Phil Collins Personal life
 In 1970, Collins answered a Melody Maker classified ad for ...a drummer sensitive to acoustic music, and acoustic twelve-string guitarist. Genesis placed the ad after having already lost three drummers over two albums. The audition occurred at the home of Peter Gabriel's parents. Prospective candidates performed tracks from the group's second album, Trespass (1970). Collins arrived early, listened to the other auditions while swimming in Gabriel's parents' pool, and memorised the pieces before his turn.
The music video for Land Of Confusion featured the members of Genesis in puppet form, with the single cover (parodying the With the Beatles album and using puppets from the satirical TV show Spitting Image).Collins won the audition. Nursery Cryme was released a year later. Although his role remained primarily that of drummer and backing vocalist for the next five years, he twice sang lead vocals: once on For Absent Friends (from Nursery Cryme) and once on More Fool Me (from Selling England by the Pound).
In 1974, while Genesis were recording the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Brian Eno (who is credited with Enossification for electronic vocal effects on the track Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging) needed a drummer for his album Another Green World. Collins was sent to fill the gap, and played drums in lieu of payment for Eno's work with the band.
In 1975, following the final tour supporting the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel left the group to pursue solo projects. Collins became lead vocalist after an unfruitful search for Gabriel's replacement. In the short term, the group recruited former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford to play drums during live shows, although Collins continued to play during longer instrumental sections. Bruford's drumming can be heard on the track The Cinema Show on the live album Seconds Out. He was soon replaced by ex-Frank Zappa band member Chester Thompson, who became a mainstay of the band's live line-up. The first album with Collins as lead vocalist, 1976's A Trick of the Tail, reached the American Top 40, and climbed as high as #3 on the UK charts. Said Rolling Stone, Genesis has managed to turn the possible catastrophe of Gabriel's departure into their first broad-based American success.
Collins simultaneously performed in a jazz fusion group called Brand X. The band recorded their first album, Unorthodox Behaviour, with Collins as drummer. Since he put greater priority on his career with Genesis, there were several Brand X tours and albums released without Collins. He credits Brand X as his first use of a drum machine as well as his first use of a home 8-track tape machine.
As the decade closed, Genesis began a shift from their progressive rock roots and toward pop music. Although the album ...And Then There Were Three... contained progressive rock influences, it also featured their first UK Top 10 and US Top 40 single, Follow You, Follow Me.
Audio samples:
Dance on a Volcano (1976)
The first track from Genesis’ A Trick of the Tail, this was Collins's first appearance as the group's lead singer. A progressive rock track, it contrasts with the style of his later work.
Problems playing the files? See media help.
In the 1980s, the group scored a string of successful albums, including Duke, Abacab, Genesis, and Invisible Touch. This last album's title track reached number one on the American Billboard charts, the only Genesis song to do so. The group received an MTV Video of the Year nomination in 1987 for Land of Confusion, another popular single from the album, although ironically they lost to Gabriel's solo hit, Sledgehammer. Reviews were generally positive, with Rolling Stone's J.D. Considine stating, every tune is carefully pruned so that each flourish delivers not an instrumental epiphany but a solid hook.
Collins left Genesis in 1996 to focus on his solo career; the last studio album with him as the lead singer was 1991's We Can't Dance. He and Gabriel reunited with other Genesis members in 1999 to re-record The Carpet Crawlers for Genesis's Turn It On Again: The Hits. When in the mid-2000s discussions of a possible Genesis reunion arose, Collins stated that he would prefer to return as the drummer, with Gabriel handling the vocals. Eventually Turn It On Again: The Tour was announced for 2007,
|
