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.
[1] In the late 1980s, he contracted with Al Teller, the chairman of MCA (now Universal Music Group), to obtain acts for his newly-created record label called Gasoline Alley.
[1] In 1994, he founded Red Ant Records with Al Teller - who had left MCA - and signed contracts with Divine (which had the 1998 hit single Lately), Cheap Trick, and Salt-N-Pepa.
[1] 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.
In 2016, he was asked by Andrew Axelrod at Axar Capital and German insurer Allianz to run Robert F. X. Sillerman-founded concert promoter SFX Entertainment which they had purchased out of bankruptcy.