Phil Pickett

Philip Stuart Pickett (born 19 November 1946) is an English songwriter, musician, vocal arranger, producer and artist manager.

He is principally known as a songwriter and musician and for co-writing and recording "Karma Chameleon", one of the biggest hits of the 1980s era with Boy George and Culture Club during his tenure as keyboard player and backing vocalist for the group on every live performance throughout the world during the 1980s. Prior to this, Pickett co-founded hit-making pop band Sailor in 1973 which achieved considerable chart-topping success in the mid-1970s glam rock period and with whom he still regularly performs to the present day. Pickett's songs have also been recorded by many other artists including Labi Siffre, Sheena Easton, Georgie Fame, Joe Cocker, Brian Kennedy and Malcolm McLaren, used in countless TV commercials and included in the soundtrack of Hollywood films Electric Dreams, Top Secret!, The Lost Boys and his West End Musical Theatre debut, Casper The Musical.

Pickett was born on 19 November 1946 in Münster, Germany (B.A.O.R.), the only child of father Philip George Pickett, an RAF pilot officer killed in a flying accident in Rhodesia in 1950 and mother Eileen Elizabeth Pickett who died in Spain in 1993.

Upon leaving school at Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham, England, in 1964, Phil took the advice of a family mentor, Philip Sutton, a director of Garfield Weston's Associated British Foods, by choosing to take an apprenticeship in the bakery industry, but by this time was also immersing himself in a growing passion and talent for musical composition. An interest in American music, particularly R&B, led him to form his first band, "The Blues Unit" with some school and college friends. After completing his apprenticeship on his 21st birthday, whilst taking a 12-month sabbatical travelling across the US, Pickett enjoyed a brief but life-changing chance encounter with legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington in a North Beach supper club in San Francisco, who whilst raising a glass to the young man, strongly advised him to "follow his heart" and return to England to pursue a music career instead.

Upon hearing an early arrangement of an obscure Peter, Paul and Mary album track, the then relatively unknown "Leaving on a Jet Plane" that Pickett had curated and was now performing with his folk singing partner Paddy Maguire at "Mother's" in Erdington 1968, Warner Bros executives Ian Ralfini and Martin Wyatt arriving from London to audition the duo and realising the track was already published by Warners, released it a few weeks later and the song went straight to No. 1 in the UK chart staying there for several weeks. ...

Source: Article "Phil Pickett" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.