Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  “Want a lift to the studio, Steve?”

  “Ah, no, I’ll call you later.”

  I arrive at the studio and relay this odd encounter.

  “Oh, didn’t he tell you? He’s left,” says Mike.

  I think Steve was too embarrassed to tell me. But also, I later learn, he feared that I might have been the one person who could have persuaded him to reconsider.

  So, Steve goes, another one biting the dust. But if we could survive the loss of a singer, we can survive the loss of a guitarist. We roll on, undaunted, with Mike working hard on bass and lead.

  That autumn we’re back recording in Hilvarenbeek, and by the end of the year we’ve finished recording another album,…And Then There Were Three….Genesis have never been more successful. The threesome is working, and me being singer is working. The sense is that we could be about to break through to another level. If only we’re prepared to put in the legwork. Yes, even more legwork than we’ve put in already.

  Those home fires? They’re dying down, and also flaring up. With two young children to mother, Andy has endured a lot—a lot—of being alone. On the rare occasions when I’m home for anything like an extended period, the atmosphere is tense. We can’t speak more than a couple of sentences before we’re arguing. We love each other, to be sure, but sometimes it’s plain we don’t like each other.

  In a relationship it’s vital for each partner to complete the other. This isn’t happening in our marriage. I’m not one for suspicions or, dare I say it, paranoia. Andy, though, picks up on a strange look, or something someone said, and it goes under the magnifying glass for careful, endless, tiring scrutiny. I don’t cope with this very well, and the drawbridge comes up.

  Indeed, neither of us is coping very well. I’m pulled this way, I’m pulled that way. I’ve gone from drummer to rock star, but I’m still a family man at heart, and a dad to my core. I look into Simon’s cot and think, “You have no idea what’s happening.” When I think about it, neither do I. I want my son and daughter to have a father and a normal family life. But the way it’s looking, we’re all going to be disappointed. Genesis’ success is conspiring against us.

  Less than four years have passed since my teenage girlfriend and I reconnected in Vancouver. In that time we have absorbed seismic changes: a transatlantic relocation, the creation of a family, the departure of a frontman, the elevation of a drummer, the transformation of a cult band beloved by students into something of an international rock phenomenon. My becoming the singer in Genesis has supercharged my working life in ways I could never have imagined. But it looks like it’s also accelerating the demise of my personal life.

  But do I regret or resent what the band has become, or what it’s done to me? I can’t say I do. There was no alternative. I had to take over.

  Or: how multiple American tours end my first marriage, kick-start my solo career and wrench out “In the Air Tonight”

  Early 1978 and, as our new album title tells it,…And Then There Were Three….

  Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and I have just finished recording, and Tony Smith calls a band meeting. These are usually convened to discuss our future, and usually involve us gathering at the band’s HQ in London, grumbling a bit and drinking tea.

  Genesis meetings are always a good forum for an argument. Smith will suggest something and I’ll reply, “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t want to fucking do…insert name of tour/promotional obligation/Top of the Pops gig. And, by the way, contrary to your schedule, a month is four weeks, not five, so we can’t fit in all that work.” And then I cave in.

  For once, however, we are all in firm agreement about something (maybe because there are now fewer of us to disagree with): Genesis are not being played enough on American radio. Not enough to break out of the big metropolitan centers—New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles. And we are not breaking out of those cities because we are not, frankly, rock’n’roll. We are studious, sometimes overly so, occasionally indulgent English long-hairs who tend to inspire our audiences to vote with their bums and sit down while they watch us play.

  So if we want to spread into the South, and heartland America, Genesis will have to try by other means. We will have to put our plimsolls firmly on the ground, get on the road and voyage deep into the USA, hitting the so-called secondary and tertiary markets.

  In short: in order to break America, we have to play everywhere in America.

  Of course, no thought is given to the possibility that America might break us. Or, specifically, break one of us, and his marriage.

  Smith and our long-term agent Mike Farrell duly book an intense American tour. Then another. Then another. And then there were three American tours, in quick succession. And two European tours. And a short Japanese tour at the end.

  I say, “OK,” caving in again.

  I go home and report back to Andy. “Darling, great news—Genesis have a fantastic chance to make some serious inroads in America…” To me, the professional logic of touring our arses off for the best part of a year is impeccable. The emotional, personal, matrimonial logic? Let’s say I am perhaps less clear on that front.

  Andy’s response can be paraphrased thus: “Well, if you do that, we’re not going to be together this time next year.”

  Granted, of course, people have feelings. But here’s my feeling: This is what I do for a living. And now that I’m the frontman in Genesis, this is what I do for other people’s livings, too.

  I put it to Andy (somewhat gingerly) that when we got married, she knew that this was my job. That I have to go away, regularly, repeatedly, to earn a crust. I gently suggest that she has signed up for this. But the great thing is (I press on), once Genesis have completed this rather epic bout of touring, we won’t have to do it again. Honestly, being away for the best part of a year isn’t establishing the pattern for our life. It’s about getting Genesis over that hump, breaking into those smaller U.S. markets, so that life gets easier.

  Andy and I have just bought a house, Old Croft in Shalford, near Guildford in Surrey, which is a bit farther out of London than we’d originally intended. Located up winding country roads, it’s almost on a par with Peter’s parents’ house. I’ve gone from end-of-the-line to end-of-the-lane. Still, at this time I am far from wealthy. A Trick of the Tail, two years previously, was the album when Genesis started to credit the writers individually, so there are individual royalties coming in. But even now, with…And Then There Were Three…, I’m still not a big earner on the songwriting side. Now here we are with a big mortgage, and a young and expanding family—Simon is one and a half and Joely is five.

  Another reason for me doing all this touring is less tangible, and something my upbringing has ingrained in me. Despite dodging the loathsome prospect of working in the City, I’m still my father’s son. I’m the breadwinner, the provider, and I need to go out and work for my family. Not to buy a guitar-shaped swimming pool or a champagne-colored Rolls-Royce. Just because, quite simply, it’s my responsibility.

  So I go away on tour, and Andy gets on with the job of building a home. Her first order of business: Old Croft needs fixing up. A lick of paint, and the rest.

  Handily, one of Andy’s relatives, Robin Martin—nice guy, I get on great with him—is a decorator. But he can’t do the whole job, so he gets in some cheap labor. One of them is this pipe-smoking, slipper-wearing, ex-public-school chap. Your typical painter and decorator, right? He’s out on a limb, out of work, so Robin employs him to work on our newly purchased marital home.

  And that’s how the affair starts.

  And I find out.

  And unfortunately I remember finding out—in the course of a particularly heated phone conversation—during one of the tours. But unless I want to abandon the tour and shoulder all the financial aftershocks, I have to carry on and hang on for dear life.

  I come home knowing I have to face this disastrous turn of events, but with the knowledge that I have to go back out on another
tour pretty much immediately. And touring in the seventies isn’t like touring now. There’s no email, Skype, FaceTime or mobile phones. We’re not that far from the days of the telegram.

  Consequently, when I arrive home, we have, to put it mildly, a lot to discuss. But when we try to communicate, we get nowhere. I know this isn’t how Andy sees it, but this is honestly how I remember it.

  One afternoon Andy calls me at the house while I’m there with the kids, and says, “I’m not coming home tonight. I’m staying out.” And I know who with.

  I go ballistic. I punch a wall, making a fist-sized hole. If it wasn’t the wall it would have been something else. I’ve reached that point. The next morning she turns up and I’m livid. I’m also very, very sad. Because I now know that it’s over. She’s quite matter-of-fact about this, in the “Andy” way I’ve got used to. I can’t stop thinking of what probably happened the night before. She seems to be unaffected by what she’s done, and all the obvious ramifications. The fact that I’m unhinged by her actions doesn’t seem to bother her. She seems to be saying, “I told you this would happen. It’s your fault.”

  There’s all this loose change in a little tray by the phone, and lest I lash out at another wall, I launch it across the hallway. I don’t intend to get physically violent, and this is as close as I come.

  This can’t help but affect the kids. Later, I hear Joely and Simon playing mums and dads in the dining room. Simon arrives in his pedal car. Joely says, “What are you doing back? You’re not supposed to be here!” Out of the mouths of babes.

  Nonetheless, believe it or not, I’m still desperately keen to make all this—our marriage, our family, our new home, the band—work. Spinning one plate in the air while watching another wobble toward the floor.

  I’m pleading with Andy: “Just wait until I finally get back. There’s only two more weeks to go on the tour. Just wait, and we can discuss this when I come back.”

  Andy says, “OK, I’ll wait.”

  By the time we’re in Japan on that final leg, it’s not just the plates that are spinning. As Mike Rutherford will later write in his book, The Living Years, I’m legless in Japan, having discovered sake, though I’m never unable to perform. I also discover the head-melting nature of being so far ahead of GMT. For the average European, Japan forty years ago is like being in a completely alien world, not knowing or understanding anything; blind to language, customs, rules; grappling with a time difference that makes it nigh impossible to get hold of anyone at home. It’s utterly disorientating. So I cling to sake in a nightmare haze.

  Finally back in the U.K. at the end of 1978, my abiding memory is of a restaurant in the village of Bramley in Surrey, not far from Old Croft. It’s strange what you remember in a time of crisis. I remember I ordered risotto. I remember not being able to eat it. I also remember being told by Andy that it’s all over between us. Not only that, she’s taking our kids and moving back to Canada.

  I’m dreaming of a gray Christmas: that not-so-festive season, Andy leaves for Vancouver. But I’m not giving up on my marriage without one last fight. I ask some of the Genesis road crew to pack up the Old Croft furniture because, in early 1979, I decide I’m going to follow her there. I will live in Vancouver, buy a house and woo back my wife.

  Before leaving for Canada I have a meeting with Tony, Mike and Smith in The Crown pub in Chiddingfold, Surrey. I say, “If we can carry on the band while I’m in Vancouver, we’ve still got a band. But as that’s almost 5,000 miles, eight time zones and a ten-hour flight away, I doubt we can do that. So I guess that means I have to leave Genesis.”

  But Tony, Mike and Smith ask me to hold my horses. If I need some compassionate leave, I can take it.

  So I set off for the Canadian west coast. And none of it—the expat-living, the house-buying, the wife-wooing—makes any difference. After four months, nothing changes. My marriage is over.

  —

  By April 1979 I’m back in Shalford, tail between my legs, boxes still packed in this house in which I’ve barely lived. The paint is still practically wet on the walls. The paint applied by the guy who’s been sleeping with my wife. We’ve gone for wooden floorboards and brick interior—très late-seventies chic—so it looks even more desolate. Everything, myself included, is stripped back to the core.

  I’m rattling about in this house, just me and the cardboard boxes. I would have jumped straight back into Genesis, but Mike and Tony have taken advantage of my emotional sabbatical to begin making the solo albums after which they’ve long hankered. In the course of 1979 both spend time in Stockholm, recording at ABBA’s Polar Studios. They hadn’t considered that my love-dash to Vancouver would be so abortively short. Nor had I.

  Lest I go completely off the rails, I start channeling my energies into whatever musical distraction I can find. Someone recommends me to English singer-songwriter John Martyn, he of the seminal 1973 folk jazz album Solid Air. John asks me to drum on the album that will become Grace & Danger. As we become close, he discovers I can sing a bit, and I add background vocals on the beautiful “Sweet Little Mystery.”

  I fall in love with John and his music during these sessions. He and I seem to musically hit it off—so much so that two years later I produce his next album, Glorious Fool. But before that, Grace & Danger ends up being arguably one of his best works. Unfortunately, Chris Blackwell, boss of Island Records, isn’t so sure about it. Like me, John is working his way through a divorce, which is probably one of the reasons we form such a strong bond. But Blackwell feels the songs are a bit too close to the bone. John and his wife Beverley made records together for Island, and Blackwell is very tight with them both. As a result he’s loath to release such an emotionally raw bunch of songs.

  But Grace & Danger is finally released, albeit a year later. With plenty of time on my hands, I go on the road with John and the same guys that made the record. For me, at this time, it’s a wonderful release. It’s rejuvenating, not least because it’s a million miles from the juggernaut that is Genesis. We have great fun, perhaps sometimes too much fun. John likes to drink, as is now well-trodden musical history. He’s also partial to other substances, which can make him extremely, but lovably, unpredictable. If you are simply around him in those circumstances, you can just walk away. But for those of us working close to him, it seems like he’s hell-bent on self-destruction. And you can’t help but be somewhat dragged in.

  In this period John comes to stay and play at my house many times, and we take it in turns to call our soon-to-be-ex-partners. It always ends in shouting and the phone going down.

  So we open another bottle.

  So it goes on.

  I also reconnect with Peter Gabriel. He has a very expensive American band on retainer. I say, “If you ever need a drummer…” I end up going down to Ashcombe House, Peter’s home in Somerset, and me and some other musicians live with him for a month or so. We help him spitball the ideas that are going to become his third album, and we do some gigs: Aylesbury, Shepton Mallet, Reading Festival. During these shows I leave the drums and join him down front for “Biko,” “Mother of Violence” and “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”

  Considering all the historic interest in supposed tension between Gabriel-era Genesis and Collins-era Genesis, it’s not often noticed that I play with Peter a lot at this time. If I may be so bold, I’m the best drummer he knows. He can rely on me. With Peter being a drummer himself, he’s pretty picky.

  But our connection is deeper than the merely musical. Contrary to what people might like to think, there was never any bad blood between us. We were great friends. But as they say in the muckier newspapers, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. After leaving Genesis he may occasionally have voiced his feelings—“Finally, I’m free of the bastards!” (I’m paraphrasing)—but he didn’t have anything against any of us personally. Within Genesis he and I bonded closely. I was someone he could always rely on to be his stooge for comedy routines during his stories. Unlike he
and Tony Banks, we had no baggage. Perhaps Peter was pleased that it was me that took over vocal duties in the school band, rather than some new-boy incomer. Not that he ever voiced an opinion before, or after, his leaving. He always just seemed to accept my assuming the frontman role. Sure, compared to the Charterhouse chaps, I was a grammar-school oik. But I was his grammar-school oik.

  Later in 1979 we continue the reunion at London’s Townhouse Studios, where I play drums on four tracks on his third solo album, which is being produced by Steve Lilywhite and engineered by Hugh Padgham. Notably I play on “Intruder,” the song on which we develop the so-called “gated” drum sound. More of which anon.

  Meanwhile, back home, for moral support two of the Brand X guys, Peter Robinson and Robin Lumley, move into Old Croft. Not, in retrospect, a particularly wise decision. They’re far more party animals than I am.

  Robin brings his American girlfriend Vanessa, and she and I start to have a thing together. (Robin is quite happy about it. He’s a bit bored with her. And we are très late-seventies chic, remember.) Peter lives down one end of the house, and Robin down the other in what would have been one of the kids’ rooms. I move into what would have been the master bedroom. Alone. The marital suite never felt less sweet.

  Before our first short American tour, Brand X record an album, Product, at Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire. This is the John Lennon pad of “Imagine” video fame, which he then “gave” to Ringo Starr. Although still Ringo’s, it now runs as a studio, and when Brand X are in residence, it runs as a studio twenty-four hours a day. There is daytime Brand X, and there is night-time Brand X. I’m on the day shift.

  I also start living at the Queen Victoria pub in Shalford, every lunchtime and many an evening. The landlord and landlady, Nick and Leslie Maskrey, become great friends and confidants who nurse me through the difficult times. I will end up spending many a session there, some of those in the company of Eric Clapton. He’s a country neighbor in Surrey, but I first met him earlier that year, when I was in the studio in London with John Martyn.