Phil Roy Biography

PHIL ROY

…In His Own Words

“My very first musical memory was sitting in a car in Philly as a kid, listening to the Four Tops' 'Reach Out (I'll Be There).' Wow. I just remember... connecting. Later, as an adult, I thought about me as a five-year-old in that car and all the great soul singers who've wrapped their voices around my songs, around a slice of my soul, and I connect to that moment again. I understand how human it is.

"I started working pretty early as a kid. My family had a shoe store at 16th and Columbia in North Philly, the flash point of the riots in '64. It was called Hollywood Shoes. The clientele was 100 percent black. Substitute the pizza parlor in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing for the shoe store and that was my world, my frame of reference as a boy.

"It was a great time for music. Gamble & Huff were sewing the seeds of the Philly Sound with The Ojays and The Blue Notes. Thom Bell was working with The Delfonics and The Spinners. I started formal music studies when I was about nine. My guitar teacher played in Gamble & Huff’s house band; MFSB! And I took refuge in the radio, devouring the music on soul stations like WHAT and WDAS. Then I started getting into the progressive rock movement that was happening in the U.K. It completely captured my imagination.

"I started playing guitar in high school groups with names like Relayer and The Wild Spaceship. We played covers by The Stones and "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter. I was just a kid smoking weed, going to concerts, saving my ticket stubs, living my teenage life. It was that time and place in America during the mid-70s and I loved it. I started listening John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock's 'Thrust,' and Larry Coryell and Chick Corea, and suddenly becoming a guitar player really appealed to me. I've got to give my father credit, the way he encouraged me to pursue my dream. And I wound up in Boston at Berklee School of Music.

"At Berklee I found I wasn't talented enough to make it as a serious instrumentalist in the jazz world, but one of my teachers -- John Aldridge -- taught a songwriting class and I got to record my first song in the studio. That experience changed my life. I wrote and recorded a few more songs and pretty soon I was in Los Angeles where I formed a pop-rock band called Carrera. It was the classic show biz story; we were discovered on Sunset Boulevard and we signed with Warner Brothers. And, like so many other Hollywood stories, I wound up broke and disillusioned, working at a mall, selling shoes. The band hung in there; we changed our name and signed to EMI, who dropped us after one album.

"So the cat started chasing his tail again. I became a staff writer for several big publishers. I achieved what every songwriter craves -- recognition, acceptance, approval. Ray Charles covered 'My World,' which became the title cut from his 1993 Warner Brothers album. Joe Cocker sang 'The Simple Things' on his album, 'Have A Little Faith.' Aaron Neville cut 'My Brother, My Brother' from 'The Grand Tour,' which was his most successful solo album. And Pops Staples, Widespread Panic, Paul Young and Eric Bibb each recorded 'Hope in a Hopeless World.' I'm also very happy that Mavis Staples has just recorded two of my songs, 'God Is Not Sleeping' and 'Ain't No Better than You.'

"So why did I feel so unhappy and unfulfilled? After 20 years, living in Los Angeles had become a terrible burden. I was chasing after the unattainable. I'd been slogging away at the music game, and the goodnethat made me 'me' was vanishing. I realized that my publishers were more interested in how many albums my songs sold, instead of who was singing my songs. Imagine -- the greatest singers of my generation are performing my material, and it isn't good enough. It was... confusing.

"One day, I realized that it took me 17-and-a-half years to reach number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was the highest I had ever charted in the U.S., and suddenly it occurred to me that I was writing songs to get on commercial radio when I wasn't even listening to commercial radio! I was making music for everyone but myself. And I was at the end of my rope. Personally and professionally -- spiritually -- I was done. Recording my own album was the last thing for me to do. I sold my motorcycle. I sold my car. I sold a piece of art, just to pay for studio time. I was driven, and driven to do it.

"The millennium was turning, so I cut 'grouchyfriendly' in 2000. I got some great press, some great airplay and somehow I managed to sell 8,000 copies without a distributor. The album got noticed by artists I genuinely admire, like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Wim Wenders. Then I was named '2002 Independent Artist of the Year' by Musician's Atlas magazine, which was a great honor. The judges included Arturo Sandoval and Me’shell Ndegeocello, which meant even more. And that gave me the confidence to make Issues + Options.

"Making my own albums gave me a sense of renewal, as if, creatively, I was being reborn. I don't say that lightly, either -- the experience puts me in touch with a feeling of freedom that has nothing to do with music. See, chasing hit songs for so many years wore me down. You get a taste of the rewards, and you become enslaved. Suddenly you're in your 40s and you're wondering -- not, how am I gonna pay my mortgage, but -- how am I gonna pay my rent? You put your life on hold because you're waiting for something to happen, and happen... and it never does. It just never does.

"One Thursday afternoon not too long ago, I walked into the offices of Or Music in midtown Manhattan. The guys who run the label (Michael Caplan and Larry Miller) wanted to make sure that I was real, that I wasn't the product of some studio wizardry. I sang and played 'Melt’ and 'Hope In A Hopeless World' and two hours later I was a changed man, secure in the knowledge that I would be safe with them, that I'd have an opportunity to share my music with people, which is all I ever wanted. Michael told me that 'OR,' in Hebrew, means 'light.' Which was a perfect image to me, because I was tired of the darkness. I wanted -- I need -- to experience the light.

"So the cavalry has finally come and I couldn't be happier. A few sequence changes and 'Issues + Options' becomes my first nationally released solo album. The title is very straight-forward. Everyone has issues, everyone has options. Hopefully, your options outweigh your issues.

"There are some very beautiful moments on the record. I'm also proud to say that every song on the record was co-written, and that I had some great collaborators, like Glenn Tilbrook ('She Hurts') and Nicholas Cage ('Melt') and the Brazilian guitarist Heitor Pereira ('Nobody Has to Know'). Some people think it’s a cop-out to co-write, but to me, it's a beautiful thing to toss an idea back and forth; it becomes a part of something greater.

"I've spent my whole life writing about the human condition, and the songs on 'Issues' come from a certain consciousness. I try to reflect on the struggle all of us have at times, the struggle with faith and hope. The struggle to believe that the outcome will be all right. I like to write about the struggle for justice. There's the struggle with money and materialism, too. And the struggle for redemption and salvation. And then there's the struggle with love. To find and receive that precious love, and the ways we struggle to keep it -- that's what 'Amazing' is about. Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum, as in 'She Hurts,' when we feel old and alone. That's my goal -- to capture those kinds of simple, truthful, heartfelt qualities in my music.

"I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm recently married, and I've never experienced such contentment. I'm much more at peace than I was in LA. Yeah, I'm 43, but I feel like I'm at the beginning of the beginning. I'm like a little kid again."

--As told to Leo Sacks

New York City, spring 2003

Phil Roy’s Or Music debut album Issues + Options- in stores May 6, 2003.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT DAN MACKTA AT OR MUSIC dan@ormusic.com

All press inquiries contact Matt Hanks at Shorefire Media - 718 522 7171 or mhanks@shorefire.com

-
Dan Mackta
Or Music
37 W. 17th St. Suite 5W
New York NY 10011
212.675.8200 ext. 12

BACK