Originally published on November 9th, 2020.
Long before his first major international appearance with Genesis, Phil Collins had already made it onto German television. In 1969, the then unknown musician performed with his band Flaming Youth on WDR in Cologne. A film from the almost half-hour set has just been put back on the Internet and is attracting a lot of attention worldwide.
You can watch the video below, which shows Collins playing drums and singing.
“A musical pop expedition into space”
A year before he became part of the band Genesis, Collins played some pieces from their album “Ark 2” with his then band Flaming Youth on WDR. The recording was released on Christmas Eve in 1970 under the title “Arche II – A musical pop expedition into space”. The concert was not subsequently broadcast again and has therefore almost been forgotten. However, in 2010, a bootleg DVD compilation featuring Flaming Youth’s 40-year-old television appearances was released. The restored recording of the television appearance on WDR has now also been published on YouTube and is now freely accessible to everyone.
The band Flaming Youth also included bassist Ronnie Caryl, keyboardist Brian Chatton and guitarist Gordon Smith. The musicians had toured with John Walker from the Walker Brothers and then decided to form their own band. They first recorded a single called “Green Light / The Key” in 1969 under the name Hickory. A little later the group met songwriters Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. They were looking for a band to record an album they were working on. This led to the formation of the group Flaming Youth, whose only album was “Ark 2”.
The record didn’t sell well. This was probably partly because the songs were too long for commercial broadcast. Caryl also auditioned for Genesis in 1970 and played a single show with them before Steve Hackett joined the band. Caryl later became a member of Collins’ solo band.