PHILLIPS, STEPHEN
STEPHEN PHILLIPS MEETS STEPHEN PHILLIPS
YORKSHIRE EVENING POST, LEEDS UK 06.05.69
FLEMING, HAZEL E.

This week I'm going to write about Stephen Phillips. Before you gasp at the extent of my ego I had better explain that I don't mean myself but the Leeds country-blues singer whose name also happens to be Stephen Phillips.

At 21 he is one of the finest country blues guitarists in the country - well known in the North both for his solo gigs and his performances with The Westeners, Aces Wild, The Oddfellows Jug Band and Easy Mr. Steve's Bootleggers.

In January, 1968, when Steve married his attractive wife Sue, he went solo (musically that is). When I called on them the other night, Steve was busy decorating his front room red. Well, not completely. The windowsills would be in a contrasting yellow, he told me, and the door purple... 'heavy colours'. Steve was once at Harrogate Art School.

FIRST GUITAR
We moved into the kitchen of the house where Steve bought his first guitar, for £2, eight years ago. They are frequently visited by friends who come to spend an evening as I did, listening to Steve playing the guitar.

"I've probably played a thousand or more guitars," explained Steve, who works by day in a guitar warehouse, mending cracked necks and broken bridges, then spends most of his evenings playing his own guitars.

These include three steel National guitars, ideal for Steve's style. "I never get tired of just looking at them. I don't know of anyone else in the country who has three," he said. Without his moustache Steve would look pretty much like Elvis Presley, whom he deeply admires. "In my first group I used to sing a lot of Presley numbers. Of his recent ones Guitar Man was about the best." Steve enjoyed the new Presley album which not only has Elvis in old country style on Lawdy Miss Clawdy and others but also three snatches of Guitar Man. He was sorry Scotty Moore wasn't on this latest LP.

At home Steve sings with a cigarette permanently drooping from one corner of his mouth. Country blues of the 20s and 30s, raucous and emotive.

THE PIANO
Baby daughter Corrinne sits and claps in time. She is growing up with an inbuilt sense of rhythm. Steve and Sue don't go out much. Luckily Sue likes Steve's playing because that's what he does most of the time. "I remember agent Danny Pollock asking me what I wore on stage. He was horrified when I said a suit. He told me I ought to grow my hair much longer".

Steve didn't. It is the music which interests him, not the image. He likes progressive music but gave me the impression that he is a bit cynical about the long hair, tinted glasses brigade. He had enjoyed watching the Family. Who wouldn't?

Steve also plays the piano, an instrument which didn't hold any interest for him as a child when his brother and sister learnt it. "I didn't really like music as a child. It was when I was assistant stage manager at the City Varieties that I heard an artist called Peter Honri, who did a clown act on the concertina, playing the piano one day when he had dropped into the theatre." He was playing special numbers like Yancey Special, St. Louis Blues, and St. James's Infirmary. Now Steve plays the piano as well as the guitar in his act. He could certainly make a name for himself nationally if he were so inclined, but he shows a remarkable lack of interest in commercial success - and that isn't just an image thing.

"I like to make extra money - I just spend it on guitars", said Steve. I asked Steve why he didn't make some demos and try for a record contract.

"What would be the point of me doing this sort of material on record? It was all done, probably much better, 30 years ago." If only some of the so-called blues groups currently playing the clubs were equally honest!

For the present Stephen Phillips will continue to repair and play guitars, wearing a suit on stage and resisting any temptation to be drawn into the image conscious world of the pop business.