Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  But all to no avail: I can’t produce the usual power.

  After the tour, I stick to Collins family tradition: I do nothing about this health problem. It’s bound to just go away.

  It doesn’t. It gets worse.

  Back in Switzerland I go to my local clinic for an MRI. It takes the radiologist no time at all to see that the vertebrae at the top of my spine are in terrible condition. More than fifty years of drumming has worn away the calcium and crumbled the bone. If the diagnosis was alarming, the prognosis is horrifying: if I don’t have an operation forthwith, paralysis and a wheelchair are on the cards.

  In the Clinique de Genolier, I go under the knife. The surgeons slice open my neck below my left ear, root around for the crumbling vertebrae and screw them together with man-made calcium.

  I recuperate, for a year. But after a year the fingers on my left hand are still numb. Forget holding a drumstick—I can’t hold a bread knife. As a left-hander, I quickly come to appreciate how much I rely on my good hand. I go back to my local doctor, based at the Clinique, Dr. Sylviane L’Oizeau, a lovely lady who will go on to help me enormously, in various, life-affirming—not to mention lifesaving—ways. She sends me to Lausanne, to another specialist. Lo and behold, a new diagnosis. The problem is not in my neck, it’s to do with the inside of my left elbow, where there’s a misplaced nerve. It’s been squeezed out of position, so in early 2008 I undergo two operations as the surgeon tries to re-lay the nerve. This time the inside of my arm is sliced open, followed by my left palm.

  More recuperation. This is the longest I’ve ever not played drums since I was twelve. I know you have to get back on the horse, but I’m not sure the horse is happy at the prospect.

  The years 2008 and 2009 are the best of times and the worst of times. I’ve bought a new home in Féchy, a village fifteen minutes from our old family home in Begnins. It’s a comfortable, modest place and, as I’m on my own, all I need. With nightly work commitments, Dana is stuck in New York most of the time. She visits whenever she can, but unfortunately these trips are few and far between.

  I see a lot of Nic and Matt, and relations with Orianne are cordial. Even if my days as a husband are over, my days as a hands-on dad have, really for the first time in my life, just begun.

  On the downside, the recuperation from the neck, arm and hand surgeries is taking considerably longer than I, or any of the medical specialists, expected. If I had any lingering doubts about the wisdom of shutting up shop professionally, my body is making its feelings clear. It’s waving the white flag.

  I put my feet up.

  Now another flag goes up, a red one. Tony Smith wants to know how I am. He’s my manager, but he’s also my friend. He wants to make sure I’m not slowing down to a complete and terminal halt in Switzerland. As soon as I said I was relocating there, I think it put him on high alert. Even though he knew I was really happy with Orianne, he feared Europe’s most neutral country was going to kill my creativity stone-dead. He wasn’t completely wrong and, to compound matters, now I’m on my own. But I’m not about to move. The boys are here, so I’m here.

  “What are you doing?” Tony will say on the phone.

  “I’m doing nothing. I’m flopped on the sofa, watching cricket.”

  I feel I deserve this, not least because my body is obviously demanding a rest. I will take this lying down.

  So Tony plays his joker. “Why don’t you do a covers album?”

  As my very clever manager knows, this is something I’ve always wanted to do. The music of my youth, the stuff that set me on this path fifty years previously, still thrills and courses through me. So I suggest something along these lines: my interpretations of, and tribute to, the sixties standards that turned me on to soul and R&B, and that I loved when The Action peppered their set with their energetic, Mod-leaning versions. If this is to be my swan song as a recording artist—and I very much feel it will be—what better than to finish back where it all started? At the end of my music career, I’m digging back into my musical beginnings. I’ll call this album Going Back, to underline the idea but also in tribute to the great Carole King and Gerry Goffin song “Goin’ Back,” which is one of the classics on my hit list.

  Yes, it’s nostalgia, a chance to do what I was trying to do with my school band, but—finally—do it properly. And it’s nostalgia that makes me feel very much alive.

  I’m quickly ears-deep in the project. I listen intently to hundreds of Motown tunes, and compile a longlist of songs to record: Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” Martha Reeves & The Vandellas’ “Jimmy Mack” and “Heatwave,” The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” I’m determined to do justice to this cornerstone canon of American music by reproducing as best I can all the sounds—and doing so in my home studio.

  It takes no time for me to realize that that’s a skyscrapingly tall order. Even if my drumming and physical capabilities were fully up to speed—and they’re patently not—I need some proper players to help me honor those brilliant original recordings. Amazingly, thrillingly, Bob Babbitt, Eddie Willis and Ray Monette—three of The Funk Brothers, players on so many of the Motown 45s I’d collected in my teens—agree to join me.

  The recording sessions are a total joy. I work with an amazing engineer, Yvan Bing, and we have fun replicating those tracks. It’s a reminder of a simpler, purer time. It’s the authentic sound I’m seeking. I’m looking for the particular fill on “Dancing in the Street,” that specific groove in “Standing in the Shadows of Love.” There were three great Motown drummers, and I want to emulate all of them. Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones and Richard “Pistol” Allen were jazz drummers, and if you’re a drummer you can hear that each of them has a different thing. I want to be able to honor them all. I realize I just skimmed the surface with “You Can’t Hurry Love.” I want people to know that this is how Phil Collins does Motown. Because he knows it and loves it.

  Of course the irony is that, when it comes to performing that drumming, I can’t even hold a stick in my left hand. That’s how weak I am. So I strap a stick to my hand with tape. Obviously that’s not ideal. Fortunately, apart from each individual guy’s trademark fills, the parts are pretty basic, which is an element of their ageless charm.

  Working methodically through 2009, we eventually recorded twenty-nine songs. With the album more or less completed by early 2010, in March I’m back with Genesis. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

  The band are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. Mike, Tony, Steve and I all fly in, but there’s no Peter; he’s busy with tour rehearsals in the U.K. We’re not protesting too much when I say none of us are overly bothered by his absence. We’ve long become used to the fact that his schedule is what it is.

  Also, he’s done me a bit of a favor. With Peter unavoidably detained elsewhere, that stops dead any suggestion that the “re-formed” Genesis might perform at the ceremony. As my recuperation is limping slowly on, me drumming in public with a stick taped to my hand is surely not a good look.

  Three months later I’m back in New York to collect another gong: the annual Johnny Mercer Award at the 2010 Songwriters Hall of Fame gala. I’m thrilled to bits, especially as songwriting is a craft I learnt relatively late in life. I’m also surprised: I’m not joking when I tell the BBC on the red carpet that when I got the call requesting my attendance, I thought they wanted me to present the award, not receive it. I’m still not sure I’m worthy, and there aren’t many clubs I’d want to join that would have me as a member, but I’ll gladly join this songwriters’ guild.

  Those two validations come just in the nick of time, because a couple of days after the Songwriters Hall of Fame event, I’m in Philadelphia to begin a series of shows in support of the upcoming Going Back. It’s a short run, only seven gigs (Philadelphia, New York, London, the Montreux Jazz Festival), but it’s still too long. These shows should be wonderful, but my head isn’t where it should be. To make
matters worse, once I’m onstage, I inexplicably have trouble remembering all the words to these songs that I grew up with.

  I try not to let that experience cloud my enjoyment of the album. Going Back is a personal, intimate and honest portrait of the fifty-nine-year-old artist as a young man. The cover art says as much: it’s a photograph of me, aged twelve or thirteen, dressed in nice shirt and tie, sitting in our front room at 453 Hanworth Road behind my Stratford drum kit.

  Two months after the shows, in September 2010, Going Back is released. My eighth solo album goes to number 1 in the U.K., making it my first chart-topping album of new material since Both Sides seventeen years previously. Collins is back! Not that he really wants to be “back.”

  Going Back, the tribute album I always wanted to make, is a full stop. My contract with Atlantic in America is up. I don’t feel much kinship with the label anyway. With Ahmet gone, the place feels very different. Any personal connections between Atlantic and my solo career or Genesis have been whittled away by a succession of hired-then-fired executives. This, I realize, is the modern state of the record business. It’s not a world that I relate to anymore.

  Unfortunately, the other world that I thought I might be a part of isn’t showing me huge love. The Tarzan musical hasn’t led to a flurry of new commissions from the theatrical world.

  All things considered, by the tail end of 2010, I’m starting to think that finally, this dog has had his day. My life onstage has petered out with the underwhelming Going Back shows. But I can live with that. Just about.

  I decide to give performing one last shot. My left arm and hand still aren’t fully match-fit, but I tentatively step back into the ring. I’m asked to play with Eric at a Prince’s Trust gala concert in London that’s booked for November 17, 2010. I’m not sure I’m ready. But my association with Eric goes back a long way, and with The Prince’s Trust even farther. I can’t say no.

  But as soon as I sit down at the kit to play, I know it’s a mistake. We’re only doing one song together, “Crossroads,” but it’s one song too many. I have no feel. I think, “I’ll never drum again.”

  So that’s it. I’ve left my band. Drumming’s left me. My glittering Broadway future isn’t looking quite so glittering. Third time unlucky, my marriage is over. My girlfriend is stuck in New York. My life is empty.

  What will I fill it with?

  I know. I’ll have a drink.

  Or: how I nearly drink myself to death

  I have a hole, a void: where there used to be work there is now time. A lot of time. Stopping work so I can be with the boys will ultimately prove completely useless and destructive. It won’t just upend my life. It will nearly end my life.

  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  The beginning of 2006 finds me alone at the Peninsula New York Hotel, working on Tarzan the musical. I’ll be there, alone, for close to six months. Orianne and the boys are back in Switzerland. I go home, but I don’t go home enough.

  If I don’t talk to the boys every day, I get edgy. I’m worrying, “Oh my God, what must they be thinking?” Of course it’s difficult to get two words out of them when we do speak.

  “How’s school?”

  “Fine.”

  The older ones also need me to talk to them. “I know I’m nearly an adult, Dad,” Lily once said to me, “but I still need you to tell me you love me.”

  Why don’t I go home? It’s a good question. I think I’m so fucking obligated to the work in hand that I don’t see the wood for the trees. Not for nothing are there endless phone arguments with Orianne.

  When I do next go home to Switzerland, it’s to walk out of the courtroom in Nyon a single man. I’m immediately thinking that thought again: “My God. Nicholas and Mathew are at school and nursery right now. And they have no idea that their lives have changed.” I can’t stop that thought. Nic’s four; he knows his mum and dad have been arguing a bit. But that’s it.

  I feel terrible. What can I do? Confused, despairing divorcé that I am, orphaned for the third time from my kids, I channel myself. I dive into the Disney work, and I dive into the Bar Centrale, on 46th Street, a quick walk from the Richard Rodgers Theatre. It’s a theatrical people’s bar; you have to book. But our producer, and Disney Theatrical Group president, Tom Schumacher, always has a table. So I develop a daily routine. I walk from the Peninsula to the Richard Rodgers every morning; then I walk to Bar Centrale every night.

  I also start to bury myself in the minibar, a little nightcap or three after an evening in Centrale. Occasionally I see the minibar man, filling ’er up. He says, “You really like vodka!” I don’t particularly; right now I really like any alcohol, anything that’ll numb the pain. I work my way through the miniatures, then the half-bottles, then the whole lot is gone. Well, I leave the Scotch. I don’t drink everything. I’m thirsty, but I’m not that thirsty. Not yet.

  But when you’re drinking the miniatures straight from the neck, standing by the fridge, that’s dangerous. Why dirty a glass? No mixer required. But at least I’m not buying carry-outs. That comes later, when I’m living in my apartment in New York.

  The weekends when I’m not working I have what I call, in honor of Billy Wilder’s great 1954 movie, the Ray Milland Lost Weekends. I drink, I sleep, I wait for the minibar to be restocked. Even when I am working I’ll sometimes have a drink before I go to rehearsals. Poached eggs with a side order of vodka, straight from the bottle, at 10 a.m.

  To be clear: I never indulge on the job. I’m professional, so drinking while working is off the menu. But that just means I have to drink with ever more vigor when I’m off the job.

  The scary thing is my tolerance has gone through the roof. The vodka isn’t touching the sides. How many do I have to drink before I feel something? No one knows, not even Danny Gillen, still by my side, still picking up the pieces and still looking out for me.

  Danny tries: “Are you sure you want another one?” But he can only act when he sees me drinking. The difficulty for everyone is that I’m doing this in private. It’s what Robin Williams said about his cocaine days. He didn’t find it a social drug—he went home and did it, when it was just him. And that’s what I do with drink.

  Some people get morbid when they drink, miserable, aggressive, punchy. Not me. I just get happy. But the truth is: I’m crying on the inside. The cliché is true: I’m literally drowning my sorrows. Drink doesn’t make me feel better. But it does make me sleep. And if I’m sleeping, I’m not thinking. That’s what the lost weekends are all about. I’ll drink, and that’ll knock me out for the forty-eight hours until it’s time to return to the sanctuary of work. I’m flooding the void in my brain and the hole in my life with booze.

  After six months in the Peninsula New York—by which time I could have bought the place with my bar bill alone—and after Tarzan is up and running, I move back to Switzerland.

  I don’t have a home, so I stay in a hotel in Geneva, or in various hotels in Nyon. Day after day I try to remain part of the boys’ lives, but often as not this boils down to simply ferrying them to and from school. And night after night I find myself lying on the bed, staring out of a skylight at gray Swiss skies, rueing my life. I’m all alone, save for my good friends Johnnie Walker and Grey Goose. “You’ve got everything,” I think, “but you’ve really got fuck-all.”

  My mind is whirring, obsessed with an old, familiar scenario: what do my kids think about when the lights go out at night?

  Eventually, in November 2008, I buy the small house in Féchy, fifteen minutes’ drive from the boys. But for the first time in forty-five years, the days are long and empty. I bat away concerned calls from Tony Smith, who’s keen to know what else I’m doing apart from lying on the couch, watching sport on TV and putting away bottles of wine. It’s not quite the retirement I imagined, but it’ll have to do.

  That’s not to say I’m endlessly sozzled. Life settles down, I have to pick up the boys after school and they stay with me for long weekends or holid
ays. So I still have that responsibility—I have to drive. And if I do step over the line, they’re collected by Lindsey Evans. She’s our tireless longtime nanny, although I don’t think she expected to be nannying three boys.

  And that, for the next few years, becomes my gig, a low-flying alcoholiday interspersed with only the occasional professional distraction and trips to New York to see Dana. In anticipation of more Broadway work, I’ve bought an apartment on Central Park West and we spend a lot of time there, or are out seeing new shows or having dinner. I never make it a secret that Orianne and I shouldn’t have got divorced, a fact Dana seems to understand.

  Then, out of the blue, in May 2012, Orianne announces that she’s moving to America. She has a new husband and they want to start over. They’re thinking Los Angeles. I’m thinking, “Hang on a fucking minute.”

  I say, “You’re not going to Los Angeles. I’m not doing that all over again, a ten-hour plane flight to see my kids.” Orianne knows as well as anyone I’ve already endured enforced separation of that distance (Joely and Simon were taken to Vancouver, Lily to Los Angeles) twice over.

  I say, “I will fight you on this.”

  But Orianne goes through the divorce documents and says, “The lawyers say you can’t.”

  So they decide to go and, “luckily,” they choose Miami. It’s at the bottom of North America, but on the “right” (European) side at least. Small mercies and all that.

  It’s summer 2012 and the kids are still in Switzerland, just. I’m suffering from severe stomach pains and am taken to the Clinique de Genolier. Dr. Loizeau’s conclusion is swift and firm: due to my drinking I have acute pancreatitis and I need to go to the University Hospital of Lausanne immediately. I need to dry out, to detox, and this is a facility that is better equipped to cope with someone in my condition.

  That “condition” is clearly of some concern to the medical professionals: they want me in the intensive care unit in Lausanne as quickly as possible, so they ferry me by ambulance helicopter. I stay there for what seems like an eternity. It’s probably two or three weeks. Time drags when you haven’t got a drink at hand.