Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  August also brings my and Jill’s first wedding anniversary, so there’s added reason to bunker down near heart and hearth. As I’ve been bouncing from project to project, country to country and collaboration to collaboration these past four years, she’s generally been traveling with me. Coming on the road was pretty exciting for her, though not as overwhelming as it might have been, given that she has a slightly showbiz background: her dad was a Hollywood outfitter, making suits for the rich and famous, and her mother was an actress and dancer. When I was recording a snippet of “Over the Rainbow” as a little coda to Face Value and had a sudden blank on the lyrics, Jill was able to phone her mother, who knew the lyricist, Yip Harburg. He dictated them to her over the phone. Straight from the mouth of Dorothy, as it were.

  The thrill goes both ways. I love having Jill with me on my travels, a wingwoman by my side. The first half of the eighties has been a very busy time, but it could have been a very lonely time, too. Jill gives me strength and support and encouragement.

  This has meant that for much of the first year of our marriage we’ve been together. Yet it has also meant that, courtesy of all the professional distractions, we’ve been apart while we’ve been together. All things considered, then, summer ’85 is a time for the four of us to be as blissfully domestic as we can.

  Us having children is, by mutual agreement, not on the table right now, and won’t be for a few years. Firstly, we have Joely and Simon to consider. They’re still young—with her being born on August 8, in the school holidays, I generally get to celebrate Joely’s birthday with her; conversely, I usually just miss Simon’s birthday, which falls on September 14—and we don’t want to complicate things further before they’re ready to deal with yet more change.

  I have huge admiration for Jill: it’s been very difficult for her inheriting a family. It’s difficult for the kids, too, taking Jill as a stepmother. In fact, technically Joely now has a stepmother and a stepfather, but not since day one have I ever thought of myself that way, and neither has she. I’m her dad, she’s my daughter, that’s it.

  But this fragmented, internationally scattered family—something we’ll joke about years later, when it’s even more fragmented and scattered—is more than just a traditional “mum and dad got separated” set-up. It’s tricky, and I try to keep things peaceful, functional and above all loving.

  Anyway, the summers are time off and a break for me—but they’re not particularly a break for Jill. Suddenly she becomes a mum. She’s very good with it, but it’s not without its trials all round as the kids try to reconnect with an unavoidably absent father and connect with a new mother figure. When they’re older, Simon and Joely tell me that they found it harder than they made it look at the time, even during the brief spell when they were living back in the U.K. with Andy. In fact, Simon reveals to me that he regularly ran away from primary school in Ealing because he hated school so much. Or maybe he hated his life so much. Either way, I can’t help but carry the guilt.

  No one tells me this at the time. But I do, I belatedly realize, have photographic evidence. In a school photo, Simon is positioned at the end of the line; in fact he’s sitting a good meter away from the rest of his schoolmates. It couldn’t be more symbolic if he was clutching a vinyl copy of Face Value under his arm. I still wince at that photograph of my little boy.

  So, working hard to make up the dad hours that I have so painfully lost through trial and circumstance, I spend a lot of time with the kids. I sometimes think this might cause a problem for Jill. We’re together but apart once more. But I can’t stop thinking about the inevitable: Joely and Simon leaving to go home to Vancouver. So I cherish every minute they’re with me in England.

  Jill and I have our time, after Joely and Simon have gone to bed. We’ll watch a movie or talk, but as they grow older the bedtimes get later, and the time we have alone together shrinks—like most couples with kids.

  When the school holidays are over, I reluctantly drive Joely and Simon to Heathrow and wave them off on the long-haul trip back to their mother, unaccompanied minors on a ten-hour flight to Vancouver. I wouldn’t dream of doing that with Nicholas and Mathew now—I’d get on the plane with them. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I apologize to Jo and Simon here and now for my selfishness. It didn’t feel like that at the time, I promise, especially as I was doing battle on another front.

  I’ve become used to bargaining with Andy, bartering about when I can have the kids. Divorce can be cruel to children, pawns in an adult game. They hear one side of a conversation, the shouting, the phone slamming down, then have to listen to Mum or Dad berate the other. It’s bad enough their parents not living together anymore; they certainly don’t want to hear them arguing now that they’re apart. But wisdom comes with age, and I now feel I have a master’s degree in divorce and people management. I will come to view my adult life as forty years of negotiation.

  —

  The summer holidays done, I’m ready to go back to work. Not that I resent this in any way. Unlike my dad, who was frustrated and I think ultimately damaged by the job he was forced to do, what I do for a living is what keeps me living. I love my job.

  With the kids safely back in Canada, Genesis come together at The Farm that October to start work on the record that will become Invisible Touch. Now that I’m ensconced at Lakers Lodge, Mike, Tony and I all reside near each other, and we can all drive to the studio within ten minutes.

  If ever I was going to quit Genesis in favor of my solo career, in theory this would be the time, with the tailwind of No Jacket Required still blowing hard. But at the same time, I’ve missed the guys. Tony and Mike have become more lovable as time goes on, which is the reverse of the traditional rock-band narrative. Tony, formerly rather diffident and difficult to talk to, has become a great friend, funny and witty. He’s a different person, especially with a glass of wine in him. Mike, too, has loosened up.

  So I’ve missed them, and I’ve missed our magical way of working in the studio. We have nothing planned, so we go in and improvise. We play. It’s not like John brings in a song and Paul brings in a song. I don’t know any other band that works like we do, sitting round, improvising together, until something forms. Every other band seems to be more organized—more boring—than that.

  I think, “I can’t do this anywhere else.” We have something special here.

  Genesis is also a safe haven. I’m back in the group, surrounded by friends (it’s the same road crew I have on my solo tours). We work together, we relax together, we eat together. You come into the studio in the morning and the roadies have some breakfast waiting. When you’re making an album, there’s a lot of time where you’re not doing anything, especially once you start recording, so a couple of hours later you might wander over and see if there are any cold beans and sausages left. Then there’s curry in the evening. You put on weight making an album. Love handles aside, the only problem is having to clock off each day.

  We start with a blank sheet of paper, and the lovely big control room that’s been built in The Farm since we last recorded here. We also have a live room for my drums, but we start to use drum machines more than on any previous album. This frees me up, both in the writing of the songs and the singing of them.

  The track “Invisible Touch” is one example. Mike has this insistent guitar riff, I start singing, and instantly I have this phrase: “She seems to have an invisible touch…” This touch “takes control and slowly tears you apart…” This is someone dangerous and destabilizing. This is Andy, and it’s Lavinia. Someone who will come in and fuck up your life, man, which is the line I will end up singing onstage, much to the audience’s general whooped appreciation and my kids’ embarrassment.

  But “Invisible Touch” isn’t bitter or angry—it’s an acceptance. Sometimes when Simon’s had relationships that haven’t gone well, I’ll say to him, “She seems to have an invisible touch…” and he’ll laugh. He appears to have relationships similar to the ones I have.
Even with my son Nic and girls he’s meeting at school, I tell him there are certain people you shouldn’t go out with. But you find yourself attracted to them.

  Yet while there’s a haunted, fever-dream quality to the lyric, there’s a bounce to “Invisible Touch,” its sound influenced by “The Glamorous Life,” a big American dance hit from 1984 by Prince’s sometime percussionist and co-singer Sheila E. It’s one of my favorite Genesis songs, and when it’s released as the first single from the album in May 1986 it becomes our first—and only—U.S. number 1 single. In fact it’s the first of five American Top 5 singles from Invisible Touch, which to this day is Genesis’ bestselling album, released one year after No Jacket Required, my bestselling album.

  Oddly, the worlds of Genesis collide in other ways in this period. Having dominated the American sales and airplay charts that summer, we’re knocked off pole position in the singles chart by Peter’s “Sledgehammer,” which is taken from his brilliant fifth album, So. He’s a long way from a fox’s head, but he does now have a stop-motion animated head in the classic video for the song.

  Hands up: I do envy Pete. There are some songs he’s written that I wish I’d written—for one thing “Don’t Give Up,” his gorgeous duet with Kate Bush. But even here at the height of my success it seems that, for every achievement or great opportunity that comes my way, I’m starting to accrue bad press as a matter of course. Pete seems to get good press seemingly equally automatically. It seems a bit unfair, which I appreciate is a pathetic word to use in this context. A few years later, in 1996, when I release Dance into the Light, Entertainment Weekly will write: “Even Phil Collins must know that we all grew weary of Phil Collins.”

  Between the completion of the recording of Invisible Touch and the start of the ensuing tour, I hook up again with Eric. It seems like we’ve both been forgiven for Behind the Sun, because I’m allowed to drum on, and co-produce with Tom Dowd, his new album. It’s to be called August, as that’s when his son Conor was born. We record in Los Angeles under the watchful eye of Lenny Waronker, to make sure there’s lots of guitar. August becomes Eric’s bestselling album to date, a happy outcome we might attribute to better song choices, Waronker being right, my being a much better producer, or a magical combination of all three. We carry that momentum into a run of live shows in Europe and America on which I become part of Eric’s touring line-up. It’s fantastic fun playing with Eric, Greg Phillinganes and Nathan East—we’re in such raptures we call it The Heaven Band—and a lovely, relaxing prelude to what is about to happen.

  The Invisible Touch tour starts in September 1986, with three nights in Detroit at the 21,000-capacity Joe Louis Arena. It won’t be over for ten months and 112 shows.

  This is the tour on which we start to have underwear thrown at us onstage. Prior to this we’d get the odd shoe—were people limping home?—but now it’s underwear. Why? Five American Top 5 singles have brought us a younger, more liberated audience? The passion in the lyrics of “Invisible Touch” is getting to people? Tom Jones isn’t touring this year?

  Round the world we go, three nights here, four nights there, five nights at Madison Square Garden. Days off on tour? Not really interested. I’ll hang around the hotel, maybe go to the cinema, and not much else. It’s not because I might get bothered by fans in the street; it’s because I’m just counting down the hours till that night’s gig. That’s what I’m here for. Alternatively, I sit in my room and listen to the tapes of the previous night’s show, checking out the sound mix, alert to any sloppiness or mistakes from any of us onstage. Eventually I will realize that each show is its own time and place.

  Sometimes, at the suggestion of the best throat doctors rock’n’roll money can buy, I’ll take myself off to the nearest steam room. Now that I’m playing so many shows, solo and with Genesis, and increasingly in large venues, I live in fear of losing my voice, and the steam helps.

  Probably, then, I’m not much fun to be around on tour, so I always encourage Jill to go out—do some shopping, see the town, get a feel for this latest pit stop on our ongoing global wanderings. This also helps me to have some time alone and recharge my batteries. I’m obliged to give so much of myself onstage, I need all the “me” time I can get.

  I know how it looks. There I am, sitting alone in my room, in silence, listening to last night’s show, or trying to find something to watch on American TV. I sound like Greta Garbo.

  In Australia our routing overlaps with that of Elton John, and I spend an instructive evening in his dressing room in Melbourne. He’s playing with the Melbourne Symphony, and it’ll be broadcast all over Australia. Elton throws a moody because he thinks he’s lost his voice. It looks like he’s about to pull the gig, no matter how this might impact on the dozens of orchestral players and the tens of thousands of fans. He calls for his limo, is driven round the car park in a low-speed huff, but in the end comes back and takes the stage.

  Post-show, back in his dressing room, I tell him I only noticed a slight vocal wobble in one place, during “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” He’s pleased to hear that, but I sense a tantrum remains but a tickly tonsil away.

  For me, it’s an illuminating interlude. Most times the audience just don’t notice these subtleties—I’d barely noticed and I knew he was hoarse. You need to think twice before letting a sore throat mushroom into a diva-shaped cancellation. There are few excuses that will cut it with 20,000 fans, short of actually dying in the steam room pre-gig.

  The Invisible Touch tour finally ends back home in July 1987. But only six of the 112 shows are in the U.K., so we’d better knock it out of the park. Dauntingly, those parks are the national football stadiums of Scotland and England: Hampden in Glasgow and Wembley in London.

  For a football fan, these are special moments. At Hampden they let us use the trophy room as our dressing room, and I’m thinking, “This is where England and Scotland played…I wonder if Jimmy Greaves sat here…”

  Wembley is tremendously atmospheric, and the four nights we play there are easily the triumph of the tour. When you’re onstage in front of 86,000 people—at the legendary home of English football—and you lead them in lovely, daft crowd antics (“woo-ooo” when the lights come down during my introduction to “Domino,” for example), it’s a thrilling, intoxicating sight. I feel very powerful that night. Top of the world, Ma. And my ma was there, as she was at every Genesis show in London, even when, her sight failing and her legs going, she had to be pushed there in a wheelchair.

  After most shows I’m down to earth with a thump. But there is something strange at Wembley that I never feel anywhere else. This place was so important in my early years that to actually walk around the stadium, to walk the turf, is just a wondrous feeling.

  So how do I alchemize my four-nights-at-Wembley golden-god status? Not with champagne, cocaine, supermodels and speedboats. During the Invisible Touch tour I’ve been visiting local model-railway shops the world over, shipping fun-sized rolling stock back to the U.K. There I intend to fill the basement of Lakers Lodge with a Lilliputian layout that will have Rod “the Mod” Stewart sobbing with HO-gauge envy.

  I also take the opportunity to revisit something I swore I’d never touch again: acting. I’ve just done ten months on some of the world’s biggest stages—of course I can be a leading man. And surely this time no one’s going to edit me out of the action?

  —

  I was twelve years old in 1963 when the Great Train Robbery happened. I remember skimming the headlines in Mum and Dad’s newspaper the day after the heist. I knew it was important. Most of Britain seemed to quite like the audacity of the fifteen-strong gang of thieves stopping the overnight Glasgow to London mail train in such a simple manner—by tampering with the signal lights—then relieving it of its cargo of banknotes, the princely sum of £2.6 million. That’s about £50 million in modern terms. Very, very princely.

  After their capture, the members of the gang landed outrageously long prison sentences. The swinging s
ixties were just starting and the country’s mood was changing, so the popular feeling was that they were made an example of by the British Establishment. One of the incarcerated thieves, Ronnie Biggs, disparagingly known inside the gang as “the tea boy,” escaped from London’s Wandsworth prison and fled to Paris, then Australia, before settling in Rio de Janeiro, where he made quite a name for himself as the celebrity train robber. In 2001, almost forty years after the robbery, he finally returned to the U.K. and to justice.

  Two of the main members of the gang managed to skip the country even before Biggs, fleeing to Mexico, where they too became folk heroes to some people back home. One of them was the gang’s leader, Bruce Reynolds. The other was first mate Buster Edwards.

  So it was that one day in 1987 I received an offer from a film company. They were making a movie based on the life of Buster, who, after returning from Mexico skint and homesick with his family, had spent nine years in jail before going straight and running a flower stall outside Waterloo railway station in London.

  As the film-makers saw it, Buster’s story was a romance. Throughout his life of petty crime and the accompanying jail time, he and his wife June were inseparable. They wanted to tell the couple’s story, with the Great Train Robbery simply as background.

  Would I consider taking the role?

  Of course I’d consider it. I might have been well rid of acting at the twilight of my teens and the tail end of the sixties—I’d had more than a few bad experiences on-screen (and on the cutting-room floor), plus I was more interested in making it as a musician—but that’s a long time ago now. A new creative challenge is appealing.

  Why me? It seems that the director, David Green, was watching TV one night when my episode of Miami Vice came on. Within a few minutes his wife said to him, “There’s your Buster.”