From the RS archive of March 11, 2016:
“Take a look at me Now” is called a series with new editions of all Phil-Collins albums. The Briton celebrated its breakthrough as a drummer of Genesis, after Peter Gabriel’s exit he also became its singer. His solo debut “Face Value” made him a superstar in 1981, until the end of the decade he landed one hit after the other (“One More Night”, “Another Day in Paradise”). In 2011 the withdrawal from music. Collins suffered from hearing loss and fought against depression; Spine problems and a nerve weakness meant that he could no longer play drums. Today he would like to introduce himself to a return to the shop. For the interview, for his album “Hello, i must be going!” (1982) was scheduled, the 65-year-old comes after a back surgery but still comes with a crop.
Critics have beaten them for years. They defended R&B musicians like Kanye West or soul singers like Adele. A satisfaction?
I only think about this topic when someone asks me about it. I am not one who goes home and is annoyed: “Brrr, get a bad meeting again!”. You have now asked me this question, I will then consider an answer. Of course I feel flattered when Adele, Beyoncé, Pharrell or Usher, the hip-hop community, like my work. Especially when others say my music is just Middle of the Road Or simply shit.
After all, it says “you can’t please everyone!”
A large part of the people who form a special opinion know above all “Against All Odds”, “A Groovy Kind of Love”, “Separate Lives” and “One More Night”. Ballads. Ballads that you hear on the radio all the time. Then conclude from this to my personality. Critics in particular do not listen to my other songs, making them a lot.
They were also omnipresent in the eighties. Whether with Genesis or Solo, they had at least one super hit every year. From “Hello, I must be going!” They coupled eight singles within ten months, record -breaking!
Eight? I didn’t even know that! The plate has only ten songs. A single every year? I have never dealt with this kind of statistics. But I had enough to do back then. “Hello …” was released in 1982, I went on tour. I came home, Genesis waited for me. The “mom” tour was up. I lived two different lives as a musician. This is more than most musicians lead today. You are either solo or in bands. I had the best of two worlds.
In 1982 they managed their first number one with the cover version of the Supremes song “You Can’t Hurry Love”. How do you have to imagine this time-a white singer who wants to revive the soul genre in the early nights?
I wasn’t just about a Phil Collins cover-the song should be even more authentic. I wanted an exact copy of the original 1966. For my Reissue series, I listened to the song again and can say: We had done a good job back then. I liked the piece, one of my Motown favorites, so much at the time-before I had to sing it again and again for years and years.
How had their record companies react in the eighties when they had a motown cover followed to their successful solo debut “Face Value” (1981)?
Everything was okay. I am in a happy position, and are also genesis, no: were In the lucky position that nobody talked to us. Another white soul musician, who was successful in the eighties, was Daryl Hall, from the Duo Hall & Oates. And they even wrote their soul songs themselves. Oh, in the end I just recorded a version of a well -known song. I also covered other things, for example “Tomorrow Never Knows” by the Beatles. With “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away” I then composed a Beatleesk song myself.
The divorce from her first wife was an issue at the time. After “Face Value” her second record, “Hello, i must be going!”, Also about this experience …
“‘Face Value’ is not the divorce album!”
But it was also the record where I got to know my next Mr. Collins! Everyone thinks I sometimes thought that “face value” was “the divorce album”. In reality it is the “transitional album”! The composition and recording of “Face Value” included one and a half years, and then I met Jill shortly before the end.
And then you open “Hello …”, your next album, with the disillusioning “I Don’t Care Anymore”?
A friend once told me that the piece gave him an adrenaline boost. He gets rid of his anger whenever he hears it. But of course each of my records is also autobiographical. And “Hello …” falls into this category: parts of it were written during a separation, you live through things – but then the divorce lawyer comes. Therefore, as in the song title, “I only didn’t care”, and “I can’t believe that this is true” (Alluding to another title, “I Cannot Believe It’s True”).
In 1982 they went on a concert tour with the Phenix Horns, the wind group from Earth, Wind & Fire. Why does nobody do anything like this today: go on tour with an already prominent companion band?
It’s just too expensive. Four extra musicians, twelve total, i.e. at least twelve hotel rooms … Most musicians do not tour with brass today. Let them replay on the synthesizer. I talked to Charlie Watts about it when I was traveling with my “Phil Collins Big Band” in 1996. 20 people powers on stage! Charlie said, “Whoa! A real saxophone! “
The Phenix Horns changed their pieces. The “Like China”, aggressive on the plate, missed a kind of samba robe live.
“Like China” is a humorous song! Well, I still talked to a journalist about it, but this song is about how I drive to my new friend’s parents’ house. Father there, mother, there, I had to convince both that I treat their daughter like porcelain – “I Treat you like China”. In the live version I provoke Lacher: “I Treat you like chhhhhnna!”. But that’s the way it is when you bring your self -made material together on tour with musicians: new things are created. “Hand in hand” is more of an inconspicuous song on plate. At the concerts it grew into a hymn, the opening piece was made every evening, the audience sang along.
Her last album, “Going Back” from 2010, mainly contained cover versions of Motown pieces.
I really had the feeling that we could collect the Motown Spirit. I sent Chester Thompson (Fusion and jazz drummer that also toured with Collins) The finished album so that he could learn it. Chester heard it and thought I had sent him a real Motown plate from the 1960s!
They said that “Both Sides” from 1993, based on Bruce Springsteen’s work, would be their “Nebraska” plate: intimate, defenseless. Could you compare others of your works with those of your colleague?
“‘No Jacket Required was my’ Born in the USA ‘”
Springsteens “Born in the USA” was gigantic. A plate in Cinemascope. “No Jacket Required”, my third album, was my own Cinemascope album. Another work, “Dance into the Light”, was created in 1996 when I started a new life in Switzerland after the end of Genesis. I heard Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and tried to write songs on the guitar. The hope that my songwriting would also develop in a different direction was behind it, after all, I always composed on the piano before. How successful I was in it? I can’t judge that.
With “Face Value” they created their own drum sound – both a real and one with a machine. In the eighties you knew that only from Prince. In this regard, they both have no successors.
Take a look at HipHop and R&B. Continuous sequencers are used there. Of course, there have been certain rhythms for a very long time, and they are unmistakably bound to an artist. I used the Roland CR-78 for “In The Air Tonight”. The song, with this machine, was coated on me. That and “in the air” Killed it for everyboy else. Whenever the sound could be heard on another plate, it was thought: this is this in-the-air matter. Maybe that’s why Machines are no longer so popular – they nail a party. On “One More Night” I used the Roland TR-808. But I feel flattered. Flattered, in Someone Category to be compared with Prince.
Are there pieces to which you would like to play drums live, but they shouldn’t be mastered at the same time when singing?
Believe me, I often think about how I would love to sing continuously and play drums at the same time. After all, that would be the perfect implementation of the vision that I have from my own compositions. I love Chester Thompson, my tour drummer, we have been working together for more than 30 years-but of course he plays his own interpretations of my pieces. But there would be a problem from the audience view anyway, I would constantly sit behind the drums. The drum kit would be a barrier.
You could appear like Mick Fleetwood with a kind of “touchpad” drum jacket and then drum on your upper body …
(Serious) That would be an option, but not for me. Levon Helm (Drummer by The Band) Has mastered the challenge, musically and visually. His kit was right on the stage.
Did you start playing the drums again?
No, but I should set up a drum in my new house and slowly start. Because I’m talking too much that I could no longer play. I haven’t tried it in the last six or seven years.
“I have to start working again”
Maybe I can also simply solve my problems with my hand by starting playing – even if I could never get started again like back then. If I write new songs, I would put it back on the piano. But this hand here (crooked his left) Don’t always participate. When it gets cold, it contracts even more. With a colder open open-air concert, I couldn’t go to the wing.
Will you import a new album or go on tour?
I think about concerts, a tour is probably out of the question. I was certain three years ago: I retired. But my youngest children, they are 14 and 11 years old, have repeatedly pushed me: write songs, play them live! We want to see you on stage! I haven’t composed any songs yet. But: I recently moved to Miami, and my recording studio will be completed there in February (Art break). Then I will no longer be able to put out excuses: I have to start working … and that is the classic process: When you have finished the first songs, the next thought is: an album could grow from it.
And what about the rumors, there could be a Genesis reunion-including Peter Gabriel?
The original line-up with Peter Gabriel would certainly be possible. I only consider a reunification in our line -up with me to the drums, as we were last on stage with Peter, is unlikely. Who should play drums then