pieces VII: Slow Waves, Soft Stars.
Gemini’s title track, meanwhile, was actually written for famed Argentine concert pianist Martha Argerich, who was born under the astrological sign of the same name. It’s Phillips’ “more humble” (but still excellent) version we hear on the record. “I have another pianist friend, Gabriele Baldocci, who’s also great in his own right,” he says. “When he was doing duets with Martha a while back he said, ‘Why don’t you write something for her?’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’
“I knew about her, and I could remember reading this great thing in the paper: ‘Martha Argerich is 75, but her fingers don’t seem to realise it.’ [She’s now 84.] She’s still one of the greatest living concert pianists, so I was delighted when she premièred Gemini as a duet with Gabriele in Valencia back in 2018.”
There were already too many composers in early Genesis, and it was getting a bit strained
Was Phillips in the front row when they performed it at Palau de la Música Catalana? “I wasn’t, actually. Because there was no guarantee they were going to play it and it was a long way to go if they didn’t! But you can see their performance online. One friend of Martha’s told me the piece summed up her character perfectly, but I’ve never actually met her – I’m too in awe of her, to be honest.”
Thinking about how his career has panned out, Prog wonders if Phillips always had a stronger leaning towards classical music than his former Genesis bandmates? “Not at all; Tony Banks was the classically trained one who’d already had piano lessons and could play bits of Holst and Rimsky-Korsakov. The rest of us were pretty ignorant, really!
“I was already composing on keyboards, albeit in a very primitive way – as Tony was always very quick to point out! Then when I left Genesis [in July 1970] I got a great piano teacher. She showed me Debussy’s Claire De Lune, and I could hear something of The Beatles in it – or something of Debussy in The Beatles.”
He later had the “Damascene conversion” that led to him studying harmony, counterpoint and orchestration at London’s Guildhall School Of Music And Drama. “When I heard Sibelius’s Karelia Suite on Radio 3, I found it incredibly exciting and tuneful, and it had pathos. I thought, ‘This is classical music, is it? I’m in!’”
Despite his many achievements, Phillips says he has no interest in writing a memoir. “A few people have suggested I should, but some of my life has been quite a struggle and there would be murky waters to navigate alongside the funny stories,” he explains. “I’d rather spend my time making music.”
The Byrds and Beatles used 12-strings for strumming. We were exploring multi-timbral harmonies – ploughing our own furrow
In 2008, though, Italian journalist and Genesis scholar Mario Giammetti published a Phillips biography titled The Exile. “I found the idea of anyone writing a book about me quite embarrassing,” says the subject, “but his book was authorised because Mario’s such a sweet fella and I wanted to help.”
The biography did dispel that old chestnut about Phillips being to Genesis what Pete Best was to The Beatles; someone who exited early and saw fame and fortune slip through his fingers. “I think if I’d been sacked, or left because of musical differences, I’d have felt a right flunker,” he says. “But I left for health reasons and because I couldn’t handle the pressure of touring, so I think we can put the Pete Best thing to bed.
“The comparison does hold true in terms of how massively successful both The Beatles and Genesis became, and of course it would have been nice to be a part of that. Ultimately, though, it’s all a bit academic.
“Another point worth making,” he adds, “is that there were already too many composers in early Genesis, and it was getting a bit strained, especially with us all living on top of one another. No wonder they eventually ended up making ...And Then There Were Three! But it took them a while to realise that behind the drums they had Phil Collins, the most extraordinarily commercial animal anyone could have dreamt of.”
After a long spell of soul searching and personal discovery, Phillips’ first solo release post Genesis was 1977’s rightly acclaimed The Geese & The Ghost: a fine, prog-as-prog-can-be record on which Mike Rutherford, Collins and Steve Hackett’s brother John all guested.
When Steve and I compared notes on our time in Genesis we found some resounding similarities
“It had been in gestation for years, so by the time it finally came out, even prog fans were listening to less prog,” says Phillips with a laugh. “But I do remember the US magazine Goldmine had it on a list of great prog LPs sandwiched between In The Court Of The Crimson King and Crime Of The Century, which made me very happy.”
Punk’s grip on UK music had tightened circa 1977, however, and bods at Arista Records advised a radical re-think for 1978 follow-up Wise After The Event, prescribing no long instrumentals and a punk bile Phillips didn’t possess. “I wasn’t an angry young man; I found it a bit of a struggle, to be honest. But I was lucky to have [producer] Rupert Hine with me, who was this phenomenally kind, patient and inspirational guy.”
In a career so long and varied, it’s difficult to do justice to Phillips’ voluminous, quality controlled output. His Private Parts & Pieces series, which has so far resulted in 12 LPs between 1978 and 2024, has been an important receptacle for some of his most diverse and exploratory music. Elsewhere, some of Phillips’s library/production music output – “a good little earner on the side” – is collected on 2010’s Ahead Of The Field: Music For TV And Film, a fine introduction to the field that helped finance the Steinway grand piano Phillips plays on Gemini.
Ultimately, though, Phillips will likely best be remembered for helping to define Genesis’ early sound. His 12-string guitar parts – and those of his friend Rutherford – were pretty crucial. What in particular was the appeal of the instrument?
“In 1967, the so-called Summer Of Love, there was a field called The Glade that we used to go to for our nefarious fumigating activities. One day we emerged from behind a hedge a little transported and some guy was sitting strumming a 12-string. It was such a beautiful sound. I’d heard electric 12-string on Byrds and Beatles records and loved it. They tended to use them for strumming, though, whereas Mike and I were exploring multi-timbral harmonies – we felt we were ploughing our own furrow.”
Does he feel his worth to early Genesis has been fully acknowledged? Steve Hackett has certainly sung his praises. “Yes, Steve has been nothing but a darling. And ironically enough, I’ve gotten to know my replacement pretty well over the years. When we compared notes on our time in Genesis we found some resounding similarities, actually. I won’t go into them here, but I remember thinking, ‘I wish I’d known you earlier, Steve. I could have told you what to expect!’”
Gemini – Pieces For Piano is on sale now.
