Defend Phil Collins

P sure I'm the only one here who's doing that.

I do think that Collins/Genesis made some classic pop singles in the 80s, btw!

Lots of people had hits in the 80s, and Collins had a lot of them. Not many artists were as innovative and experimental as Peter Gabriel, and he still managed to have hits. I do give more credit for that, fwiw.

Again, I love Gabriel, and his hits weren't particularly innovative or experimental. Me, I don't love artists because they experiment; songs come first, and Gabriel had them for a while. Notice that with one exception his albums outsold each other through So.

I think that e.g. the 7/4 groove in "Solsbury Hill" was p creative for something that is popular enough that it could be described this way on another thread:

it's been used for so much that it barely registers as a song that can be good anymore

(I would also give credit to the makers of "In the Air Tonight" for sonic creativity.)

Nominal hits like Games Without Frontiers and Shock the Monkey are plenty weird and innovative. Even the stuff on So is kind of weird and innovative, it was just a huge smash album, so perhaps sounds less so now that it is a touchstone. I don't think that necessarily makes it better than Phil Collins pop hits, if that is your preferred thing, but it certainly makes it more compelling to me. It persists outside of its popularity, not because of it.

An album like No Jacket Required, it's sort of the apotheosis of all the things that Gabriel and Collins had been doing for the previous five years. It's not at all innovative, but it's built on the backs of many interesting innovations.

Nominal hits like Games Without Frontiers and Shock the Monkey are plenty weird and innovative.

So is 'In the Air Tonight'! I mean, the thing doesn't exactly scream "HIT SINGLE!", but it somehow was.

The thing about his cover of 'You Can't Hurry Love' is how much it sticks out like a sore thumb on Hello, I Must Be Going... the rest of the album is in competiton with Face Value as his darkest/most personal work. 'You Can't Hurry Love' feels like it was beamed in from another Collins LP entirely.

The recording of the drums in I Don't Care Anymore is incredible, starting close micd and dry then morphing into the more familiar huge room Phil sound.

In the Air Tonight is of course weird and awesome, but I want to say it's an outlier.

In hindsight, maybe Collins should have suggested that Genesis have a hiatus rather than leave the band entirely to focus on solo work. While the ...But Seriously period was successful for him, it's hard to think of how he could have kept up the same level of success in the '90s with his solo work. The hardcore Genesis fans would have continued to follow the band regardless.

pretty clearly sounds like a drum machine at the beginning of "in the air tonight", not live drums unless they are super processed

The recording of the drums in I Don't Care Anymore is incredible, starting close micd and dry then morphing into the more familiar huge room Phil sound.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, October 19, 2018 4:09 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like the snare sound on 'Another Day In Paradise', actually! The noise gate has been set to close after allowing for a little more decay on the reverb.

The beginning of 'In the Air Tonight' is a Roland CR78, yeah.

Phil's drum machine work (did he do the programming?) helped define the era as much as Jam/Lewis/Prince.

Eno (!) told me (!) that Phil told him his work with Eno was formative in that it showed him how to make an album more or less by himself.

He would have done the programming on the No Jacket Required stuff. The drum machine on 'In the Air Tonight' wasn't programmable, although you could manipulate the presets a few different ways and of course treat the output with something else afterwards, like anything.

More importantly, he knew he wanted them!

Who besides Sly Stone used them as much before him? Not many.

It's the same rhythm box used on OMD's 'Enola Gay', Ultravox's 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', several Numan tracks circa 1981-1983, and I suspect Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' ...

Same drum machine on Duke?

Genesis' 'Duchess', too.

(x-post) Yup!

i love the sound of those super early drum machines so much

I own an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace. Kind of fun to just turn it on and let it go.

oh wow i bet....that really dead, dry sound is so cool really cuts through a mix

On another hand, it just seems like sour grapes and jealousy that Collins was everywhere and super successful on a huge scale.

Er, what? Who exactly is jealous and why? Unless you're a singing drummer who used to play in a British prog rock band and had a solo career but it turned out Phil Collins was more successful than you?

Bill Bruford's still made they shelved his Stock Aitken Waterman produced solo ablum

Yeah, those early rhythm boxes sound quite organic and even kinda funky. By the time of No Jacket Required I suspect he would have been using LM1's and 909's. 'Sussudio' sounds like it has a couple of drum machines on it at once.

(xxpost)

That R&B inspired solo album by the drummer from Gentle Giant should have been smash but Collins had cornered the market. Seriously though, well not seriously at all, I think being a Tory and divorcing his wife via a fax and running off with the au pair harmed his reputation - except I think both have been debunked? Well, he did run off with the au pair I believe.

Section 5 of his enormous wiki entry is titled 'Criticism and praise' and has four subsections...

5 Criticism and praise
5.1 Critical and public perceptions
5.2 Criticism from other artists
5.3 Collins on criticism
5.4 Praise

... though it's dwarfed by the section that follows...

6 Personal life
6.1 Family
6.2 Wealth
6.3 Court case
6.4 Health
6.5 Honorary degrees
6.6 Politics
6.7 Other interests

Like few others, I would venture, he has an separate page dedicated to the lists of awards and nominations he's received, titled List of awards and nominations received by Phil Collins.

Phil's drum machine work (did he do the programming?) helped define the era as much as Jam/Lewis/Prince.

― Josh in Chicago,

He programmed and played almost every percussive element on his albums, and played most of the keyboards. It's interesting how he and Peter Gabriel have similar instrumental talents (maybe Gabriel's the better keyboardist and Fairlight programmer, idk)

The Tory thing has been debunked, I think.

He's claimed that he was so busy throughout the '80s that he didn't even vote, and he could very well have been out of the country during elections, given his schedule. I could very well believe that, actually.

Although, I'm sure some dedicated Collins/Genesis nut out there could verify whether he was on tour or not at the time.

Having tried to keep awake through a recent Genesis documentary - literally the most boring programme ever shown on BBC 4 - I'd say anyone who has to play in a band with Tony Banks deserves a medal.

God yeah what a wanker

The Tory thing has been debunked, I think.

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 19, 2018 10:41 AM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he has stated that he isn't a tory and didn't leave the uk for switzerland in 1997 due to fears of a labour government - which is repeated as a fact so often in the uk that i assumed it was true until about 4 months ago

Having another listen to Hello, I Must Be Going and thinking there's so much good stuff on this: 'I Don't Care Anymore', 'I Cannot Believe It's True', 'Like China', 'It Don't Matter To Me', 'Thru These Walls', 'The West Side' ...

Been browsing his stuff on streaming services. The new covers for the remasters are really creepy somehow. Also wtf

Yeah, the No Jacket Required one particularly!

Agreed, it turns me off to the whole album

As he wrote in his book, he moved to Switzerland because his wife at the time, who he may have subsequently remarried, was Swiss, and they wanted to live near her parents.

What a happy coincidence.

Shortly before the 2005 election (when Collins was living in Switzerland), Labour supporter Noel Gallagher was quoted: "Vote Labour. If you don't and the Tories get in, Phil Collins is threatening to come back and live here. And let's face it, none of us want that."

Noel OTM?

As he wrote in his book, he moved to Switzerland because his wife at the time, who he may have subsequently remarried, was Swiss, and they wanted to live near her parents.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, October 20, 2018 12:31 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup - and if his wikipedia article is to be believed, then he continued to keep homes in the US and the UK, not to mention he's no longer living in Switzerland but Miami, and has done so since 2015.

Rich expats with houses lying empty for most of the years while people are sleeping on the streets, better hope Corbz doesn't win the next election.

heard "something happened on the way to heaven" in the food court the over day and it brightened my day

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, October 18, 2018 9:33 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it's a great one, that... the chorus is up there with his catchiest, I think. ...But Seriously may have been better regarded by fans of his first three albums if it had been about 15-20 minutes shorter.

And if it had been called ...Butt Seriously