In part two of Jason Barnard’s conversation with Anthony Phillips, the Genesis origin story gets properly filled in. That jump from the gentle psychedelia of From Genesis to Revelation to Trespass has always seemed like a leap, but Phillips explains it simply: he and Mike Rutherford spent the eight months between recording and release writing constantly, stockpiling 12-string ideas until they had the foundations of Dusk, White Mountain and Stagnation sketched out before the debut had even flopped.
The part of this conversation that stays with you is Phillips on stage fright. Not ordinary nerves but something that came on after glandular fever, sudden mid-performance blanks where his mind just went. He was eighteen and never told anyone, convinced each time it would pass.
There’s also a brief moment here on Nick Drake. Both of them were playing the same loud, indifferent university crowds. When Drake found out Phillips had written ‘Let Us Now Make Love’ he just said one word back to him: “Dangerous.” Phillips has never forgotten it.
The conversation also covers the troubled release of The Geese and the Ghost, the nine months of painstaking manual recording that went into Slowdance, and writing the title track of his new album, Gemini, for Martha Argerich.
