Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  Deep inside, I know I can do this, but actually singing it—that’s another thing entirely. Sometimes your brain says yes, but your voice screams no.

  But I have a go, even if Mike’s lyrics do have me guessing. Mike and Tony later tell me it’s like one of those cartoon lightbulb moments. They look at each other in the control room and their eyebrows say it all: By George I think he’s got it! Looking back it was a defining moment for me. The studio environment was great, allowing us to hammer away at it until the vocals worked and the music clicked. I still didn’t want to go out front and sing, mind.

  And yet, and yet…We’re still dazed and confused. The guy we thought might, finally, manage the vocals has proved a bust…and now the drummer’s had a pop and it doesn’t sound bad…but over the whole album? Is that wise?

  We try a few takes, finesse it, come back in the next morning, have another listen and all agree: it still sounds good.

  I’m very unsure, but could it be that we might just have found a singer? Albeit in a manner reminiscent of finding a fiver down the back of the couch.

  Casting doubts aside for the time being, we have to plow on. We knock the songs off one after the other. “Robbery, Assault and Battery” is a stand-out and works really well from the off—I add a bit of my Artful Dodger into the vocal delivery. Slowly, I’m showing that I can not only sing these songs but bring in something else. A bit of character, in every sense of the word. I can inhabit them, without resorting to Peter’s visual accessories.

  Some songs are especially demanding. “Mad Man Moon” is one of Tony’s, and his melodies are out of my usual comfort zone, especially if you have to learn them on the fly in the studio. I would get used to this over the next few years. “A Trick of the Tail” is also his, but feels more natural for me. All in all, though, singing the album comes easier than I would have thought.

  Suddenly, we’ve finished. Yet all I’m thinking is that it’s a one-time-only deal. As a stopgap I’ve managed to sing the album, but doing it onstage will be another matter entirely. So, really, we still haven’t got a singer.

  I go home to Andy and Joely in Ealing.

  ANDY: “How’s the album going?”

  ME: “I’ve been singing them all and it sounds great.”

  ANDY: “Well, why don’t you become the singer?”

  ME: “You must be mad! I’m the drummer. I refuse to go out the front and wiggle my bum. I have a safety blanket between me and the audience—my kit—and that’s the way I like it.”

  Once we’ve finished recording we have another rifle through the audition tapes. “Are you sure there was no one in here?”

  No, there wasn’t, and there isn’t.

  Eventually I say, “Fuck, well, I suppose I could be the singer, but…”

  We’re caught between a rock and a soft place. Having explored every other angle, it seems like the drummer is the last-ditch, last-resort-only option. None of us can take this entirely seriously. The “backman” is going to make a good frontman? Surely some mistake?

  I’m just as conflicted, especially because I really enjoy playing the drums. That’s where I live. Yet there’s no denying the truth: I can sing the songs.

  Finally, a compromise: I might consider this if I can get a drummer that I like, because I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder the whole time, checking and quietly critiquing. And I’m not up for double duty—that looks crap. Don Henley did OK for a song or two, Levon Helm did great for a song or two. But neither would have been able to sustain contact with an audience throughout a two-hour set. The lead singer singing from behind the drums is alienating for an audience. There’s a whacking great kit getting in the way of any connection between vocalist and crowd.

  Tentatively, reluctantly, with some caveats and teeth slightly gritted, I’m coming round to this idea. And in the end, I am the agent of my own doom.

  Bill Bruford, late of Yes, is a good friend who’s turned me on to a lot of jazz drummers. He comes down to one of Brand X’s rehearsal sessions—we’re writing Unorthodox Behaviour—and he asks, “How’s things in Genesis? Found a singer yet?”

  “Not really. I’ve done the album, and they want me to try out as the singer. But to do that we need to find a drummer.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask me?”

  “You wouldn’t want to do that. A bit too Yes-y for you, surely?”

  “Yes I would.”

  And suddenly Genesis have a new drummer.

  Now I’ve no excuse.

  We all shuffle about a bit and get used to this new line-up and configuration. There’s no great ceremony about it. It just happens. I don’t even remember the rehearsals, or any announcement.

  Bill fits in well, although he’s the kind of drummer who likes to play something different every night. Although I sympathize with him wanting to keep it fresh, some drum fills are cues, something Tony, Mike and Steve rely on.

  Then, boom, we have lift-off. Another tour, another chapter.

  —

  A Trick of the Tail comes out in February 1976. This new Genesis are definitely feeling like underdogs. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons it’s reviewed favorably: expectations about the future viability of the band have been very, very low. Then people hear the record, they think it’s great, and these underdogs might have the last bark: the album reaches number 3 in the U.K. charts, which, reassuringly, matches the achievement of Selling England by the Pound.

  The following month we decamp to Dallas for live rehearsals. The first date on the Trick of the Tail tour is looming in London, Ontario, Canada, on March 26. I’m not especially nervous about the singing, nor about the sheer fact of doing it in front of an audience. I’d got used to that on Oliver!, way back when. But performing with just a microphone stand instead of a row of cymbals between me and the audience—that’s the thing to overcome. If you’re not predisposed toward bat-wing headgear and flying in the air, what do you do when there’s no singing?

  There are other practical concerns. I’ve already made it very clear that I’m not going to be able to do what Peter did. I will not be sporting Andy’s camisole or a badger pelt. But what will I wear? The workman’s overalls that did the job when I was just the drummer? Or is that too, well, workmanlike? I can wear a flat cap and Edwardian coat for “Robbery, Assault and Battery,” but that’s as theatrical as I’m prepared to go.

  It’s suggested that I have some clothes made. These are ready in time for the opening show, but I’m not going to go onstage for the first time as singer wearing something not me. I have to feel totally at ease. Workman’s overalls it is.

  Then another concern. Peter became very good at regaling audiences with little stories while Mike, Tony and Steve tuned up. He was the “Mysterious Traveller.” But I’m more “Uncle Phil.” So on the car journey from Toronto to London, I’m frantically scribbling ideas for things to say between songs. “This song’s about, ah, er…Fuck, nothing to say about this one…”

  The house lights go down at the London Arena. I curse quietly and gulp loudly. What’s this going to be like? Everybody is terrified. I’ve taken the responsibility seriously, so there’s no quick, confidence-building drink, and certainly no quick spliff. Suddenly the enormity of this moment hits me. Genesis are going onstage with a new singer. Most bands wouldn’t even risk that, far less survive it. A lot of people have assumed we won’t, writing our epitaph already: “Genesis: in the beginning was the word…and in the end was a disaster when they tried to replace a brilliant singer with an accomplished drummer. May they rest in pieces.”

  I spend almost the entire show hiding behind the microphone stand—I’m a twenty-four-year-old, drumstick-thin slip of a thing. And I don’t even touch the microphone. To take it out of its stand would be too…singer-y. But I get through the show with only minor cuts and bruises to my fragile sense of myself as a frontman.

  For the second show, in Ontario’s Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex, I pull out one of the outfits that’s been ma
de: a mustard-orange one-piece jumpsuit. Flared, buttons up the front, slightly too small so my tom-toms are showing—which, trust me, is very intimidating for a whole show. Further, it’s made of a synthetic material that stinks as soon as I sweat.

  It’s awful from the minute I step onstage. I’ll never wear that again. Ever. Promise.

  That wardrobe malfunction aside, those first two shows go fantastically well. We do The Lamb medley—let’s give the audience something they know—but none of the material is daunting. I know it all very, very well. I’ve heard it to death. And it’s incumbent on us to play the fan favorites, no matter how tricky, epic or heavy. We have to telegraph as best we can the key message: For Genesis it’s business as usual.

  Still, my hands stay jammed in my pockets for long periods when I’m singing. It will be some time before I touch the microphone, remove it from its holder and actually walk around with it. Only when that happens do I feel it’s official: I, Phil Collins, am a singer.

  It’s a six-week tour of the U.S., and again it’s the first leg of a world tour. America is still very much our priority. We’re getting blank stares in Germany—it’s not until Duke in 1980 that they like us—but we know that we can, just about, make money in the States.

  Ahead of us are Led Zeppelin; they’ve already climbed the mountain. Our British peers are Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Supertramp et al. But we still haven’t had an international hit single. We’re still only being played on FM radio. We’re a cult band. A large cult band.

  I take heart from the reviews and interviews, and also from the encouragement of Andy on the occasions when she and Joely come to visit me on tour. Everyone is surprised at how good it is. “Wow,” people tell me. “You sound great. It sounds like Peter.” I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment. But at this point, I’ll take anything.

  The great reactions keep coming. From London, Ontario, onward, Genesis and our fans collectively breathe out. We’re hugely reassured to discover that our de facto solution to the problem of Peter leaving has worked better than we might have hoped. Replacing Peter from outside would have been very difficult. Arguably, replacing him from the inside is just as tricky.

  In May we return home and, after a month off, on June 9, 1976, I make my British debut as the singer with Genesis, at the first of six nights at Hammersmith Odeon.

  On the one hand I’m somewhat bedded in as vocalist. On the other, after a long run of U.S. concerts, you get used to their boisterous audience response. The ambient noise the Americans make during the show is surprisingly loud. Returning home to Europe the band is hit by a reverent silence: Fuck, they’re listening. Everyone tightens their belts.

  But Hammersmith is great. By now I’ve decided on my uniform: white dungarees and white jacket. That’s what I feel comfortable in. I’m sliding into the spotlit role quite easily. I become more and more at ease onstage, even if I’m still not removing that microphone from the stand yet. The communication with the audiences is getting better as well. Which is a useful skill to develop as I’m now the person that people want to interview. This is flattering of course. Finally I can tell the world how things really are. It’s only later that I realize doing six interviews on a show day might hinder my singing that night.

  Hitting my stride (a bit), I devise a different way of hitting a tambourine. Somewhere in these heady days of gigging and more gigging, I start bashing my head with it. Not once, not twice, but many times. In rhythm, at the end of “I Know What I Like.” This craziness will develop into a routine known as The Tambourine Dance. It’s a cross between morris dancing and John Cleese’s Ministry of Silly Walks. A bit of music-hall fun that both the audience and I love.

  All told, Genesis have survived from within. More than that: we’re rejuvenated.

  The tour finishes in the summer of 1976, and by September we’re in Relight Studios in Hilvarenbeek, the Netherlands, recording Genesis’ eighth album, Wind & Wuthering, again with the essential Dave Hentschel producing. It’s our first time recording outside the U.K., and we complete all the backing tracks in twelve days. Our momentum feels doubled.

  It’s even apparent to the American record-label publicist charged with writing a press kit. “Despite all this activity, the unstoppable Phil Collins still managed to fit in gigging and recording with his ‘second’ band, Brand X,” bugles the Wind & Wuthering publicity material, “as well as doing other sessions…”

  From being a slightly dubious frontman, I’m now confident without (I hope) being cocky. We are charged with new material and we run with it. Once again the writing credits are shared. Steve and I co-write “Blood on the Rooftops,” and we all chip in with “…In That Quiet Earth.” I push for the Weather Report groove on “Wot Gorilla,” with Tony and me sharing writing credits. But it’s during these sessions that Steve starts to feel the pinch as a writer.

  However, by far the most important thing in my world at this time is the fact that any day now, Andy is due to give birth to our first child together. This would obviously be momentous at the best of times, but for me, having been so far away for such a long time, it has added emotional resonance. With Andy being pregnant since the beginning of 1976, she couldn’t join me on much of the Trick of the Tail tour. While she’s been stuck at home in Ealing, I’ve been out in the world, trying to become a frontman.

  Simon Philip Nando Collins is born on September 14, 1976. Philip after me, Nando after Andy’s dad. In theory Genesis could have delayed the start of the album so I could be home for the birth without any panic or emergency dashes back over the North Sea. But this is Genesis, and the show must go on. In hindsight I could have said, “Fuck Genesis, I’m off to look after my wife.” But we’re all expected to give everything to the band, even if there are, later, recurring attempts to reverse-engineer such situations: “Well, if only you’d told us, we could have moved the start-date.” But while I’ve been emboldened as a performer by becoming the frontman, behind closed doors I’m too timid to speak up. Old pecking orders, domestic or professional, die hard.

  To put it another way: all musicians are created equal, but some are more equal than others. I’m out front, giving it all I’ve got—frankly, I’ve been instrumental in saving the band from disintegrating—yet I still feel like I shouldn’t rock the boat. The Collins insecurity biting back again.

  Luckily, I get the call early enough to make it home in time for Simon’s birth at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Hammersmith, west London. He’s quarantined for a short while due to a skin condition. I visit him and Andy regularly. I’m there for a few days, but I’m soon needed back in Holland to rejoin the troops. My all-too-brief visit only increases Andy’s growing feeling that she’s playing second fiddle to the band. But from my point of view, just at this moment obligation takes precedence over emotion: there is another album to finish, and another personnel issue to face.

  Bill Bruford opted out after the Trick of the Tail tour to form his own band, U.K., so we’re a band in flux again. I call the great American drummer Chester Thompson. I’ve seen him with Weather Report and heard him with Frank Zappa on his live album Roxy and Elsewhere, where he was joined by a second drummer, Ralph Humphrey. They play a fantastic double drum riff in Zappa’s song “More Trouble Every Day”—I want some of that in our band.

  I call Chester, he says yes, never having met us, we do some rehearsals, and that’s it, he’s in. Chester will stay with us until the end of our reunion tour in 2007.

  Wind & Wuthering is released in December 1976, and we start 1977 as we mean to go on: the tour begins on New Year’s Day, and we’ve stepped up our live production. We now have lasers, and 747 landing lights. Genesis are becoming a jumbo-sized touring operation.

  For me as the frontman, all these bells, whistles and lasers are used in the best possible taste. It’s not distracting. In fact, these visuals replace the Peter gear. Enough light and magic—not forgetting a brace of new material—and audiences seem to have already forgotten that the fron
tman in Genesis used to be known for dressing like a centurion or Bill (or Ben) the Flower Pot Man.

  We’re booking big shows now. In London we play the Rainbow—reputedly 80,000 people apply for 8,000 tickets. Three nights at Earls Court. New York’s Madison Square Garden. We go to Brazil for the first time, where we play to 150,000 people and are each assigned an armed bodyguard to prevent us from being kidnapped. This is a whole new experience. We tangle with military police, are nearly flattened by a lorry on a freeway, jam with local musicians in bars, enjoy record company extravagance next to poverty-ridden favelas, and flirt with voodoo. The whole trip is interesting and terrifying. I buy some traditional Brazilian percussion (including the surdo, a large hand-held bass drum that I’ll one day play on Peter’s “Biko”). And, of course, a stuffed piranha.

  The months blur by. We finish the Wind & Wuthering tour at Munich’s Olympiahalle on July 3, 1977, have August off, and in September we start work on our ninth album. Simon is one that month.

  The Genesis fan base is increasing big time, and all the time. We’re playing arenas now, and professionally things couldn’t be much better. However, home life is diminishing due to my continued absence. With two young children to mother, Andy is housebound and her frustration is showing.

  During this time Steve’s frustration has also become apparent. He’s released his solo album, but rather than reduce the pressure, it’s increased it. He wants to have more songs on the Genesis albums. One man’s meat is another man’s poison: the new configuration of Genesis has unexpectedly thrown up new songwriting avenues, and while I’m feeling increasingly confident as a writer, Steve still isn’t getting the creative space he believes he deserves.

  That summer, we’re in London, mixing Seconds Out, a live album recorded during our four-night stand at Paris’s Palais des Sports in June. I’m driving from Queen Anne’s Grove to Trident, and I see Steve in the street in Notting Hill.