Simon Phillips

Simon Phillips is one of the world’s most renowned drummers. He has worked with Mick Jagger, The Who, Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce, Peter Gabriel, Joe Satriani, Tears for Fears, Judas Priest, Roxy Music, Al DiMeola, Pete Townshend, Russ Ballard, Robert Palmer, Stanley Clarke, The Pretenders, Jon Anderson, Whitesnake, and Dave Gilmore.

His solo albums include “Protocol” (1988), “Force Majeure” (1992), “Symbiosis” (1995), “Another Lifetime” (1997) “Out of the Blue” (1998) and “Vantage Point” (1999).

Simon is also involved in producing and engineering, working with Mike Oldfield while also co-producing Toto’s “Tambu” (1995) and “Mindfields” (1998), and engineering “Through the Looking Glass” 2001/02.

On Toto’s “Falling In Between” (2005), Simon played, engineered, composed, and shared production duties. He then went on Toto’s “Falling In Between” world tour, playing 177 shows in 31 countries. Simon is now concentrating on his sixth solo album, running his studio, Phantom Recordings, and traveling the world playing drum clinics.

MB: You say you’ve never had stage fright?

SP: Not what I would call stage fright. I’ve been nervous, sure. Nervousness and stage fright—those are two totally different things.

MB: How would you distinguish between them?

SP: Well, with stage fright, people get sick. They really get quite, quite sick. I’ve only come across it a few times. Stage fright doesn’t really go away. It’s a little bit deeper than just being nervous.

Being nervous is something you start with, and you go out there, and once the gig gets going, it subsides and you’re okay.

MB: Can you tell me about some of the worst cases of stage fright you’ve seen, without telling me who the people are?

SP: I’ve seen people getting sick, having to throw up and stuff. But like I said, it’s very rare. I haven’t seen a lot of it, and when I have worked with people who have suffered from it, they’ve concealed it very well, because if you’re a professional musician, you have to cope with it. You have to learn a way of getting around it.

In terms of nerves, I can only really speak from personal experience. I suffer from nervousness maybe at the first show of a tour, in a major town, or a town where a lot of my friends are. That’s when I get a little bit more edgy. Nervousness manifests itself in different ways—some people get more irritable; some people get a little bit tense and start panicking. I tend to just go along with it, because these days I kind of welcome it. When I’ve got a few nerves, I go, “Wow, that’s fantastic; I haven’t felt that for a while.”

Most of the time, when you’re playing on the road, gig after gig, it’s great to be excited to play. And there are other gigs where you’re not excited to play—you’re tired, you’ve done a lot of traveling, you haven’t had a decent meal, and maybe you’re jet lagged and you’ve got constipation. [Both laugh] The last thing you really want to do is play.

On the other hand, you know that by playing the gig you’re going to get lots of exercise, and it’s the best thing to get you over your jet lag. So it’s a double-edged sword. But I love it when I get a feeling of nervousness before a gig; I think, “Oh, this is great. It’s going to be a good gig.”

MB: When you’ve been nervous, have you ever had to calm yourself down? Do you do anything to keep yourself calm?

SP: No. When I’m nervous, I still remain pretty calm. You probably wouldn’t even know that I’m nervous. And, like I said, my kind is a healthy form of nervousness. It’s just like sports. I used to race cars. And boy—when you’re on the grid ready to go—you’ve never felt nerves like that before in your life. There could be an almighty start line accident. But just the whole fact that you’ve got the car, the engine is revving at seven thousand revs, and you’ve got a clutch that's biting under your foot—with twenty-five other cars around you—that’s nervousness. [Laughs]

And then you drive the first lap in a bunch of about ten or fifteen cars, which are very close to each other, and which could touch each other at any time—that’s nervousness. But you have to remain calm. And it really focuses you. There’s nothing like a bit of nerves to get the old adrenaline going. And that’s why I said it’s positive, as long as you’re the sort of person that can focus and channel that energy, ‘cause that’s what it is: energy. I get the feeling that stage fright is the same kind of nervousness channeled in a very bad way.