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Howard Phillips and the Saturation Point

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At one point, you could right click on the link, save to a safe place, and unzip to listen to an exclusive pre-release unfinished bootleg of Howard Phillips' Musical Version of The Fear Man. However, the link isn't presently working.

Howard Phillips convened a new group to record his musical version of The Fear Man. One member provided the following candid sleeve notes.

It would be wrong to describe Howard Phillips as mercurial, just as it would be inaccurate to describe a rhinoceros as a bit pushy. Of course I knew of Phillips' reputation before I agreed to go into the studio with him, but I needed the money. The project Phillips had proposed - a soundtrack to accompany Stephen Theaker's recent novel "The Fear Man" - intrigued me too, not least because of Phillips' well-publicised spats with Theaker, his former collaborator and editor. Why had he decided on such a venture? "In his own bumbling way, Theaker has stumbled upon the germ of a good idea," Phillips told the newly-assembled band, The Saturation Point. "It needs only my vision to paint the beating heart of this idea in colours of sound, to expunge the dissolute prose of the original!"

The Saturation Point entered the studio with more than a shade of trepidation. We had heard the rumours of Phillips' outlandish behaviour, and I cannot with all honesty say that they were exaggerated. Firearms have no place in a modern recording studio, and do not make good motivational tools. And I cannot agree with Howard's assertion that alcohol is an essential lubricant the the creative process. I believe that the creative process is severely hampered when the lead singer must be prevented from choking on his own vomit.

Once the first three recording engineers had been sacked, Phillips jealously guarded the mixing desk, until a bottle of vodka was upset over the controls, shorting out the entire studio before a single track had been completed. The rest of the album was composed and recorded in Phillips' own home studio in three sessions that left the band exhausted, both physically and emotionally. Despite composing the majority of the lyrics, Phillips himself could not sing on every track. He spent many hours locked in the bathroom, sobbing to himself. When questioned later, he told us that he was overcome with a sense of cosmic tragedy. "That such a genius as I should have been born mortal!" he cried as he fell backwards into the drum-kit.

I said that I needed the money, and I guess I still do. My therapist's bills will take years to pay off. My only hope is that Phillips doesn't manage to screw us out of the royalties, and that the album is a success. It deserves to be.

The genesis of this mighty-thewed band is being chronicled in the Saturation Point Saga, appearing regularly in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.