Phil Everly, 1939–2014

last updated 8 January 2015

Together with his older brother, Don, Phil Everly helped draw the blueprint of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s and early ’60s. The Everly Brothers’ exquisite harmonies on tracks like “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie” would inspire acts from the Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel, even though harmony was often absent from the brothers’ personal relationship. They fought offstage and on, and famously called it quits after Phil smashed his guitar and walked off during a gig in 1973. Yet their sense of brotherhood was never lost. “We’re closer than most brothers,” Phil said in 1986. “Harmony is the ultimate love.”

Philip Everly was born the son of a Kentucky coal miner turned musician, Ike Everly, and his wife, Margaret. The family had left Kentucky for Chicago to pursue musical opportunities, said The New York Times, and moved on to Iowa, where Ike found steady work playing country music on live radio. In 1945 “Little Donnie” and “Baby Boy Phil” began singing with their parents on air. In the mid-1950s Don and Phil settled in Nashville and launched themselves as the Everly Brothers. Their breakthrough came in 1957 when they cut “Bye Bye Love,” a song rejected by 30 other acts, said RollingStone.com. Phil later recalled driving into Nashville and hearing the song playing on pop radio for the first time. “That was, like, big juju,” he said. Nearly three dozen hit singles followed, including “All I Have to Do Is Dream” in 1958.

The brothers’ hit-making streak ended in the mid-1960s with “the arrival of the raunchier, rockier Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” said The Guardian (U.K.). As they slipped down the charts, drug use and a hard life on the road took its toll. After years of silence following their 1973 split, Don and Phil agreed to play together in London, resulting in The Reunion Concert, their first album to chart in a dozen years. Yet the brothers soon drifted apart again. “Everything is different about us, except when we sing together,” Don said in 1999. “I’m a liberal Democrat, he’s pretty conservative.”