The Professor of Rock

I am not a big Genesis fan but when I tell people that Phil Collins was a great fucking drummer they look at me like I have no clue what I am talking about.

 

How old are these people that you're talking to? Not kidding and not trying to be funny. If you didn't listen to '70s and '80s Genesis, any of his first four solo albums or Brand X, then he's dismissed as a some sort of balladeer or arranger for Disney.

Um, no.

Watch from 7:50 through 14:30. The skill. The coordination among Collins, Chester Thompson (another accomplished drummer) and Tony Banks. Speeding up tempo. Slowing down tempo. That's no accident. No (1A) joke.

 

the guy was tremendous on the drums, but also fucked his back.

 

When Peter Gabriel was doing his third solo album, Melt, he asked Phil Collins to play drums on it. He also forbade the use of cymbals. I can't imagine what that does to a drummer - "What the fuck am I supposed to do with this hand, then?!?" That's the album with "Games Without Frontiers" on it.

 

Thing is, Phil was fine with it. Ever listen to "In The Air Tonight"?

No cymbals. That famous fill setting up the final chorus ... but no cymbals.

I know that Phil played drums on "Intruder" on Pete's Melt album - that was the first track in which Collins' gated drum sound was used ... used a lot by Phil in his solo work and subsequent Genesis albums - and "Family Snapshot," a track with some dark lyrics that only Pete could pull off.

Pete got along fine with the band during and after his departure from Genesis. He had pondered leaving because he had a newborn - he and his wife had children and settled down before the other group members - who had some health scares. Spent a lot of time ducking out and checking on them at an age where the others were worried about the band and the band only. Plus he wrote most of the album "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" and the group didn't know what to think of that given that they usually collaborated on everything.

Phil played drums for Pete's solo work on occasion. Phil, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford played on a solo album of Steve Hackett's before the latter left the band (Hackett didn't like the "accessible lyrics" direction he correctly saw the group heading toward and went out on his own ... quite a prolific solo career). There's a nice deep track on Mike + The Mechanics' debut album written by Banks, Collins and Rutherford - I'm almost certain it was something that didn't make a group album. The group helped Pete out with a one-off concert on short notice in the early '80s - years after Gabriel had left the band -because he was trying to help get WOMAD off the ground and continued to champion world music to his financial detriment.

Collins also played for Phillip Bailey (which made perfect sense since Earth, Wind & Fire's Phenix Horns were a prominent part of Phil's band for his first four albums) and worked with numerous other musicians and groups on occasion.

Connective tissue everywhere. So yeah ... the group members can't stand one another 50 years later. And because Phil is compromised orthopaedically, one of his sons will be the percussionist when the band plays shows in the UK in scheduled for April (assuming the pandemic subsides).

 

One of my Top Ten, and probably it makes the Top Five, is seeing Genesis on the "Selling England by the Pound" tour. That remains probably my favorite album of theirs after all these years and all their later hits. Add in that Peter Gabriel was still fronting the band and I got to see him do "Watcher of the Skies" in full costume regalia. Bonus was seeing them in the Fox Theater in Atlanta, which seats 3,700 or so, from the 12th row.

Those lyrics. Such an English album. It was just a great show, straight up.

 

Simple or not, this is an amazing song.

 

The version they did at Live Aid was incredible