Anthony Phillips' "Private Parts and Pieces" Revealed On New Box Set

The Genesis celebration at Cherry Red's Esoteric Recordings imprint continues with the release of Anthony Phillips' Private Parts and Pieces I - IV, a new 5-CD box set collecting and expanding his four albums of the same name released between 1978 and 1984. Private Parts follows Esoteric's recent deluxe expansion of Phillips' The Geese and the Ghost as well as a number of other projects from members of his famous band including a reissue of the 1986 album by Steve Hackett's band GTR and Tony Banks' career-spanning A Chord Too Far box set.

Though guitarist Phillips departed Genesis in July 1970 after the recording of the band's second album Trespass, he continued to write and record new music even while pursuing academic paths. He studied orchestration and harmony externally at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and after receiving his LGSM diploma, he moved into a teaching capacity at Reeds School and Peper Harrow. 1977 saw the arrival of his first solo album, the aforementioned The Geese and the Ghost, but he had accumulated a number of other homemade recordings prior to that.

The first Private Parts and Pieces collection was prioritized by Phillips following the release of his second solo LP Wise After the Event in 1978. Drawing on instrumental tracks written and/or recorded as early as 1972 and through 1976, Private Parts was mastered at Trident Studios in August 1978 and released that November on the U.S. Passport label. In the U.K., Arista opted to bundle the album with Phillips' 1979 solo album Sides as a two-for-one release. The second Private Parts volume arrived in 1980, adding more fully-arranged tracks (including contributions from Mike Rutherford) to the solo pieces on guitar and piano. It also included compositions penned for an abortive stage production of Wise After the Event and an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. ("The Scottish Suite" that opens the album was the result of the latter; plans were even afoot at one point for similar musical settings to accompany all of Shakespeare's tragedies!)

The third Private Parts and Pieces departed from the first two in the series in that Phillips composed and recorded it as an album (subtitled Antiques) in its own right rather than collecting it from archival odds and ends. It also diverged from its predecessors in that it was designed as a collaborative project. His foil on guitar was Enrique Berro Garcia. Save for "Old Wives Tale" and parts of the "Hurlingham Suite," Philips and Garcia composed the album together. Passport Records saw to its release in the U.S. and Canada; RCA issued it in the U.K. on its RCA International label.

Private Parts and Pieces IV followed in April 1984, culled from Phillips' solo material composed and recorded during the three-year period between 1979 and 1982 including the four-part "Arboretum Suite" which opened the album. Passport released it in the U.S. and Canada, but as Phillips had left RCA in the U.K., it remained unreleased there. Each one of the albums contained in this box set features additional tracks added from previous CD-era reissues. But the main attraction is Disc Five, premiering eighteen outtakes and alternate takes recorded between 1976 and 1983.

Housed in a clamshell box, Private Parts and Pieces I - IV includes a detailed 24-page booklet with essays for every album as well as copious track-by-track notes. Simon Heyworth has remastered all albums. Anthony Phillips' most recent Private Parts, Volume XI, arrived in 2012. This box handily brings together his earliest releases in the series with a trove of previously unreleased material to flesh out the story. You can order Esoteric Recordings' set below!

Anthony Phillips, Private Parts and Pieces I - IV (Esoteric ECLEC 52510, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

CD 1: PRIVATE PARTS & PIECES

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
FIELD OF ETERNITY
TIBETAN YAK MUSIC
LULLABY - OLD FATHER TIME
HARMONIUM IN THE DUST (OR HARMONIOUS STRATOSPHERE)
TREGENNA AFTERNOONS
STRANGER (Bonus Track, first released on Virgin reissue VJCP-2324, 1990)
REAPER
AUTUMNAL
FLAMINGO
SEVEN LONG YEARS
SILVER SONG (DEMO) (Bonus Track, first released on Virgin reissue VJCP-2324, 1990)
MOVEMENT IV FROM GUITAR QUINTET (Bonus Track, first released on Voiceprint reissue)