James Phillips (22 January 1959 - 31 July 1995) was a South African rock singer, songwriter and performer.
Phillips grew up in the conservative East Rand mining town of Springs, the son of a presbyterian minister. He finished high school at Witbank High in 1976. Phillips discovered Rock n Roll and perhaps significantly the protest music of Bob Dylan; the course of his life changed dramatically, in the late 1970s he formed his first band, Corporal...
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James Phillips (22 January 1959 - 31 July 1995) was a South African rock singer, songwriter and performer.
Phillips grew up in the conservative East Rand mining town of Springs, the son of a presbyterian minister. He finished high school at Witbank High in 1976. Phillips discovered Rock n Roll and perhaps significantly the protest music of Bob Dylan; the course of his life changed dramatically, in the late 1970s he formed his first band, Corporal Punishment with friends Carl Raubenheimer and Mark Bennet. Corporal Punishment was defiantly South African from the start. Instead of doing the usual thing, playing rock covers in the local bar, they chose to sing about their own universe and all its strange and brutal ironies. Using the lyrical brashness of the punk rock movement, without adopting the fashion, their songs were often menacingly sarcastic political statements. Lyrically they often touched on South African topics, notably the milieu in which young, white, South African men...
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