Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  Paranoid? At the very least my guilt is making me highly sensitive to the psychic energy, real or otherwise.

  This is the damage Faxgate does. It messes up my head, and in my confused mind it blows out the foundations of my career. I certainly didn’t like being Mr. Nice Guy, the Housewives’ Pal. But as soon as I wasn’t that guy anymore, I missed it. Now I’m pop public-enemy number one. Rod Stewart shags around, serially, and it’s just Rod being Rod. Mick Jagger does it and, well, of course he does—he’s Mick. Phil Collins does it and what an arsehole.

  Now I don’t know where I am. I feel like I’ve lost control. My standing as a human being—my dignity, or lack of it—is being buffeted by stuff that’s reduced to headlines in newspapers. The cumulative effect is I just want to write myself out of the script. I want to scrub the blackboard clean and say, “I don’t want any part of this. Because this is now too much. I carry too much baggage.”

  That wound festers, and deepens.

  After …But Seriously and Both Sides, people begin saying, “Phil, we don’t want this. Lighten up, mate. You are ‘You Can’t Hurry Love.’ You are ‘Sussudio.’ You are the cheeky chappy who makes us laugh onstage and romps for two hours. That’s what we love. No more dark nights of the soul, please. We have other people to go to for that.”

  And Lavinia? I never gave her a heads-up as to what Both Sides was about. So I don’t know what she thought of it. After that phone call, I never hear from her again. But I still love Both Sides. It’s not clouded or tarnished by the events that inspired and surrounded it. It had its little day in the sun.

  Despite the personal cataclysms, I don’t think of the album as being an unhappy experience. It was very pleasurable to make. Writing and playing and recording entirely on my own was utterly liberating. Which is why I decided to liberate myself in other ways. During the promotion of Both Sides—before the tour, before Orianne even—I tell Tony Smith that I’m leaving Genesis.

  Or: I’ve fallen in love with a Swiss woman. And I follow my heart, not the money

  Should I stay or should I go? Do I leave Jill…do I leave Genesis…do I leave the U.K.?

  The three years between reconnecting with Lavinia in summer 1992 during Genesis’ We Can’t Dance tour and finishing my Both Sides of the World tour in spring 1995 have been more than a little tempestuous. The imperial eighties have become the emotional nineties. Which decade thrilled me more, and which messed me up more? Even now it’s hard to say.

  Casting my mind back to the We Can’t Dance tour, I realize now that the weight of leading the band finally got to me. From the start of that global run of Genesis’ biggest-ever shows, there was a sense of nostalgia, a sense of “look how far we’ve come.” This was most apparent in the footage we showed on the screens during “I Know What I Like”: lots of archive film, stretching back through the Peter era. It was moving stuff.

  But also from the off, there were problems and niggles.

  After the opening night in the Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, we move on via Houston to Florida. I develop a sore throat, so I try acupuncture backstage at Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium. The next night, in Tampa, I only manage one song, “Land of Confusion,” before apologizing and exiting stage left, my singing voice in tatters. So much for acupuncture. Half the stadium is shouting “awwww,” in sympathy. The other 20,000 are bellowing something along the lines of “Bastard! I’ve paid my money, sing the songs!” I scuttle back to the dressing room and cry. It’s just too intense. I’ve let everybody down, from fans to crew to caterers to the entire team working in and around the stadium. It’s a very heavy responsibility, a very heavy moment. It’s all on me. One week in, and in my mind I’ve already scuppered Genesis’ biggest-ever tour.

  But as I routinely feel compelled to do, I battle on and the tour steams forward. As we tick off the world’s enormodomes and super-stadiums, a thought sets in: do I really want this, this pressure, this obligation? Can I keep this up—the singing, the banter, the larger-than-life performances required—right through a grueling summer schedule, all the way to an eye-wateringly gargantuan, outdoor homecoming show at Knebworth?

  The truth is, I hate stadium shows. You’re not in control. These venues are built for sports, not for rock tours. You’re at the mercy of the elements; a bit of rain can ruin everyone’s evening, and if the wind picks up, God help the sound. There’s so much activity everywhere in the place, all of which catches your eye from the stage. The queues for the hot dogs, the overpowering smell of frying onions, the endless lines for the toilets, the ranks of cops and security. If there are 40,000 people in the place, 10,000 of them are moving at any one time when we’re playing.

  I remember going to see Bad Company in Texas in the seventies, walking around the arena floor and being amazed by all the stuff going on: people scoring, people fighting, people puking up. Some were even watching the band. By the time Genesis are touring stadiums in the eighties, fans are following the performance on huge telly screens at the side of the stage because really, for most of the punters, it’s either watch some matchstick men in the distance or watch them on the big screens—only the image on the screen doesn’t quite sync with the sound blasting from the house-size speakers. In these conditions, it’s no surprise no one’s wholly invested in the actual music. “I’m off for a bucket of fizzy beer and a tray of nuclear-orange nachos.”

  A whole tour of this size demonstrates the staggering popularity of Genesis in the early nineties. But actually having to do it is a giant pain in the arse.

  And then, what next? What happens on the tour after the stadium and arena tour? When you’ve done four nights at Wembley and six nights at Earls Court, what’s the next goal, the next height? Anything less, we’ve peaked. Anything more, we’re knackered.

  Plus, for most of the tour, I’m having to wow those stadiums while putting on a Jumbotron-friendly brave face. If there’s such a thing as vertigo of the heart, I have it bad.

  That is the mindset I take into the writing and recording of Both Sides.

  All this time Tony Smith has been walking on glass. He’s one of the few people who knows what happened with Lavinia. He is also aware that, as a result, Jill and I are on very dodgy ground. He knows the emotional state I’m in has resulted in this rather downbeat solo album, and that chipper eighties pop star Phil Collins is dying on the inside.

  Ever the attuned manager and confidant, Tony is right to worry, but not about my personal life.

  In late 1993, Tony and I are on a private jet, flying to fulfill some album promotion obligations. We are the only two on board, sitting together at a table at the rear of the plane. Though I’ve already made up my mind on my future, I haven’t told anyone. I’m promoting Both Sides with media interviews, and I’m enjoying it. This, to my mind, is my finest hour, a very personal album full of songs with lots to talk about.

  Above all, I’m relieved I’ve made the decision.

  “Tony, I’m leaving Genesis.”

  He isn’t surprised; he’s been anticipating this moment for a few years now, so his response is measured.

  “OK. We don’t have to say anything yet. Let’s see how you feel after the Both Sides tour. Then we’ll take a view.”

  I suspect his interior monologue went like this: “I know Phil. He’ll come round. He’ll get the album out, get out on the road, get all that off his chest. Then, having realized the error of his ways, he’ll get back in the saddle, just like he always does.”

  But I know how I feel, and I know how I’ll feel after the tour. I’ve made the leap, and revealed my true feelings. I won’t be changing my mind. But I agree to keep it quiet, until such time as we have to tell the world.

  Jetting about to promote Both Sides in late 1993, my life is all over the place. I’ve made what I consider to be my best album, but at what price? The inspiration came from the perspiration of trying to work out where my head and heart lay. These are songs of separation, of a love lost. Moreover, the freedom I had making them i
s also giving me feelings of anticipation. What if I do more records like Both Sides, personal and self-sufficient? Why do I need to make more band albums?

  In sum, for reasons positive and negative, after devoting half of my life to the band, it’s time to leave Genesis. I just can’t tell anyone about it.

  So I keep schtum for over two years, during which time I come back down to earth with a bump. Terra infirma. In Switzerland. Now it’s time to address the women in my life.

  —

  I’ve always hated the “divorced wife/divorced band” view of me at this time, as if the two could be yoked together. It’s a pithy headline, but far from the truth. At the time I convinced myself that I was in control of both sides of my life, but that each was a separate issue. “At the time” being the operative phrase.

  Those around me, I sense, think I’m mad. Tony Smith especially can see that quitting Genesis and quitting my second marriage will cost me dearly, two times over and in every sense. I don’t care. I need out.

  I don’t blame Genesis for the serial traumas in my personal life. I may have felt a perennial obligation to agree to tours and schedules and projects, to keep everybody happy and everybody employed. But fundamentally, the buck stops with me. I could have said no to that follow-up album, to that final leg round America, to that latest invitation to produce. And I could have said no to Orianne—or, rather, not pursued her with quite so much vigor.

  During the Both Sides tour I decide that, once I’m finished, I will go and live with her in Switzerland. To a man who’s been pilloried in the U.K. press, bolt-holes don’t come much safer or welcoming than the small, mountain-and-lake-ringed, democracy-loving country where discretion is one of the core natural assets. In search of a clean break from all my adult relationships, domestic and professional, there aren’t many places cleaner than Switzerland.

  That’s how observers might think I think.

  The next thing people automatically assume is that it’s a money move. Cue another round of headlines: “Millionaire rock star Phil Collins skips the country to avoid paying his taxes, thereby denying the U.K. government money to keep the lights on and the hospitals open.” I still get it now—“Tax Exile Phil Collins (Who Divorced His Wife by Fax) (What a Bastard).”

  But in all honesty, none of the above has occurred to me. I haven’t mused, “Where am I going to get noticed less? Where can I hide easier?”

  It’s simply that Orianne lives in Switzerland. So I go where she lives. The “only” thing I’m guilty of is being a forty-four-year-old married man who’s fallen in love.

  I try to say as much in a couple of interviews. I tell a U.K. newspaper that if Orianne lived in Grimsby or Hull, I’d have gone there. The paper promptly seeks out inhabitants of Grimsby and Hull for their views on my quotes—their implication being that The Faxing Tax Exile is now laying into honest-to-goodness English burghers. Hey presto, another round of hostile press, followed by a barrage of abusive letters from Grimsby and Hull: “What’s the matter with our towns?”

  Still, the coincidental advantage of moving to Switzerland is that, generally, people do keep themselves to themselves, and leave you alone. If they don’t, you can quite legally shoot someone if they come into your garden. Right now, something about that rather appeals.

  I’m immediately very, very happy in Switzerland. While, obviously, I have a huge self-made mess to clean up, here on the ground life simplifies in a flash.

  Waiting for Orianne to finish work each day in Geneva, I frequent a nearby bar. The barman says to me, “What do you want to live here for? We’re all trying to get out.” The reasons they want out are the reasons I want in. The natural beauty, the slow pace, the deafening peace—all bliss to me. After twenty-five years being public property, now I get to be private property. It’s taken some drastic measures, but I’ve written myself out of the script.

  Our first home is on the southern side of Lake Geneva, in a rented townhouse in a medieval village, Hermance, right on the French border. There are four floors, one room on each floor, and no straight walls. It’s lovely, a little skew-whiff paradise.

  In Switzerland, life is more family-oriented, in a warmingly old-fashioned way. Orianne’s dad had been suffering from cancer when I met her, and tragically he died the night I played in Stuttgart on the Both Sides tour. I’d flown to Orianne immediately after the show.

  Now her family are closer than ever. We go to her mum’s every weekend for a family lunch. Aperitif, glass of white wine, nice meal, nice conversation. Obviously I don’t talk as much (my French is un peu basic, but I am learning) but the feeling is wonderful. I’m transported to my childhood, to the suburban west London of the late fifties and early sixties—to those happy Sunday lunches with Reg and Len, Mum killing the vegetables and Dad fighting with the dishes. It’s a little step back in time, and I love it.

  With Mum and Dad separating, then Dad dying in 1972, then me spending the next twenty-odd years on the road, this sense of being part of a bigger family is something I’ve missed for almost a quarter of a century, almost my entire adult life. Andy’s family were in Vancouver, Jill’s in LA. Here in Switzerland, everyone’s together. This is something comfortable, familiar, that’s nothing to do with who I am or what I do.

  The rest of my family? Complicated, to say the least.

  It’s terribly hard for Jill to deal with this mess. One of the first things she says when I tell her I’m moving to Switzerland: “You don’t speak French!” She’s right, but it doesn’t matter to me. I can learn, and I do.

  I try to see Lily, who’s now six, as often as I can. I fly back to the U.K. and stay in bloody awful Holiday Inns or airport hotels. I pick her up from school and we sit in the car and talk, or listen on repeat to the soundtrack to the latest Disney film, Aladdin, waiting for the Italian restaurant in Cranleigh, Surrey, to open. A difficult, sad thing for all concerned.

  The first time Orianne meets Lily is in Ascot—I can’t stay in London because the press are still stalking me, so I book a little country hotel, not far from Tittenhurst Park, the former Lennon house I’d rented with Brand X.

  I introduce Lily to the difficult subject of the new lady in Daddy’s life by telling her: “I’ve met a lady who looks just like Princess Jasmine from Aladdin.” She’s wide-eyed at this. “Wow!” That helps Lily and Orianne have an instant connection.

  Orianne doesn’t meet Simon or Joely for a while. Baby steps. Inheriting a family can be traumatic for all concerned. But Orianne, a bright, intelligent woman, takes it all in her stride.

  Mindful of the fact that I need to solidify things—I want my kids to be able to come visit as soon as possible—we begin looking for a proper, family-friendly place to live. But the Swiss are careful about this sort of thing. A foreigner can’t simply arrive in their country and buy an enormous family house—you must have what’s known as a C permit. To acquire a C permit you have to demonstrate a commitment to staying in Switzerland by having a B permit for five years, thereby showing that you are not just swooping in and buying a property as some sort of tax-friendly holiday hideaway.

  It takes awhile, but eventually we find just the home. It’s surrounded by vineyards, in the small village of Begnins, halfway between Geneva and Lausanne. Clayton House is a 7,000-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, a tennis court, swimming pool, pool house and great views of Lake Geneva and the Alps. Unfortunately someone already owns it: motor-racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart.

  Luckily, Sir Jackie is a mate, and he and his wife Helen are keen to move back to the U.K. For a while, we rent the house from Jackie, but after I’ve convinced the Swiss authorities of my bona fides and my commitment to their lovely country, I buy Clayton House.

  I feel settled, stable and solid. First time in…ever.

  I don’t know if word of my new-found liberation has leaked, but I later learn that, in January 1996, my name is circulating in an odd new context. A TV movie of Doctor Who is in the works and, alongside Sc
ott Glenn and Randy Quaid, I’m under consideration to portray the Time Lord’s arch-rival, the Master. In the end, scheduling prevents me from being formally approached about playing the intergalactic baddie, which is probably a good thing. I can’t very well swap touring with a band for traveling through space and time.

  By now it’s clear that we can’t sit on the Genesis news any longer. I want to “out” myself as being a now former frontman, and Mike and Tony need to be able to move on with whatever they’re planning next.

  I fly to London, for a meeting at Tony Smith’s house. I imagine that Tony and Mike have long ago been briefed by our manager about my intentions. But still, I’m nervous. These are my oldest musical friends. Two of my oldest friends, full stop. And I’m about to formally say goodbye to them.

  We sit around Smith’s kitchen table with cups of tea. There’s a little bit of small talk, but we all know what we’re here to discuss.

  “I’m leaving.”

  Tony Banks replies, with true British understatement, “Well, it’s a sad day.”

  Mike adds, “We understand. We’re just surprised you stayed this long.”

  In my mind, it’s an undeniable law of rock’n’roll physics: Genesis can’t get any smaller. And then there were two? That won’t really work. And while Peter leaving was a huge deal, Genesis now isn’t like Genesis then. The well-regarded progressive rock group of the mid-seventies is now the stadium-filling phenomenon of the mid-nineties. I hadn’t ever wanted to cause this outcome, but this is surely the end.

  But no. Tony and Mike want to go on—they’ll find another singer. Genesis are not over, not now, not yet.

  Secretly, I’m thrilled that they’re hatching plans to continue. I don’t want the band to end, and I certainly don’t want to be the cause of that end. I just want out.