Phillips was born to a Jewish family and graduated from Stanford University where he was the director of special events and was named Billboard's college talent buyer of the year. At Stanford, he was responsible for all bookings including Crosby Stills & Nash, Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, and Rod Stewart. After graduating, he went to the University of Santa Clara School of Law where he received a scholarship thanks to his booking prowess. He served as their stadium manager and was responsible for booking bands such as Lydia Pense, Cold Blood, Elvin Bishop, and Bruce Springsteen. After law school, he worked for NBC where he co-produced Rock Palace. He then signed a contract with K-Rock where he focused on New Wave artists, Haircut 100 and Modern English; and later booked Rod Stewart. Soon after, Stewart's manager, Arnold Stiefel, hired him to join his talent management company and Phillips quickly signed Billy Squier and Prince becoming a full partner after the first year. Phillips and Paul Gongaware managed Prince until Warner Brothers executives Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker, and Michael Ostin parted ways with Prince. While with Stiefel, he also signed Simple Minds, Morrissey from The Smiths, Matthew Broderick, and produced the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In the late 1980s, he contracted with Al Teller, the chairman of MCA, to obtain acts for his newly-created record label called Gasoline Alley. He quickly signed Shai and later Sublime. He signed Toni Braxton and reached success with Un-Break My Heart a song Clive Davis brought to them from Diane Warren that they co-produced with David Foster. In 1994, he founded Red Ant Records with Al Teller who had left MCA where signed they Divine, Cheap Trick, and Salt-N-Pepa. In 1999, Irving Azoff engaged him to help book acts at the boutique concert company Concerts West which had just been sold to the Anschutz Entertainment Group. As Phillips was close friends to David Zedeck and Larry Rudolph, he was able to book Britney Spears, Tom Petty, and Paul McCartney. Soon after, he became the CEO of Concerts West changing the name to AEG Live and reporting directly to CEO Tim Leiweke. While CEO, he hired Clear Channel executives Chuck Morris and Brent Fedrizzi; brokered the purchase of rival Goldenvoice; purchased 50% of Coachella; expanded into New York by taking over the staff of Mitch Slater's Metropolitan Entertainment after it was purchased by Live Nation; and opened The O2 Arena in London hiring Rob Hallett as booking agent. Along with Quint Davis and George Wein, Phillips successfully promoted the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and along with John Meglen was able to book Celine Dion to open the Colosseum at Caesars and then 50 nights with Michael Jackson thanks to company founder Philip Anschutz's friendship with Tom Barrack. After Jackson's death, he produced the memorial broadcast with Ken Ehrlich and Kenny Ortega. In 2013, went to work for Ashley Tabor-founded, radio operatorGlobal Entertainment. In 2016, he was asked by Andrew Axelrod at Axar Capital and German insurer Allianz to run Robert F. X. Sillerman-founded concert promoterSFX Entertainment which they had purchased out of bankruptcy. Phillips hired Chuck Ciongoli and Gary Richards, renamed the company LiveStyle, and moved the headquarters to Los Angeles. Phillips felt that SFX as a brand had garnered a negative reputation, and that the company had originally collapsed because it focused too much on growing quickly, performing an IPO, and Sillerman " a story about sponsorship", which "has to be the icing on the cake – not the cake itself." Phillips also began to describe the company as being oriented towards electronic music in general rather than EDM, and stated that some of their events will broaden their scope, but other events will remain predominantly oriented towards electronic music.
