Phil Chen, Bass Guitarist on Eurythmics album Revenge has died at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer

Chen was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946. He played in various bands throughout his youth, cutting his teeth on the Kingston Club Circuit before relocating to London in the late 1960s. He initially started Jimmy James’ band before moving to session work. His most notable credits began in the mid-1970s, with appearances on Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow and Donovan’s Cosmic Wheels. He also played on a number of notable Rod Stewart releases, including Hot Legs and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?  Other artists Chen played with include Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jackson Browne, Desmond Dekker and many more.

Jimmy Z wrote about his time working with Phil on his website:

“When I arrived at the airport, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Phil Chen, the legendary bass player was flying to Paris for Eurythmics, too. 

What a treat!!!!  Phil is a sweet heart of guy and a real gent. And with his Jamaican accent, Jamaican/British silly sense of humor and encyclopedic knowledge of legendary Motown bass player,  James Jamerson , this had the makings of a great adventure.  For some unknown reason, our flight was routed Los Angeles to London with a minor little layover, like an hour or something, and then on to Paris. It doesn’t sound like much, but any extra hours in London can be brutal. So the flights cool – we’re both stoked and catching up on things and the cocktails are flowing – then we land in London and things started going downhill fast.

Phil had this bright idea we should get off the plane and stretch our legs. So we did. Of course as we are trying to get back on the plane, we learned we had left the security area we were supposed to have stayed in  – and I don’t think our looks helped any. Picture this: a slight Asian man in red converse basketball shoes who speaks like he is from Jamaica – maybe because HE IS – and me in an old Colombo type trench coat, hair sticking up in every direction, two days of stubble with my Mexican/Latino looks. I guess our appearance screamed drug dealers to these security-customs men. When we walked up to security it was like “yeah, right boys….over here please.” We tried to explain that our flight was just about to depart but can you imagine???…They couldn’t give a shit!! What a surprise!!!

So they take us to this room and make us strip, sit on very cold folding chairs and repeatedly go through our clothes and, of course, take a look up that place where the sun don’t shine. Oh well, just another charming day at the office.

When they finally figured out we weren’t running the big stash over to Paris on their watch, they let us go. I thought for sure we’d missed our flight but there it was and we just made it on in time.

We finally arrive in Paris around midday and considering that terrorists were blowing up storefronts and Metro stations that spring, we cleared customs fairly quickly. We looked around for someone from the Eurythmics to pick us up but no such luck. So we sat down and waited…and waited… for four hours. I was livid. I had been playing in France for a few years with Rod Stewart and had many friends and girlfriends I could have hooked up with and hung for a few hours or days but I didn’t because I figured we’d be covered.  Or just get in a cab and go the hotel. But that wasn’t possible because we had no info and if we got one they wouldn’t know where to find us  – so we waited”