Josh Phillips is best known as the keyboard player for Procol Harum but he’s also an avid boater and a headline act at this month’s Southampton Boat Show
Josh Phillips is not your typical rock star, so perhaps it’s no surprise that his boat is a Linssen rather than something flashy and brash. The youngest of five children, he spent his early years growing up on a converted WW2 Air Sea Rescue launch in Rochester, Kent.
“My father was the captain of a coaster and my mother was a district nurse,” Phillips tells me over a mug of tea in the saloon of his 1993 Linssen GS 400, Decamerone.
“It was 1961 and all seven of us were living in a brand new bungalow when Dad spotted a converted 70ft Thorneycroft motor launch for sale. I was only six months old at the time but it must have appealed to Mum’s sense of adventure because she agreed to sell the house and move us all on board The Kyrlewe. For the next seven years we lived on that boat so it’s hardly surprising we grew up with salt in our blood.”
Even when his parents split up and sold their beloved floating home, his mother was determined to maintain their family’s connection with the water, buying a 22ft cabin cruiser for Josh and his older siblings to continue their boating exploits.
“My brother and I spent every weekend playing about on the river,” recalls Josh. “Nick was 15 and I was nine but she’d happily leave us to our own devices while she did her rounds. One day Nick managed to get hold of an old canvas dinghy.
“Somehow we took the Evinrude outboard engine off the cabin cruiser and attached it to the transom of the dinghy. The whole thing bent under the power but we had a lot of fun tearing around in it. Looking back, it’s amazing neither of us came to any harm.”
Musical youth
Boats were not the only passion in Josh’s formative years. His aunt was a keen piano player (they had one on board The Kyrlewe) and by the age of nine Josh had started to play too. However, it was a trip to see rock band Procol Harum playing live at the Rainbow Theatre in 1972 that really fired up his imagination.
“They were already a favourite of mine when we went to see them perform. When we came out of the gig I said to Mum, ‘That’s what I’m going to do’. Little did I know that 21 years later I would end up joining the band.”
Phillips’ band Cross Section with The Who’s Roger Daltrey (third from left)
For those of a certain age, Procol Harum’s blend of psychedelic rock and free-wheeling lyrics helped define the 1970s. Their breakout single A Whiter Shade of Pale, with its iconic opening line (We skipped the light fandango…) and haunting melodies sold over 10 million copies alone and it was Phillips’s skills as a Hammond organist that made him such a natural fit when he was invited to play with the band in 1993 – a relationship that endured until 2022 when front man Gary Brooker passed away.
These days Phillips divides his time between composing theme tunes and musical arrangements for television shows, including Strictly Come Dancing, and performing with his new supergroup The Blue Water Giants.
Comprising fellow legends of rock Mel Gaynor from Simple Minds, Neil Taylor from Tears for Fears and John ‘Rhino’ Edwards from Status Quo, all of whom share Phillips’s enthusiasm for boating, the Blue Water Giants are rapidly becoming the go-to band for yachting events the world over.
Phillips got the boating bug aboard The Kyrlewe
So it’s no surprise to learn that later this month, The Blue Water Giants will be headlining the Shipyard Stage at the Southampton International Boat Show on the evenings of Friday 18 and Saturday 26 September. Playing many of the rock classics they’ve had a hand in over the years as well as some original songs they’ve recently released, the performance is sure to go down a storm with showgoers of all ages.
For a man whose early career was spent living the life of a touring rock star, Phillips’s current setup seems remarkably conventional. With a house on the Hamble that he shares with his wife Emma and their boat just a few yards away in the Royal Solent Yacht Club (RSYC), it all seems a far cry from the rock and roll lifestyle of his early years.
That all started when he and his school/bandmates spotted an advert in a 1977 edition of Melody Maker magazine bearing the words: “Do you want a life of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll?”
Now he takes his own family out on his Linssen GS400 Decamerone
The 16-year-old Josh Phillips and his equally optimistic band mates responded in the only way they knew how. Turning up at the live auditions, they discovered that the advert had been placed by the producers of Quadrophenia, a movie based on The Who’s 1973 rock opera of the same name.
Somehow, Phillips and his band, Cross Section, were picked from hundreds of hopefuls to perform live in front of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend before being selected to appear in the movie, in which they played a young band trying to make it in the London club scene.
Sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll
“At that point, school went out the window,” admits Phillips.
“We started playing in pubs and clubs, anywhere that would have us. But in between touring I’d always find a way to get out on the water. My brother Nick was working on a paddle steamer on the Thames, taking tourists out for day trips, so I’d turn up and help out with lines, rope in one hand, beer in the other.”
Phillips chose craftmanship and practicality over ostentation
Fast forward to the 1990s and Phillips decided it was time to buy a boat of his own, going as far as putting a deposit down on an old RAF refuelling vessel based in Hull before a surveyor took one look at it and advised him not to even think about taking it out to sea.
Finally, in 1998, having moved to Teddington, he bought a single-screw 29-footer built by local yard Tough Brothers. Finding it neither a particularly good sea boat nor well suited to the river, he sold it and bought an outboard-powered Hardy Pilot 20. Being a wily operator, as well as a talented musician, Phillips then did a deal with Honda to play a gig for them that included a brand new 75hp engine as part of his pay packet!
“Damon Hill is an old friend of mine so once I’d had the new engine fitted we went out on the boat together to see what it would do. Those Pilot 20s were never really designed to plane, but with Damon standing on the bow pushing the nose down and me giving it full throttle on the helm, we managed to get 20 knots out of it before the police called a halt to our antics!”
The view from Decamerone’s upper helm station
When he wasn’t messing about with his many famous mates, Phillips and his growing family would enjoy countless carefree hours pottering up and down the river.
After 14 happy years with the Hardy and with his two children preparing to fly the nest, Phillips felt it was time to upgrade to something bigger that he and Emma could go cruising through Europe on.
Phillips and the Blue Water Giants
Life in the slow lane
“We looked at a Beneteau Swift Trawler 42 in Chichester but then went to see the Linssen at Boat Showrooms in Shepperton and fell in love with it. Being steel, it felt like a proper little ship and the quality of the joinery was superb.”
Brexit put paid to their original plans of cruising through Europe but in 2023, after seven years of enjoying their Linssen on the Thames, they upped sticks, bought a house on the Hamble and moved Decamerone to the RSYC, a stone’s throw away.
“We love having the Solent on our doorstep, there are so many places we can get to within an hour or two: Cowes, Newtown Creek, Osborne Bay, Yarmouth, Lymington, Buckler’s Hard. It feels like we’re on holiday even though we’re only a few miles from home.”
The Royal Solent Yacht Club is Decamerone’s current home
With their son Oscar now working as a designer for Compass Superyacht Tenders and daughter Lucia building her own career as a singer, it seems that Phillips’ love of both boats and music has already been passed on to the next generation. Not that he’s showing any signs of slowing down.
“I can’t ever see myself retiring. Boats and music are my life so why would I give up either of them?”
Seeing how at home he is on Decamerone, it’s hard to disagree. A Linssen may not be the obvious choice for a rock star but it suits this one just fine.
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