If, after reading this, you see a bearded gentleman in the vicinity of the Music School, do not think it is a Doppelgänger, for Cranleigh is lucky that Phil Lockhart has agreed to carry on teaching drums on a part-time basis. He has been part of the peripatetic team of music coaches for 36 years: in 1979 the rate for a 40 minute lesson was £2-50. In April 2010 Phil was appointed in charge of guitar and percussion in the newly formed Cranleigh Music team, as a full-time post. He taught drums for a very long time in a room behind the so-called ‘New Music School’, the current DT dept, in a room converted from a toilet block. When the Merriman Music School was created from the English Department and Electronics labs, a sound-proofed drum room was created, again out of the former toilets of East House. Drummers have to make the best of things, I suppose.
Phil is first and foremost a musician and over the years has played in many bands and duos, both in and out of School, and is currently in a Big Band, Jazz Quartet and a Folk/Rock band. He has done gigs in Guildford Cathedral, in the foyers of the Festival Hall and National Theatre and, just a few years ago, in Buddy Guy’s Blues Club in Chicago. Phil has made many friendships among the visiting music teachers, above all the legendary Mike Williams, the classical guitar teacher, whose fund of anecdotes were legendary and, over the years, oft repeated so that Phil took to numbering the stories. Henceforth when gathered over coffee Phil would call out “number 47” and those in the know would reply with polite laughter.
Until 2010 Phil combined the drum teaching with being a full-time laboratory technician in the Chemistry Department, working very long days to fit in up to 40 drum pupils on top of the academic timetable. He tells me that the post of assistant to the Laboratory Steward in the Chemistry Department he applied for in February 1976 especially appealed because the school holidays gave him more time to continue playing in the many bands and groups he did concerts with.
In 2013 Phil and I had the privilege of attending the funeral of Ken Hill, who served the School as Laboratory Steward from 1946 to 1994, retiring at the age of 73. Phil learned his trade from Ken and was still using some of the lab equipment Ken made up to his switch to the Music Department. If we add Ken’s 48 years to the latter years of Phil’s 39, we already have nearly 70 years: a whole life-time of service. Phil made many friends in the Chemistry Department from whom I will name two: George Burton and the legendary Geoffrey Boult: an old-fashioned gentleman-schoolmaster who would sneak into the fume cupboard for a stress-relieving gasper when the LVth became too much for him. His cries of “Oh, Phil…” after a lively lesson are no doubt still fresh in Phil’s memory. Phil made many friends also among his drum pupils who all loved his lessons: I am sure they felt Phil looked just like a drummer ought to look, and among these I will mention the world-class jazz pianist David Rees-Williams who gave concerts with Phil when a pupil and again when he returned as a peripatetic piano teacher.
A few months after he started at Cranleigh, Phil married Christine and settled in Shalford: next year they will celebrate their Ruby wedding. Christine and Phil’s children are a credit to them and also to the fine education given at Guildford state schools. Tom graduated from St John’s Oxford, in Maths with Philosophy followed by a PhD from the University of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auburn, Alabama. William graduated from Caius College, Cambridge in Music followed by an MA at King’s College, London and a Musicology PhD from Humbolt University, Berlin, and was Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute. He is currently a Civil Servant, working for the Department of Energy and Climate Control. Emily graduated from Royal Holloway and Pablo de Olivade University in Seville, studying Spanish.
Although Phil will still be at Cranleigh for a while, we hope he and Christine will have more flexibility in their timetable to make further trips to America to see Tom and perhaps play in some more blues clubs: he may not have a banjo on his knee, but drum-sticks fit even in to hand luggage. Phil has another nine years to match the record set by Ken Hill; I would not bet against his equalling it.
Peter Longshaw