Phil Tripp, Colourful and Controversial Music Industry Operator, Dies at 75

Phil Tripp, the colourful music industry entrepreneur and raconteur who wore many hats, and who disappeared from the public eye following a bizarre animal cruelty case, has died at the age of 75.

Born in the United States, Tripp very much made his home in Australia. His relocation, as a “Reaganomics Refugee”, he quipped, had it downside as he was unable to bring his pet iguana and tarantula through customs, thanks to this country’s strict quarantine laws.

Tripp was an early advocate for digital technology. At times, he was a publisher, a promoter, an event organiser, an artist rep — and always entertaining.

Often clad in an Hawaiian shirt, Tripp was the one of the best connected people in the international music industry, and was a regular at MIDEM in Cannes and SXSW in Austin, for which he served as Australian artist rep for 17 years, calling time in 2019.

Knowing people was his business. Tripp established the publishing company IMMEDIA in 1988, through which he issued the AustralAsian Music Industry Directory (AMID), selling the annual tome in 2010 to Street Press Australia, and for almost 20 years helmed the biennial AustralAsian Music Business Conference in Sydney, the last of which was staged in 2009. He consulted on the inaugural Australian Festival Industry Conference (AFIC) in 2019.

Tripp had friends, and enemies, and he always had an anecdote, a joke or some advice to share.

On what stands Australian artists apart from the rest, he told this reporter in 2009, “One of the things that makes Australian music so special, firstly we sing in English. And secondly, we rock. We take no prisoners on stage. We were born and blooded in pubs, and because we’re such a small, young country we have to give it up live.”

Tripp, who overcame a heart attack in his 30s, had dreamed of pursing stand-up comedy in his post-music industry years.

Those hopes were hobbled when, in a barely-believable situation in 2021, Tripp posted on social media photographs of a cat he had captured and drowned at his home in Coffs Harbour. The animal, it would transpire, was named Mango and belonged to a nearby family.

Tripp’s appalling act became a national story, worsened by the fact he had published magazines and written extensively on the pet industry, through Urban Animal magazine, a free quarterly pet magazine in Sydney. He was convicted of killing the animal. Following his arrest, Tripp told the Advocate that he felt “contrition, shame and guilt” over the incident.

Tripp’s sentence was later reduced from an intensive corrections order to a less restrictive 12-month community corrections order, though he failed to regain custody of his “companion parrot.”

It’s well known he had been working on a tell-all book, which spanned the arc between two murders in the US in his 20s and a variety of infamous misadventures in the ’70s before he emigrated to Australia.

As news spread of his passing, Tripp was remembered for his work with the Australian music community. “Sad to hear of the passing of Phil Tripp,” reads a post by Joe Camilleri on the official Black Sorrows account. “Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with Phil—always insightful, always passionate. He had a way of guiding bands and musicians, helping however he could, always with that old-school dedication to music. Research mattered to him, and every conversation was rich with memories, stories, and that infectious enthusiasm.”

Artist manager Greg Dodge remarked that Tripp had “made a serious dent in the music verse.”