“Zoom! What was that? That was your life mate. Do I get another? No, sorry that was your lot.” Phil Collins (2008)
This time, he really must be going. Two-thirds of the way through our encounter, Phil Collins casually serves notice of his retirement. Having joined a reformed Genesis for a world tour last year, he says he’s through with the touring and there’s no album planned. He’ll write, but only because he doesn’t know how to stop writing. In truth though, he sounds more excited about nurturing his collection of memorabilia relating to the Battle of the Alamo. “It’s not that unusual for a man of my age, who grew up reading Davy Crockett,” he insists. So that’s what Phil Collins does these days. In Switzerland, where he lives, he maintains his collection of cannonballs and guns. And when he’s not doing that, he helps raise the two sons he had during a relationship with Orianne Cevey — the woman he married in 1999, three years after reportedly divorcing his second wife Jill by fax.
Except that right now, we’re not in Switzerland. Asked by Sky Arts if he would be the subject of their Songbook series — Squeeze, Travis and David Gray feature in other shows — Collins flew to this Barnes studio to take part and perform four of his best-known songs. If the 57 year-old seems perpetually thrown by praise, that’s almost certainly something to do with the fact that, over the last couple of decades, he hasn’t received terribly much of it.
But, in 2008, it would be weird to single out Collins for the antipathy to which he was once subject. In person, he’s charming and self-deprecating. Nevertheless, listen to all his biggest hits back to back — One More Night, In The Air Tonight, Against All Odds and it all comes back to you — a composite picture of a man flailing amid the crashing waves of his luckless love life. You suspect that, in the early 80s, Phil Collins was one of those people who you dared not ask, “How are you?” for fear that they would actually tell you. “I don’t think I was that bad,” he says, “There were other songs. But the ones that were coming out as singles were mostly in the same vein.”
His own commercial success surprised him more than anyone. “In Genesis, we saw ourselves as songwriters. After Peter Gabriel left, I was the first to put my hand up and say, ‘It’s ok — we can just do instrumentals.’ There was no need to worry though. The relationship troubles that ultimately launched Collins as a solo entity also gave voice to Genesis tunes such as Misunderstanding and That’s All. “In 1977, we played America and Europe three times and Japan for the first time — and my marriage suffered as a result. My then-wife [Andrea Bertorelli] took the kids to Canada to be near her parents.” The band briefly went into abeyance to allow Collins to try and sort out his marriage, but to no avail.
Never let it be said that he wasted any opportunity to keep the wider world abreast of the situation. When it emerged that his ex-wife had run off with the painter and decorator, he drily performed In The Air Tonight (from his platinum-selling ‘Face Value’ solo debut) on Top Of The Pops with a pot of paint and brush sat atop the piano. He says that the song itself was written on the back of a stray piece of wallpaper.
How ubiquitous was Collins in the 80s? His profile was akin to that of, say, Mark Ronson today. As a producer, he quickly became the go-to guy for singers re-entering the studio in the wake of their own separations. He helmed albums by John Martyn and Frida from Abba, whilst maintaining the solo career and being in Genesis the whole time. Being a child actor in the 60s, seemingly made him a shoo-in for the role of a loveable cockney Train Robber in Buster (even though he bore a marginally greater similarity to the train). In his mulleted prime, Collins even donned Hawaiian shirt and starred in Miami Vice (a role he digitally revisited in 2006 for a recent edition of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories). At Live Aid, his game-for-anything persona made him the natural choice when Bob Geldof cast around for a pop star to play on both sides of the Atlantic. Not only did Collins rise to the challenge, but he also occupied the drum stool for Led Zeppelin’s short set.
His detractors couldn’t help but take it all personally. Melody Maker — a publication that once incapable of writing anything negative about Genesis — led the charge against him. When they made him their Wally Of The Week two weeks in a row, the thoroughly hurt Collins wrote back to protest. Mischievously, the magazine printed his letter without trying terribly hard to scribble out the bit where his address was. NME raged at the “hypocrisy” of his writing homelessness paean Another Day In Paradise when he had allegedly baulked at the possibility of higher taxes under a Labour Government. He has since maintained that he has never voted Conservative in all his adult life. Nonetheless, the matter still comes up far more often than he would like it to. Ahead of the 2005 General Election, Noel Gallagher took a pop, to wit: “Vote Labour. If you don’t and the Tories get in, Phil is threatening to come back from Switzerland and live here — and none of us want that.” Collins’ response? “I don’t care if he likes my music or not. I do care if he starts telling people I’m a wanker because of my politics — an opinion based on an old misunderstood quote.”
But by the beginning of this decade, an odd thing happened. While a generation of indie kids defined themselves against everything for which Collins apparently stood, the man from Genesis became a hip-hop icon. ‘Urban Renewal’ — a 2001 compilation featuring versions of his songs by the likes of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Lil Kim and Kelis — emerged to a modicum of acclaim and the bewilderment of Collins himself. The love was mutual. Collins reveals that, back in 1983, his sinister laugh on Genesis’s Mama was inspired by the laugh on Grandmaster Flash’s The Message. “‘Urban Renewal’ was sweet, because I’ve been — unfairly, I would say, but wouldn’t I anyway? — plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs that may have put me there. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating — and as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realising why it happens.”
Until last year, Collins surmised that his career reached a high watermark of strangeness with ‘Urban Renewal’. But then, he received a phone call from his manager. Cadbury’s had been in touch to ask if Collins might allow the use of In The Air Tonight. Was it made clear to him that, when the now-legendary advert ran, it would feature a gorilla playing drums to the song? “As much as it’s possible for such a thing to be made clear,” he smiles.
He’s long reconciled to the fact that In The Air Tonight will forever be his keynote song. “Do I mind? Well, if you’re ever remembered at all, it’s only usually for one or two things.” It could be worse, I point out. Look at Stephen Milligan, the Conservative MP for Eastleigh, discovered dead by his secretary with nothing but a black bin liner on his head, suspenders and a satsuma in his mouth.
“Exactly,” says Collins, “Whatever else he did, that’s how he’ll be remembered. With me, it’ll be, ‘He faxed his wife a divorce’ — which is actually bollocks, but anyway, that’ll be on top of the headstone. And then, further down, you’ll have ‘Da-dum, da-dum…” He simulates that drum fill from In The Air Tonight. Then, he modulates into a burst of one of Basil Fawlty’s most memorable ruminations — “Zoom! What was that? That was your life mate. Do I get another? No, sorry that was your lot” — and it amuses him just as much as it must have done the first time he heard it.
This is an unabridged version of a feature which first appeared in The Times in 2008.