Six degrees of prog
I've recently been listening to, what might perhaps qualify as the most improbable neo-prog album ever. The story is that Jem Godfrey, whose day job is writing TV themes and advertising jingles, got bored and wanted to make some real art. So he started writing songs, with reasonable success getting them recorded by Atomic Kitten, Shane Ward and so on. And then apparently got bored again, decided to make some real music, thus formed a progressive rock band with some of the most famous, skilled, and busiest musicians in the field.

Shane Ward to prog! I mean, it's not exactly an obvious development, is it? One can only imagine how the first phone call went:

"Hi, I'm Jem Godfrey - producer for such artists as Gareth Gates, Blue, and Ronan Keating; and I'm looking for a guitarist. Are you interested?"
Click.
"Hello?"

Presumably not quite like that, because the band exists. But anyway, one way or another he got them on board, and the resulting album, Milliontown, is quite frankly, impossibly good. How can someone with no obvious experience in the genre, jump in from a standing start, and write an album which sounds like he's been recording this stuff for years?

Anyway, all this got me thinking about how so many prog musicians play in several different bands with each other (actually it's probably true of all musicians, but particularly noticeable in the case of prog bands). For example, John Mitchell plays in this band Frost*, and also Kino, The Urbane, It Bites, and Arena. The bass player in Kino is Pete Trewavas, who also plays with Marillion and Transatlantic. Transatlantic's drummer was Mike Portnoy, who plays in Dream Theater, OSI, Neal Morse, and Liquid Tension Experiment. Liquid Tension Experiment's bass player is Tony Levin, who has played with King Crimson and is Peter Gabriel's touring bass player among a wide variety of studio sessions; he also has released a number of solo albums, and on one of them had Simon Phillips in the drummers chair. Simon Phillips is a world-renowned session musician, he now drums regualrly for Toto but has worked with many artists such as Joe Satriani, Robert Palmer, Steve Harley, and Mike Oldfield. Oldfield has worked with many other musicians on his albums, including on one occasion Phil Collins, who is most famous for his work in Genesis and his solo career but also played with Brand X, other studio sessions and many live performances - several during Live Aid in 1985, notably including Led Zeppelin the first time they reformed. Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant later formed bands Strange Sensation and Priory of Brion. Priory of Brion's drummer was Andy Edwards who plays with IQ and Frost*, whose Keyboard player is Jem Godfrey and oh look we've gone round in a circle :)

So it occurred to me to wonder, what's the musical analogue for the Bacon Number in film?

Music is generally less well connected than film. Almost all films will have a cast of dozens, very few recordings would feature more than ten. So in general I would expect it to take more steps to connect two musicians than to connect two actors. However, in both cases the system works best because of a fairly small number of extremely well-connected people: in the music realm, that role is probably fulfilled by the career session musician.

Thus for the sake of argument, I'm going to base the following system around Simon Phillips, whom I have already mentioned has played an astonishing number of sessions for a wide range of artists in many genres. The Phillips Number is the smallest number of steps^[1] required to get to Simon Phillips.

So Simon Phillips has a Phillips Number of 0.

Anyone who has appeared on a recording with Simon Phillips has a Phillips Number of 1. So Steve Lukather, Roger Daltrey, Joe Satriani, Mike Rutherford, Mike Oldfield, Francis Monkman, Mick Jagger, Richard Marx, Robert Palmer, and many many more have a Phillips Number of 1.

Anyone who has appeared on a recording with any of those people has a Phillips Number of 2.

For example, Herbie Flowers, who played with Francis Monkman in Sky, who played with Simon Phillips in 801, has a Phillips Number of 2.

Steve Lukather, who we have mentioned has a Phillips Number of 1, is a prolific session guitarist who has played with many many artists. Michael Jackson had Steve Lukather play in much of the Thriller album, Lukather plays with Phillips in Toto, so Michael Jackson has a Phillips Number of 2. Others who've played with Lukather include Chet Atkins, Cher, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Richard Marx and more - they all have a Phillips number of 2.

And so on. Anyone who has appeared on a recording with any of those people has a Phillips Number of 3.

Anyone who has played with Herbie Flowers (another very prolific session player) has a Phillips number of 3. For example, Herbie Flowers played for Hank Marvin on his "Guitar Syndicate" album, so Hank Marvin has a Phillips number of 3. Others who've played with Herbie include David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jeff Wayne, Hank Marvin, Elton John, Marc Bolan, Cat Stevens, Chris Spedding, etc.

So in conclusion: what's Jem Godfrey's Phillips Number? Well, Simon Phillips (0) played with Jeff Beck (1) on several of his albums; Jeff Beck and Lulu (2) recorded Cry Me a River for the "Red, White and Blues" album, and Jem Godfrey is credited with "instrumentation" and production on Lulu's "Together" album. So it looks like Jem Godfrey's Phillips number is 3.

Already we've covered musicians ranging from the 1950s to the 21st century in only three steps. Small world, really. Just imagine the number of musicians who'd be included if we tracked all 6 links?

^[1] I'm defining a step as appearing on the same track of a commercially available CD. Usually this will mean they have played together, but in some cases it could have been mixed in later without them ever meeting. Live albums do count, but only for musicians on stage and not shouting in the audience. Anyone who goes into a recording studio, for the purpose of being recorded, is likely to be a perfectly good connection: I'm allowing all backing vocals, even in large groups or choirs - if only because that means I get to claim my own Phillips Number is 5 - I sang backing vocals for Delirious on the "GLO" album; Delirious's singer Martin Smith (4) has duetted with Matt Redman (3) who has had Paul Carrack (2) singing backing on some of his tracks - Carrack is in Mike & The Mechanics with Mike Rutherford (1) whose album Smallcreep's Day was drummed by Simon Phillips (0).