Gregory Phillips replaced the original actor who played Saul King in the Bernard Lee TV series King of the River. He also was one of the original Freewheelers. He also recorded some singles and made a few films including Adolf Hitler-My Part in His Downfall and The Virgin Soldiers. However he doesn’t seem to have made any TV shows or films since 1972. His first major role was playing the son of Judy Garland and Dirk Bogarde in the British made “I Could Go on Singing” in 1963. A few years later he featured in “The Virgin Soldiers”.
JohnKearney did an an excellent interview with Gregory, in which he tells of his acting career, the ‘groovy people’ he knew on the Sixties scene and how he came to sign to the Immediate label. At the time he was running a music therapy clinic for psychiatric patients.
John kindly gave permission for an extract of his interview to be reproduced. Here, Greg is speaking of his friendship with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces:
I remember Steve and I got together when he was out of ‘Oliver’ and he’d got a recording contract, it might have been with Don Arden and he made a record called ‘Give Her My Regards’ and he said to the company, “I’ve got this mate of mine, who I’m at school with and he’s a good singer and you know, how about him coming in and thinking about letting him make a record too?” He was always looking after me. I remember a couple of times when he was with the Small Faces and he was recording and he’d say, “Hey why don’t you do this track?” and I did a couple of vocals with the band, very badly I seem to remember!
When Steve was setting up Humble Pie, he had a lovely thatched cottage in Essex and I used to go down with a girlfriend – that was really nice. Lots of animals and he was really relaxed. He had the radio on non-stop there, I can’t remember what their first single was (editor’s note: ‘Natural Born Bugie’), but it came on the radio and Jerry Shirley was down at the house, he looked about 12 then but I guess he was about 15 and they were just so excited, you know. Steve was over the moon, he never lost the joy of hearing his single on the radio, nothing to do with fame and fortune, it was just a blast. He was a lovely lovely guy. We always kept in contact, but I hadn’t seen Steve for quite a while before he died. A girlfriend of mine had spent some time with him and she said he was feeling pretty down, so I did try and contact him, but I never got through.