Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  In short, it’s posh with a capital p, and not much like the Barbara Speake Stage School at all.

  Peter and Tony met when they arrived at Charterhouse in 1963, with Mike enrolling a year later. Genesis formed in 1967 out of two school bands, with fellow pupils Anthony Phillips on guitar and Chris Stewart on drums. That year, Jonathan King—an Old Carthusian who’d had some success in the music industry—became the five-piece’s “manager,” and secured them a record deal with Decca.

  Taking the name Genesis (a suggestion of King’s), they released their first single, “The Silent Sun,” in February 1968. That summer Chris Stewart left, and was replaced on drums by another Charterhouse boy, John Silver. In August, Genesis took ten days out of their school summer holidays to record their debut album, From Genesis to Revelation. It was released in March 1969. Tony Banks would later suggest that “after a year or so” the LP had sold “649 copies.”

  The summer of ’69, having all left school, Genesis regrouped to consider a second album. Before they could do that, though, they lost another drummer, Silver being replaced by John Mayhew. He was an occasional carpenter who’d been looking for a drumming gig when Mike came across his number. Genesis played their first show in September 1969, at a teenager’s birthday party. Now devoting themselves full-time to the band, they began to rehearse and perform wherever and whenever. Little wonder I kept seeing their name in the pages of Melody Maker. In spring 1970, midway through a six-week residency at Upstairs at Ronnie’s, in Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho, Tony Stratton-Smith came to see them. He promptly signed them to a management and record deal with Charisma.

  In June, Genesis began recording what would become their second album, Trespass, at Soho’s Trident Studios with producer John Anthony. But in July, before the album was released, Ant Phillips announced that he was leaving. He was ill through overwork, and also falling prey to stage-fright.

  This hit Mike, Tony and Peter hard. Ant was a founder member, an old friend and a great musician. As Mike would later say, “That was the closest we came to busting up. For some reason we felt so close that if one left, we thought we couldn’t carry on. Of all the changes we’ve been through, surviving Ant leaving was the hardest.”

  But they decided to plow on with a new guitarist, with Tony’s proviso that they also take the opportunity to replace Mayhew with—to be brutally frank—a better drummer. Losing drummers was clearly becoming a habit with these guys. At least they weren’t spontaneously combusting. As far as I could tell anyway.

  Cue that Melody Maker advert in July 1970—by which time Tony, Mike and Peter have been through a lot in their seven years of friendship and music-making. They have certain methods, and certain expectations, and certainly certain ways of relating to each other.

  It will take me awhile to understand these dynamics. Tony and Peter, for example, are the best of friends, and the worst of enemies. Tony is prone to losing his temper, but this only makes itself apparent later, with Peter and Tony taking it in turns to storm out of studios in a huff. Mike keeps a delicate balance between the two. But all three of them are what they are: ex–public school boys, with all the privilege and baggage that comes with that kind of background. Immaculately bred as officers and gentlemen for a bygone age—perhaps less obvious fodder for a rock group emerging from the tumult of the swinging sixties.

  Equally, I don’t know at the time how close they’ve come to splitting, and therefore how much is riding on these auditions. Nor am I aware that Genesis’ finely balanced creative symmetry has had the legs kicked from under it. Previously Genesis had the benefit of two pairs of writers, Mike and Ant, and Tony and Peter. And then there were three.

  So the atmosphere today chez Gabriel is fragile, and tense. Also frightfully reserved, highly strung, not a little rarefied and terribly uptight. In sum, then, nothing at all like me or my background. What could possibly go right?

  But there’s one thing we all do have in common: we’re all good musicians.

  Right now, though, Ronnie and I are oblivious to these subtleties and undercurrents. We’re sitting, alongside the handful of other disorientated hopefuls, in a giant living room made all the more cavernous by the absence of the grand piano. Now sitting on the terrace, by the swimming pool, it lurks under a giant umbrella. It’s a still-life, like Dalí by way of Storm Thorgerson, an image in search of the sleeve of a seventies prog-rock album.

  Peter appears, brandishing the as-yet-unreleased Trespass. He plays three tracks: “Stagnation,” “Looking for Someone,” “The Knife.” Truth be told, I don’t quite know what to make of it. I don’t think much of the drumming—it’s a little clumsy, and there’s not much groove. There are some soft harmonies that remind me of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But the whole record seems like a…blancmange. You could put your finger in it and it would somehow reseal.

  Ronnie goes off to give it a shot on the 12-string with Mike. Then, once Mike reappears, I finally get my turn. We move on to the terrace. Based on that quick, one-off exposure to the tracks from Trespass—an album with only six tracks, each averaging seven minutes—I’m trying to get a feel for Genesis. Now, as Tony starts on piano, Mike on guitar and Peter on his bass drum (he reckons himself a drummer, which will prove perilous in the months and years ahead), I have to join in with whatever I feel appropriate at the required moments.

  We do three or four songs, including Trespass’s epic closer “The Knife,” and some acoustic bits, to see how sensitive I really am to acoustic music.

  I’m the last drummer that day and I’m trying to divine how well—or otherwise—I have done. To no avail. These are tightly wound English public schoolboys, and reserve and politesse are their key fighting skills. They will, they say gravely, “let me know.”

  Ronnie and I gather up our guitars and drums, load up the Morris Minor and start heading back to London, back to the real world.

  “Yeah, I think you blew that,” offers Ronnie helpfully. “I think I did well, but you definitely blew it.”

  “Really?” I reply. “No, I thought I did all right.” We’re arguing again already.

  But as we approach the outskirts of London I start to feel less sure about how well I did. I couldn’t read those guys. Neither Peter nor Mike nor Tony said, “That was really great!” No one was going to speak up; it’s not in their make-up. They’d have a serious conversation about it afterward. In their own good time, without being rushed by anyone—and certainly not an eager jobbing drummer from Hounslow—Genesis would reach a decision.

  I later learn that Peter knew the moment I sat down that I was the guy; seemingly the assured way I set up my kit was telling. Mike was less convinced. Tony felt quietly confident. History does not record the opinion of Mrs. Gabriel.

  On August 8, 1970, the phone rings on the red leatherette and white wrought-iron telephone seat at 453 Hanworth Road. A voice I’ll get used to hearing over the next few years says down a crackly telephone line, “Er, um, ah, hello, Phil? It’s Peter Gabriel here. From Genesis. You’ve got the gig, if you want it.”

  “Yeah, Peter, thanks a lot.”

  I try to play it cool, but inside I’m jumping. I’ve finally found a band; or a band has found me. At last I’m going to play drums in front of people. It doesn’t get much better than that.

  First things first: I call Ronnie.

  “Seems like I got the job with Genesis.”

  “Oh yeah. Did they say anything about me?”

  “Ah, no…”

  “Fuck! Ah, well, I think I was a bit too bluesy for them anyway…”

  Ronnie’s disappointment is understandable, and will also be long-running. He will come dutifully to support his old mate at all of Genesis’ London shows, but equally dutifully he will always slag us off. It becomes a predictable part of the post-show: drink, rant, criticism, expression of lifelong friendship.

  A few days after the phone call, Genesis and their new, fifth drummer meet at Strat’s Charisma office in Soho. Already I feel like I�
��ve stepped up a gear or three. A band meeting, in Soho, in the office of our manager, who also looks after Van Der Graaf Generator and Lindisfarne. Having been on the outside looking in for so long, now I’m smack in the heart of things. I’m in a band, which is on a record label, in the music industry. They even have a tour van. Well, access to a tour van. A rented tour van.

  All goes well at the meeting. The bit about Genesis being on a weekly wage of £10 is especially welcome, doubling as it does the income level I’m used to. Then Tony, Mike and Peter drop a bombshell: “We’re taking two weeks’ holiday to regroup.” My mouth drops. I have nothing from which to regroup. I just want to group. More pertinently, what am I going to do for money?

  And so my rock’n’roll dream splutters before it’s even begun. I have no option but to embrace the idea of a frankly hideous thought: a day job.

  At this point in time I can once again count Lavinia as my girlfriend. She’s decided that this week she fancies me, even though that might change by Saturday. Her folks are, as ever, lovely to me, even trying to talk her into some kind of loose commitment. I could handle a loose commitment.

  In dire need of money, not least to take Lavinia out, I feel like I have no option but to exploit our latest bout of “going steady”: I ask her dad if he has any work. Fred Lang is a builder and jack-of-all-trades who is currently engaged in a large exterior decorating job in Wembley. Grateful but not a little mortified, I exchange drumsticks for paintbrush. Rock’n’roll and my role in its future will have to wait just a bit longer.

  The job entails repainting all the windows and wooden areas on the outside of this poor unsuspecting couple’s house. The actual painting is the easiest part. It’s the preparation—stripping off the old paint and treating the bare wood—that kills you. As the old paint is usually lead-based, it’s quite possibly literally killing you.

  Excitable and frustrated teenager that I am, and a musician desperate to leave the starting blocks, I have zero patience with methodical stuff like stripping old paint, especially outdoors in a cold, damp English summer. The painstaking finesse I will later apply to my demos, and even my model trains, does not happen here. This is unfortunate, as finesse is exactly what’s required of this job. But somehow I manage to pull the wool over Fred’s eyes and pretend that this preparation has been carried out perfectly, thus enabling me to execute the final stage of painting.

  With regard to slopping on the paint, I’m pretty talented. Over the padlock on the garden shed, over the locks on the doors, over the window frames—on it goes, slap-dash and willy-nilly. Sure, the straight lines round the windows leave a little to be desired. But by the time the shortcomings in my handiwork are revealed, I’ll be miles away. It doesn’t occur to me that messing up at my girlfriend’s dad’s place of work is perhaps not the best idea a hopeful young suitor ever had.

  After the longest two weeks in history, Peter, Mike and Tony return from holiday. As they all live in the Surrey environs and I’m in distant west London, Mike invites me to stay at his mum and dad’s house in Farnham. It’s another grand home, although with a very warm, homely ambience. I gladly say farewell to London and move in with Mike, while also resolving to never again pick up a paintbrush for as long as I live.

  The rest of my life finally begins with the new line-up of Genesis’ first rehearsals in September 1970, in the pigeon-shit-encrusted environs of the Maltings, an old, barn-like complex in Farnham. We set up our gear and start playing with what I can describe as hazy enthusiasm: various public-school friends of Peter, Tony and Mike’s drop in, I discover exotic new foodstuffs like Marmite and tahini, and the whole affair is often shrouded in the sweet smell of grass.

  A constant presence is Richard MacPhail. He’d been singer in The Anon, one of the pre-Genesis bands at Charterhouse. He’s the road manager and sound engineer, and a big spliff-head. Maybe he has to be, as he sleeps in the Maltings, sharing a berth with the pigeons and their guano, and guarding the gear. He introduces me to the pleasure of the stoned headphone experience. Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Déjà Vu is not long out, and Richard brings round the LP, builds a giant joint and instructs Mike and me to immerse ourselves in the sonic majestic harmonies of “Carry On.” It’s not quite kicking open the doors of perception, but I am knocking gently.

  I enjoy living at Mike’s parents’ house. There are boiled eggs for breakfast and always a dish cooking on the Aga. For some reason, too, there’s often talk between Mike and Tony about something called “kedgeree.” I haven’t a clue what it is.

  Do I feel like a bit of an oik? For sure, a bit. But I know already that I can bring something to Genesis. Something that’s needed. Not just in the way of musical skills, although I am aware that with my drumming I can make that blancmange as hard as we need.

  Peter, Mike and Tony’s background is a world away from mine. Our schooling, class, family—on paper, we couldn’t be farther apart. For all of early Genesis’ gigging and recording experience, they’ve been somewhat cloistered. I’ve been schooled in the rough and tumble of the life of a gigging performer and musician. I’ve been on the stage in London’s West End, a regular down the front at the Marquee, the drummer for an almost comically diverse array of groups, bands and combos. I have ducked and dived through swinging sixties Soho, and I have the energy, momentum and enthusiasm to prove it. I can apply all of that to the rather more conservative, rather less worldly Genesis.

  I’m also quick with a joke, a mood-lightening attribute that will come in very handy when Peter, Mike and Tony revert to school playground bickering. When they start arguing about who stole whose protractor, I can always step in with some distracting bonhomie. My personality, and my ability to break the ice, is exactly what these buttoned-up public schoolboys need, even if they don’t know it. English reserve will only take you so far. In the same way that my very limited experience as a songwriter means I will end up being the band’s musical arranger in these early days, I can also rearrange the mood.

  All things considered, for me this is the perfect job. Genesis are a busy, gigging, well-regarded band with a record deal. On top of that, I like these guys. They’re interesting. No twelve-bar blues here. We’re different, but we have lots in common. I can make this work. I can definitely squeeze into these trousers.

  Dad on the left, his dad on the right. This is the only photo I have of my grandfather. He was much loved by all. He and Grandma were cousins who met and fell in love. They were both very gentle people. However, when Grandpa insisted Dad reject the “silly idea” of running away to sea, Dad did as instructed. He had great respect for his father’s opinion, though rumor has it he never forgave him for dragging him back.

  Nana and baba Philip Collins. My earliest memories are of both of us doing things together: buying penny buns or standing outside the East Sheen house in the rain because she’d forgotten her key. We’d have to wait for Dad to come home from work to let us in.

  My beautiful mum with her “Diana” smile. There is something about that smile; she seems so happy and radiant.

  Pipe-smoking Dad: This is how I will always remember him. PS: I think the pipe has gone out.

  Dad, little PC and Grandma on the banks of the river at St. Margarets, Twickenham, directly opposite Dick Waite’s Boathouse. I sometimes give my dad a hard time for not leaving me enough memories of us together. He died when I was young, only twenty-one, which didn’t help. It came completely out of the blue, and I guess I was angry about this uncontrollable turn of events. We had a lot of unfinished business.

  Dick Waite’s Boathouse in St. Margaret’s, around 1954. This spot would eventually become Pete Townshend’s Meher Baba Oceanic Studio. I’m the baby in Mum’s arms, with sister Carole on the left just beside us. This is the photo I sent Pete that hung in the studio for years. Uncle Len Tungay stands far right, next to the river where Mum’s ashes were later spread.

  A family Christmas: Dad, Uncle Reg, Uncle Len, me, Mum, Carole and Clive at a Brighton hotel. Although we ha
d many Christmases at Reg’s and Len’s houses, Christmas dinner was sometimes spent at this nice establishment.

  Credit 1

  Me as the Artful Dodger in 1964, at the New Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, in London’s “glittering” West End. I can still remember everyone’s names (left to right): Standing, Michael Harfleet (we’re still in touch), Ralph Ryan, Arthur Wild, me, Jack Wild, Beryl Corsan, Jimmy Thomas and Chris Cooper.

  Credit 2

  Ronnie Caryl and I, mid-sixties, in a photo booth somewhere. I remember the Afghan coat very well—I wore it everywhere, and it got so dirty it could actually walk on its own.

  Credit 3

  This was a publicity photo for Flaming Youth that turned up as I worked on the book. Our managers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley dressed us up as a band, but it was never our intention to be (literally) stitched up like that. Top row: Flash Gordon, Brian Chatton, Ronnie Caryl. Seated: me.

  Credit 4

  At the Gorham Hotel in New York, circa 1973, looking for something to listen to. The only reason I wore those underpants was because they went with the wallpaper. This is my David Niven look (younger readers, look him up). I don’t ever remember just having a mustache, but clearly I did.

  Ronnie (far left) and I at the Reading Festival, in 1972 or ’73, on Genesis duty. My fashion sense only got better, trust me. Even here Ronnie and I look like we’re about to do battle, but I love him and always will.

  Credit 5

  Peter Gabriel and I, waiting for something to happen at the Una Billings School of Dance in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. We were writing Selling England by the Pound. I’m sitting on Peter’s bass drum, which was probably the best thing to do with it.