Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  Luckily, Motown saves me, as it had done so often in my youth—as a teenager the label and its artists were the soundtrack of my life, as filtered through The Action’s set-list. Paying tribute, I include on Hello, I Must Be Going! a cover of “You Can’t Hurry Love.” I think of it as one of the forgotten Supremes songs, a bit of a dark horse; the likes of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” and “Stop in the Name of Love” seemed to get the most plays and the most affection.

  Aided by a video featuring multiple chirpy versions of myself (yes, even in a single video I’m all over the place), “You Can’t Hurry Love” finger-snaps to number 1 in the U.K. It’s the only hit from the album (it also reaches number 10 in the U.S.), but it helps push Hello, I Must Be Going! to number 1 in Britain. Disaster averted. Or is it? I’m very happy but underlying it is the thought: “A song I wrote went nowhere as the album’s first single, but this very poppy Motown cover has gone to number 1. Is the number up for my songwriting?”

  In August, prior to the release of Hello…, Genesis go on the road for two months in America and Europe. It’s a tour in support of a live album, Three Sides Live, of which Rolling Stone comments, “Where once Genesis represented art-rock at its most fatuously spectacular, they now show how lean and compelling such music can be.” On the tour we do our best to minimize fatuous art-rock, and I try my utmost to be lean and compelling.

  We’re still trying to give it lean and compelling on a soggy Saturday in autumn 1982, despite Genesis’ line-up doubling in size and the British elements doing their best to dampen our spirits.

  On October 2, at Milton Keynes’ National Bowl, the three of us are joined for a fourteen-song set by Peter and, arriving late from South America, Steve. For the first time since 1975, the “classic” line-up of Genesis are back together, for one night only, our ranks rounded out by Daryl Stuermer and drummer Chester Thompson.

  As reunions go it’s an odd one, but it’s for a good cause—a benefit concert that’s an emergency response to a unique set of circumstances. In the summer, Peter had put on the first festival by his two-year-old organization WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance). Featuring an appropriately eclectic line-up of artists including Peter, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nigerian high-life star Prince Nico Mbarga and the self-explanatory Drummers of Burundi, it was a critical success but a financial disaster. Peter had creditors threatening his life. As he later said, “When the shit hit the fan, people identified me as the only fat cat worth jumping on so I got the aggro, a lot of flak, nasty calls.”

  Still a band of brothers seven years after his departure, we all gladly pitch in to help, and the Bowl is packed with 47,000 fans for this once-in-a-lifetime gig. Talk Talk and John Martyn drew the short straws and have to open for us, and the incessant rain does its best to ruin the day. We’ve only had time for a couple of afternoon rehearsals during Genesis’ recent gigs at Hammersmith Odeon, the song selection necessarily draws mainly from the Peter era, and the whole idea feels better on paper than it does in practice. But we have to laugh when Peter insists he comes out in a coffin over the intro to “Back in New York City.” Typically Pete, and typically dark and humorous, but I’m not sure the audience get it.

  Overall, though, the fans are pleased, and so are the critics: “It probably fell some way short of Genesis and Gabriel’s standards of perfection. But this was an unrepeatable bargain”—Sounds; “A reunion that is unlikely to ever happen again. The rock event of the year”—Melody Maker. More importantly, we’ve helped stop our mate being jailed, or worse, and helped WOMAD live to fight another festival. It becomes the biggest annual event on the world music calendar.

  After Milton Keynes I’m just home long enough to see “Thru These Walls” stiff as a single, and then my second solo album comes out in November. Hello, I really must be going: I immediately embark on my first solo tour, which runs until February 1983.

  This, I’m realizing, is what happens when you’re a solo artist and simultaneously in a band. There’s no time to stop and smell the roses, or to rue the failures and process them.

  There is, however, time for nerves and apprehension. I’ve been touring with Genesis since 1970 so, after twelve years, I need to assemble another great band to help stave off the anxiety of being “on my own.” I pull together The Phenix Horns, Daryl on guitar, Mo on bass, Chester on drums, Peter from Brand X on keyboards. The set-list is just as strong. I have two albums of material to choose from. The hits are still hits, and the ones that weren’t hits become something else live. “I Don’t Care Anymore,” for example, grows into a huge stage song.

  I feel like I hit the ground running as a solo artist. I’ve never been short of confidence, but I become more of a performer, leading from the front and filling the stage. Somehow I’m able to reach out to the Genesis fans who bought The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and to the pop fans who bought “You Can’t Hurry Love” by that smiley, cheeky Phil Collins chap. I’m able, too, to dig deep for the encores—every night we finish with a version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and Brand X’s “…And So To F…,” which is pretty fantastic with horns, and which gets a long-overdue shout on the 2016 Hello, I Must Be Going! reissue. Everyone goes home happy.

  But if I’m honest, this is the blurriest time for me, and my recollections are fuzzy. Is it possibly because this is when things go stratospheric, and because it’s now that I really start putting in the solo miles in America? The Hello tour only has six European shows, four of them in London, and the rest—through December, January and February—are all in North America.

  Or are my memories dim because that’s how I feel about the album? Fundamentally, Hello, I Must Be Going! doesn’t tick many boxes for me, even though I know there are some songs that are huge for fans. But there are no real stand-out memories of writing it or even recording it.

  I know what my second album did for my career, though: it brought my first nomination at the Brit Awards (British Male Artist), and my first Grammy nomination (Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male), for “I Don’t Care Anymore.”

  But what did it do for my art and heart? Not much. I got the second solo album blues.

  Back in the U.K. in early spring 1983, I reconnect with Robert Plant. Again I go to Rockfield, again I play on six of the eight tracks on what will become The Principle of Moments, his second solo album. This time, Robert decides to go on tour, a six-week run around North America. Would I like to join him? You bet I would. After the craziness of my day job—day jobs—back to being just a drummer, sitting behind everyone else, will feel like going home. And doing so for Led Zeppelin’s former singer is an honor I’d be mad to turn down. It’s a muso gig, as distant as it’s possible to get from this new pop gig I now have, and I jump at it with both sticks. It’s the deepening of a great relationship. Some people, rock stars especially, drift in and out of your life, but Robert has stayed a good friend.

  In this period, not only am I away from home all the time, I’m away in multiple directions. Jill is accompanying me on a lot of these adventures—she loves the Plant tour, it’s her kind of music—but not all of them, and probably not enough of them. But we’re getting on like a house on fire. Love is still in the air.

  Home, briefly, in May 1983, I meet up with Mike and Tony at The Farm. After all my running around it’s good to be back with the guys again. As we embark on what will be Genesis’ self-titled twelfth album, now that our studio is fully operational we have the luxury of both time and improvisation. Mike plays around with a new toy. As he later describes the harsh rhythmic sound he comes up with: “I programmed that with the very first big Linn drum machine. And I did something the Americans would never do: I put it through my guitar amplifier, a small one, and I turned it up so loud that it was jumping up and down on the chair. What the English do well is take a sound and fuck it up. That’s a prime example. It’s just a horrible but great sound.”

  He’s not wrong. Straight away it works. We all fall in love with it and, inspired, I do my best J
ohn Lennon impersonation, and I also take a vocal cue from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” adding in the maniacal laugh.

  And that’s “Mama,” the lead single from the Genesis album. Our biggest ever U.K. hit, both of its time and timeless, and an enduring stage classic. It’s followed by “That’s All,” the writing of which begins with a piano riff of Tony’s and becomes our first U.S. Top 10 single. Released in October 1983, the album is another U.K. number 1, and sells 4 million copies in the U.S., by some margin our biggest at that point. At this time we’re just very lucky. Whether it’s my thing or the Genesis thing, it just keeps getting bigger. One profile is reinforcing the other, and our songs seem to be exciting more and more people.

  By the time February 1984 rolls around, I’m looking a bit greedy. Before Genesis have even finished our five-night stand at Birmingham’s NEC, the last dates of a four-month tour spent mostly in North America, I’ve released a new solo single in the U.S. At least at home I do the decent thing—“Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” isn’t released in the U.K. until after the completion of the tour, at the end of March.

  Well, I say “I’ve released.” The idea that the artist has any control over release dates for singles and the like is one of the great fallacies surrounding the music industry. If I had my way, I wouldn’t even be involved in choosing which songs are released as singles. On the one hand I’m not sure I’m very good at these kinds of decisions—if you’ll recall, I’d ignored “Against All Odds” when I was recording Face Value, viewing it as a B-side at best. It didn’t even get a look-in on Hello, I Must Be Going! a year later. Then it becomes my first American number 1, wins my first Grammy and secures my first Oscar nomination.

  On the other hand, in 1983–4 I have so many other things going on that it barely occurs to me to think how this release date reflects on that touring schedule, how this solo obligation impacts on that band responsibility. I’ve just got my head down, getting on with it.

  The serendipitous tale of “Against All Odds” goes like this: in December 1982, during my first solo tour, Taylor Hackford—the future Mr. Helen Mirren—comes to meet me in Chicago. He’s the director of An Officer and a Gentleman, which is a big film that year. Hackford wants a song for a new film he’s shooting, a would-be noir-ish romantic thriller. I tell him that I can’t write on the road, but I have an unfinished song with the working title “How Can You Sit There?” Might this demo cut the mustard?

  Hackford loves it. I haven’t seen a script, but he feels the lyrics are already perfect for the main musical theme for his still-in-production film. So I wrestle together a proper recording. The piano and orchestra are recorded in New York under the supervision of the legendary Arif Mardin (he’s worked with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Queen); then, at Music Grinder in LA, I record the drums and vocals. Arif is a lovely man and a fantastic producer, able to get great performances in the most effortless way. I’m thrilled to work with him, I want to impress, and he coaxes out of me a powerful vocal.

  I already have most of the key lyrics, notably the “take a look at me now” line. But Hackford reminds me his film is called Against All Odds, so I incorporate an approximation of that, using the phrase “against the odds.” Hackford, though, is precise: he insists I have to title it, and sing, “Against All Odds.”

  The director is thrilled with the end result, and I’m pretty pleased, too. In a short space of time I seem to have become known as a writer who can crystallize emotional turmoil. I’m the Phil Collins of Genesis lore, but to more and more people, I’m the Phil Collins who’s written “In the Air Tonight” and “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away,” who can write with space, and also with dramatic, cinematic sweep.

  The song is big, way bigger than the film. It’s now viewed as a paradigm of the eighties power ballad, that phenomenon from the decade when the hair was big, the emotions were bigger, but the shoulder pads were biggest of all. Barry Manilow covered it on his album The Greatest Songs of the Eighties, and Bazza knows what he’s talking about.

  “How can I just let you walk away / just let you leave without a trace / when I stand here taking every breath with you / you’re the only one who really knew me at all…” Why do these words and this song mean so much? Well, it was written at the height of my troubles with Andy, and forced at gunpoint to analyze it, I’d have to say it’s a good break-up song, with universal resonance and empathy. People hate a break-up, but they love a break-up song. “Against All Odds” pins down how it feels to be broken-hearted, and it’s one of the songs most often mentioned when people write to me, describing how it helped them through the trauma of heartbreak. And it’s a big vocal: impactful, raw, real. Courtesy of Arif, that was a good day in the studio in LA. I don’t remember having the pain and misery coursing through me as I stood in the vocal booth, but I must have drawn it from somewhere. That’s what the song needed, so I went for it.

  Singing it onstage for years thereafter, I can’t say that I’m dragged back into painful memories every time. If I was feeling that much pain night after night, I’d be a crackpot. Onstage you’re just trying to sing it—keep in tune, get the lyrics right. I don’t always manage. “How can I just let me walk away / when all I can do is watch me leave”—I’ve sung that more than once or twice, which is pretty impressive as clangers go.

  A year after its release, “Against All Odds” is in the running for an Oscar for Best Original Song. Normally, the nominated artist sings their nominated song. But 1985 is the year the Academy decides to change things: they’re going to have the songs performed by other people.

  The dispute starts small—a note from my label or management to the Academy, professing our willingness to stop over in LA en route to an Australian tour and perform on the telecast. Soon it escalates, and the letters are flying back and forth. One is addressed to a “Mr. Paul Collins.” Eventually Ahmet Ertegun writes to Gregory Peck, who’s president of the Academy at the time. This has gone right the way to the top. For as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the Oscars, and I’m an avid movie buff. I’m privileged to be in this exclusive group of nominees. I have no intention of upsetting anyone by inviting myself to sing my song. But suddenly, I’m unwittingly in the middle of an Oscar meltdown.

  The Academy gives “Against All Odds” to a dancer to lip-sync. To be fair, she’s not any old dancer—she’s the hugely experienced Ann Reinking, ex-partner of master choreographer Bob Fosse. None of that prevents the whole thing being a pig’s ear.

  It’s all very unseemly by the time I finally get to LA, because it looks like I’m the one who’s been writing the letters. I go to the award show and everyone in the business knows about the kerfuffle. As soon as Ms. Reinking comes on to perform the song, everyone turns around to look at me, to gauge my reaction. I’m just embarrassed, at what she’s done to the song and at what they think is my argument. Stevie Wonder wins, for “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” But at least “Against All Odds” wins the 1985 Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.

  That said: I didn’t even know it was nominated for a Grammy. I only found out when the award arrived in the post. “What’s this? Something else for Paul Collins?”

  Credit 9

  Guildford Registry Office, Surrey, August 4, 1984, with Jill on our wedding day. I had stayed the night before at Eric’s and Patti’s house, and Patti wouldn’t let me leave without ironing my wedding shirt.

  Credit 10

  With Bob Geldof backstage at Live Aid, 1985, in a photo taken by the legendary David Bailey. I don’t think I’d performed yet, so this was before the madness started. Even Bob looks relatively calm at this point.

  Credit 11

  The Heavy Mob: Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones and I at the Grammys, 1985. I had just performed “Sussudio” on the show, and Michael leaned over and asked me who had arranged the horn parts.

  Presenting a small tour jacket for the baby Prince William (future King of England) t
o Diana, Princess of Wales, at a Genesis show on the Mama tour at Birmingham NEC in 1984. This is a pretty heavy photo, as William is now knocking at the door of the throne. Maybe his son George now wears that satin Mama jacket.

  Trying to teach HRH Prince Charles how to play the drums during a Prince’s Trust week at Caister in Norfolk. Thankfully, he was useless and I kept my job.

  Mum, Carole and Clive in happy times at the Buster premiere at The Odeon in London’s Leicester Square. They were very proud that I had made a good film, especially with someone like Julie.

  Tommy: From left to right, my Uncle Ernie, Billy Idol’s Cousin Kevin, Pete Townshend, Elton’s Pinball Wizard, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Steve Winwood’s The Seeker and Patti LaBelle’s Acid Queen. Difficult job to live up to Keith Moon, but I tried the best I could.

  With Steven Spielberg on the set of Hook. He’s trying to talk me down from the ledge after informing me that he wants to do my scene in one shot: no cutaways, no chance to regroup and to get it right. Tremendous pressure.

  Mark Knopfler, Eric, Sir George, Macca and I at AIR Studios in London rehearsing for the 1997 Music for Montserrat concert. As always with these kinds of events, the atmosphere was friendly and without ego.

  With my good pal Planty, who presented me with an International Achievement Award at the Ivor Novello Awards in London in 2008. I love Robert. We share a great sense of humor, and he is, like George Harrison was, a little suspicious of fame and the blind faith that comes with it.