Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  At these performances I really go for it. Pud and I work hard to nail the “look”: dressing gown, worn half-open over boxers; blacked-out teeth; an empty bottle of cooking sherry; all topped off with a look of leery lust. Townshend sees me staggering onstage in character, rolls his eyes and smiles. Another loony. Roger Daltrey looks slightly terrified when I approach him and get on my knees.

  In February 1990 I attend the Brits ceremony at London’s Dominion Theatre and perform “Another Day in Paradise.” I win Best British Solo Male Artist, and “Another Day in Paradise” wins Best British Single. I’m wearing a nice Versace suit (they did make them, once) and the hair is greased back (I did have some, once). In my acceptance speech I feel it’s only right that I make a nod to the lyrical content of the song. I point out how we all grumble about First World problems: coffee’s a bit cold; steak’s a bit underdone; bus is a bit late. But that’s nothing.

  It’s hardly a nuanced, Bono-worthy rallying cry. But to me it’s pretty reasonable as a broad-stroke comment about the sentiments that inspired “Another Day in Paradise.” I’m counting myself as a normal bloke, and how this is just another day for you and me, compared to the plight of those poor souls on the streets with cardboard boxes for beds.

  With hindsight, I can see it differently: a rock star who has it all, tritely lecturing his fellow jewelery-rattlers on a glittering showbiz night about the travails of the homeless.

  But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Billy Bragg: “Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn’t have the action to go with it he’s just exploiting that for a subject.”

  At the 1991 Grammys, “Another Day in Paradise” takes home Record of the Year, which is nice—especially as I’d won none of the other eight Grammys for which I was nominated. It’s the last award of what feels like a day-and-night-long ceremony. By the time Hugh Padgham and I troop up, the audience has thinned out fairly dramatically. Everyone has gone to the post-show party. The awards have been a Quincy Jones fest—he’s released his first album in years, and it’s swept the board. There’s a lovely picture of Quincy and me at the party. He’s won it all, and he’s commiserating with me. Friends till the end.

  It’s the close of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. And on both sides of the Atlantic, I bestride the changing of the decades like a Versace-clad, five-foot-eight colossus. “Another Day in Paradise” is the last number 1 of the eighties on the Billboard Hot 100, and …But Seriously is Billboard’s first number 1 album of the nineties. It’s the second bestselling album in America in 1990, beaten only by Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. In the U.K. it’s number 1 for fifteen weeks in total, winding up the bestselling album of 1990.

  As the new decade begins, I hit the ground running. The 121-date Seriously, Live! tour begins in Nagoya, Japan, in February 1990 and ends that October with seven sell-out nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

  All, I think, looks good…especially as it now seems that I’m on Hollywood’s radar. Not because they mistake me for Bob Hoskins—that comes later—but because Buster, despite bombing in the U.S., has brought me to the attention of casting directors and producers around town.

  As is the Hollywood way of things, I do lunches, I take meetings and I audition. A theater manager in Sister Act 2; a buddy movie with Mickey Rourke; a part in the Mel Gibson/Jodie Foster/James Garner Wild West gambling drama Maverick; a Russian serial killer—I don’t get any of them. But I do make one film, Roger Spottiswoode’s AIDS drama And the Band Played On. I play a gay Greek bathhouse owner opposite Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen and dozens more. It’s an all-star cast, although I fear more people were in it than watched it.

  I also land a couple of animation gigs. In The Jungle Book 2, the famous “John, Paul, George and Ringo” vultures from the original 1967 Jungle Book are joined by a “fifth Beatle,” a wisecracking cockney corvid who is, yes, just a little Artful Dodger–esque. In Balto, an animation about a hero dog, I play not one but two polar bear cubs, Muk and Luk. Talk about challenging dual roles (although one of them doesn’t speak). Yes, I have a great face for cartoon voice-work.

  Around this time I’m “developing my own projects” too (this is also the Hollywood way). One is a live-action telling of the tale of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” This idea began during the No Jacket Required tour, when more than one review remarked on my similarity to stocky, balding English actor Bob Hoskins. Then other reviews compared me to Danny DeVito.

  Rather than take umbrage at these libelous comparisons with no basis whatsoever in physical facts, I have a sudden brainwave: the three of us could play the Three Bears in a movie.

  This idea burbles along for an age until I find myself sitting next to Hoskins at the London premiere of Scandal, the 1989 film about the Profumo affair. I mention the idea, he loves it, and he suggests we approach Robert Zemeckis, who’s just directed Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

  Somehow, word goes round about this “project.” Kim Basinger gets in touch—she wants to be Goldilocks. All this and we don’t even have a solid script.

  The next time I’m in LA, DeVito summons me to his office. He asks me to write a song for a film he’s directing about a battling divorcing couple (why did he think I’d be good for that?), The War of the Roses. I’ll go away and write “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven,” but DeVito passes so I keep it for …But Seriously.

  Then he says, “So you think I’m a bear? It’s a good idea. Zemeckis, eh? That’s also a good idea. We should all get together.”

  I start having meetings with DeVito, Zemeckis and his writers. It takes a long time for nothing to happen. I see “my” film gradually getting more and more expensive, and cruder in its humor, and more remote. It’s like trying to grab smoke. To paraphrase what would have been one of Papa Bear’s best lines: “Who’s been fiddling with my project?”

  Finally, though, a film comes good. Not long after the end of Seriously, Live! Steven Spielberg’s office contacts Tony Smith’s office. The director offers me a part in Hook, his reboot of the Peter Pan story that’s to star Dustin Hoffman as Hook, Robin Williams as the grown-up Peter Pan and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. Spielberg wants me to play a John Cleese-esque London policeman. Steeped as I am in the British comedy of Tony Hancock, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, I grab this opportunity with both hands.

  Spielberg sends me the pages of script and I enthusiastically commit them to memory. In February 1991, on the plane over to LA (the film is shooting on nine sound stages at Sony Pictures Studios), I act out the dialogue over and over again, trying it this way and that. Apologies to whoever was sitting next to the lunatic on that flight.

  At this point I have forgotten the two things Michael Caine once said to me: “You’re a good actor, Phil. And remember—never learn the whole script. ’Cause they’re gonna rewrite it.” But I’m terrified, so I do learn the whole thing. Also, I’m a musician: this is a song, so I’m going to learn how it’s played.

  I arrive on-set and I am handed a fifteen-page script. “Ah, no, it’s OK, I’ve learnt it.”

  “Steven rewrote it last night.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “Yeah, he just had some new ideas…”

  In the dressing room I’m panicking. I’m about to work with the great Robin Williams, one of my comedy heroes; I don’t want to mess this up, not for him and certainly not for Spielberg. I frantically scan the pages and it’s basically the same thing, but in a different order. Which is even worse.

  After an hour shitting myself, I’m taken to the set. Spielberg doesn’t recognize me, which is one good thing—I’ve decided to disguise myself as much as possible. I don’t want people to see “Phil Collins” in this film.

  Spielberg, a very nice man, tells me not to worry about the new script—however, we are going to film this scene in one long shot.

  I’m now double-dreading it. But we do a rehearsal and all the right people a
re laughing at all the right moments. Everyone except Hoffman.

  He’s not even in the scene, but he’s sitting there, his feet up, with his own scriptwriter/assistant at his elbow, a guy who comes in and makes the script more “Dustin.” First thing Hoffman says to me: “Where d’you get those pants, man?”

  “Ah,” I begin, flattered, “they’re Versace…”

  “Hey, make a note of where he gets these pants…”

  But I’m soon less flattered. Hoffman pipes up to Spielberg: “Are you sure he should be saying all that?” Spielberg ponders this, and then says, “Hmm, yeah, maybe we should do a short version too…” One version of my scene is longer, and very funny, and people are laughing, and I’m able to do what I’ve been working on endlessly in the run-up to filming. The other one’s had all the meat, and the jokes, cut out of it.

  Spielberg says, “OK, we’ve only got Phil for the afternoon, maybe we should shoot both versions.”

  We shoot the two versions, and I say to Spielberg, “I’d love to come and see how this looks.”

  “Sure, come see the rushes tomorrow.”

  When I turn up the next day, Hoffman is there, attached to Spielberg’s elbow like a Versace pants-wearing limpet. We watch both versions of my scene and, gulping slightly, trying to be casual, I offer: “The longer one’s the funniest…”

  With a bit of Method tutting, Hoffman makes it clear he doesn’t agree. I know there and then that my long version is history. I was ready for my close-up, but Rain Man rained on my parade.

  At Hook’s LA premiere in November 1991, Spielberg is very nice. At the after-party he tells me he had to use the short version. So, yes, not quite another cutting-room-floor rejection for Collins, but nearly.

  —

  In March 1991, the month after I film my Hook cameo, Tony, Mike and I begin recording We Can’t Dance. It takes an uncha​racteri​stically long time to write—four or five months—but we’re in our own studio, The Farm, so we can take our time. And, frankly, after a non-stop few years, I’m in no rush.

  Plus, while I have no problem being bandleader in my own group, it’s a nice change of tone coming back to the boys. Always good mates, there is the usual cheery, relaxed atmosphere between the three of us, something which is creatively inspiring. Upon its release that November, We Can’t Dance becomes the band’s fifth consecutive British number 1 album.

  The commercial success is obviously nice, but the most important song on the album to me is not one of the hit singles. I wrote the lyrics for “Since I Lost You” for Eric. It’s about the death of his four-year-old son, Conor, a lovely little boy whom I’d last seen when I was visiting Hurtwood Edge with Lily.

  We were in the early stages of making We Can’t Dance when I got the call telling me that Conor had died after falling from the window of his mother’s fifty-third-floor Manhattan apartment.

  Eric was dry at the time and I told him one of my concerns: that the easiest thing for him to do after this terrible loss would be to start drinking again. He said that, no, “that would be the hardest thing.”

  In the studio the next day, Mike, Tony and I, all of us good friends of Eric’s, are talking about this unimaginable tragedy. We’re working on a new piece of music. I start singing a lyric: “My heart is broken in pieces…” Lily turned two earlier that same week, and I’m thinking of all the times I’m separated from her. I write from the perspective of a dad who is often a long way away from his kids, and who has to entrust their care to others. It’s a gnawing feeling that’s always preyed on me—I’ve long said to all my kids, “Remember when you’re crossing the road: stop, look both ways. I know it sounds dopey. But chances are, I won’t be there.”

  I tell Mike and Tony what the lyric is about. They confirm something I’d already thought: I need to run this by Eric. If he has any problem with the song, it won’t go on the album.

  At the mixing stage, I go round to Hurtwood Edge, sit with Eric on his sofa, explain what I’ve done and play him “Since I Lost You.” We both start crying. “Thank you, man,” he says, “that’s lovely.”

  Then he says that he’s written a song, and that his label want to release it as a single. He’s not sure, so he wants my opinion. Eric plays me “Tears in Heaven.” It’s a beautiful song. In his grief, Eric has pulled together something extraordinary. Another reason to love him.

  In May 1992 the We Can’t Dance tour begins. Genesis are now firmly in the big league, notably in the U.S., where we’re generally playing stadiums.

  In June the tour passes through Vancouver. While we’re in town I phone Andy. We’re almost on speaking terms, and really I have no choice, because I want Simon and Joely to come to the show. Andy asks where we’re playing next.

  “Tacoma, then Los Angeles.”

  “Oh. You know Lavinia lives in LA, don’t you? Do you ever see her?”

  A quarter of a century on from those heady mid-sixties days at Barbara Speake’s, Andy knows my lingering thing for Lavinia lingers on. But at this point I haven’t seen her for over twenty years. She had joined British dance troupe Hot Gossip—once a sexy fixture on anarchic TV sketch program The Kenny Everett Video Show—and eventually married one of American sibling group The Hudson Brothers. We’d all moved on. At least that’s what I thought.

  Now, all these years later, Andy is telling me that Lavinia is still living in LA with her husband. My ex-wife gives me her number. She is also giving me a hand-grenade. I will later come to wonder whether she knows this.

  I get to LA and I call. A voice comes on the line. My brain freezes, my heart stops.

  “Is that you, Vinny?”

  “Is that you, Phil?”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I just knew it.”

  In that short exchange, a cosmos of longing. It’s Brief Encounter by way of Shakespeare. Two star-cross’d lovers, snagged on the horns of circumstance, torn apart moons ago on a steam-shrouded, black-and-gray railway platform. Something like that. I mentioned that I was at stage school, right?

  In all the times I went to LA—playing, recording, buying a house with Jill, producing other people’s records—we never reconnected. And now, years later, here we are again.

  Trying not to sound like I’m bragging, I tell Lavinia that Genesis are playing Dodger Stadium the following night. Would she like to come? She’d love to.

  “Can I bring my husband?”

  “Ah, of course, sure…” Anyway, this isn’t going to go anywhere. She’s married and has kids, just like me. Course it isn’t going anywhere.

  The next day I pass my LA guest list to our press officer, Sheryl Martinelli. I mention Lavinia: “An old friend of mine, make sure you give her great seats.”

  I call back later. Did Lavinia pick up her tickets? Sheryl replies, “Wow.”

  “Oh, still nice, is she?” I say, hoping to concrete my schoolboyish excitement under a slab of casual insouciance.

  “Oh, yes. Beautiful girl.”

  During the show, I know Lavinia is out there, though I don’t know where. I think I see her at one point, amid the crowd of 40,000, but I’m not sure. It’s been twenty years. But just in case, I keep an eye on this particular person in the audience…only to establish, come show’s end, that it’s not her.

  Still, it’s a very good gig. Afterward, for the first time ever, Tony Smith says, “That was a good show. Pulled everything out of the box.”

  “Really?” I say, that casual insouciance vibrating hard.

  Did I mention that Jill is also in Los Angeles? With Lily, who’s now three? They’ve been traveling with me, on and off, on the tour. Just to add to the fun, my mother-in-law Jane is also there.

  Backstage, after the gig, a scrum—a menagerie—of LA celebrities. Kevin Costner stands out. He’s a fan, fresh off a big year winning seven Oscars for Dances with Wolves. I don’t know who else is there, because, frankly, I’m not interested.

  My eyes swiveling around the inner sanctum of the after-show, I say
to Sheryl, “No sign of Lavinia?” Sheryl says she’ll go and have a look. I’m standing there, absent-mindedly glad-handing the well-wishers, craning my neck. I’m talking to Stephen Bishop, I’m talking to Costner, I’m listening to neither.

  Then, as if by magic, Sheryl arrives with Lavinia.

  “Kevin, mate, Dances with Wolves, loved it, but I’ve got to go…”

  Sheryl leads Lavinia into the inner sanctum. She doesn’t have her husband with her. She’s brought Winnie, her best friend. Lavinia says, “I gave Winnie my bag ’cause I wanted to have both hands free and ready for this…”

  She gives me a hug and a kiss. Time stops, then rattles backward, fast, dizzyingly, to teenage dreams in Acton, west London, nineteen-sixty-something. I’m thinking, “Oh my God…”

  I am not thinking about my nearby wife, three-year-old daughter and mother-in-law.

  I know that recounting this makes me sound like a right shallow bastard. But I’m not that way. I’m very loyal. Very committed. I’ve fought in the prog wars, survived the giddy, groggy seventies and kept my nose clean. I’d married young, and I’d wanted to stay married, only to be betrayed. Now here I am, happily married, but betrayed again, although this time by the feelings I still have for someone pivotal in my formative years.

  Seeing—hugging—kissing—Lavinia again, the cliché is true: it’s electric. In a flash I’ve gone from We Can’t Dance to I can’t breathe. Another cliché: suddenly, in this crowded scrum of an LA after-show, there’s no one but me and my schoolgirl sweetheart.

  I lead Lavinia out of the throng, over toward my caravan—Genesis have four or five of these dressing rooms on tour, but I usually have my own for my clothes and hair gel—and we talk excitedly, harking back to the old days. Stephen Bishop sidles up. He’s clocked our hug. He whispers to me, “Wow, that was electric. What’s going on there?”