Defend Phil Collins

as per my previously mentioned charity boxset find, I have enjoyed the albums far more than I ever expected to.
basically, yeah, he definitely got a lot more shit than he deserved.

But he worked for it! He worked his butt off for it. And he was nothing but a drummer her still would have been one of the best drummers of all time.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 18, 2018 6:58 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Absolutely, you can't really fault his work ethic. Not just Genesis and solo, but Brand X and all those guest appearances. Speaking of which, is there a list anywhere of all the stuff Collins played on over the years?

It's funny - there's been more than a few artists over the years that have been all about clinging to their supposed "arty" credentials, and just as many that want to be million-selling pop stars. During his career, Collins has been both a huge pop star and a cult art-rock hero.

“Misunderstanding”is pretty great but “Easy Lover” is f’in all-time

Absolutely, you can't really fault his work ethic. Not just Genesis and solo, but Brand X and all those guest appearances. Speaking of which, is there a list anywhere of all the stuff Collins played on over the years?

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/phil-collins-plays-well-with-others/

“Misunderstanding”is pretty great but “Easy Lover” is f’in all-time

― calstars, Thursday, October 18, 2018 7:20 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love both, fwiw!

Yeah turrican you are def otm

collins drumming on gabriel 3 all time

Just found out Phil sang this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyagd2EvwDU

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/phil-collins-plays-well-with-others/

― mark e, Thursday, October 18, 2018 7:23 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Even that doesn't seem to be close to exhaustive - the people in the comments section are pointing out so much that's missing that it's making my head spin.

Talking about Gabriel, nobody ever thought he was the fucking antichrist when he did his version of a pop album with So.

"Just found out Phil sang this"

it says "vocals: phil" on the back of the album sleeve after the song title!

I was listening to ...But Seriously and Face Value when I was in grade 4, so he was among my very first favorite artists.
It's probably anathema here, but as a soft song, I really liked Another Day in Paradise when I heard it. Apparently there was a film involved that I haven't watched (was it Jungle Book ? I like the Jungle Book).
As others said, his music is pretty innocuous.

“Now she don’t even know my name / but I think she likes me just the same” story of my life

Talking about Gabriel, nobody ever thought he was the fucking antichrist when he did his version of a pop album with /So/.

"Just found out Phil sang this"

it says "vocals: phil" on the back of the album sleeve after the song title!

fwiw he only plays on a few tracks on Gabriel 3.

The hate toward him has softened in the last decade or so. Partly it's that he's no longer inescapable on TV and radio, but also that his influence as a pop songwriter is more enduring than anyone would have thought in the 80s.

Reading his book really put things in perspective for me. There was a period he was actively in Genesis and solo, both stadium level endeavors, plus also playing drums for Robert Plant (on tour!) and Eric Clapton, plus producing and guesting, plus sometimes acting, plus playing any number of benefits. The bulk of this was between 1980 and, say, 1986. Just a ton of work.

phil collins is good.

as is billy joel.

so are the eagles.

all in a "take a couple/few tracks per album and ignore most of the output" kind of way but still

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

Reallllly don't think Phil was the driving force behind pushing Genesis towards 'pop' when Mike and Tony were the principal songwriters throughout their transitional period (and beyond)

It was totally the other guys pushing pop, after the departure of Steve Hackett. it just so happened that the band's first pop success, after Follow You Follow Me at least, was a Phil track iirc. Misunderstanding? plus his solo stuff gave him clout.

I think Follow You Follow Me was Mike-driven but a group effort

Granted 'Misunderstanding' was a hit but those three post-Hackett albums are dominated by Mike and Tony's 'pop' songs with Phil being a relatively figure

*marginal

I ignorantly just assumed it was Phil pushing the pop since he's the frontman + there's all these Genesis songs I used to think were Phil solo songs. I don't really know Genesis. I love "turn it on again", that is my jam

Yeah. Along the same lines I was baffled as a kid looking for “invisible touch” on the PC solo albums

yeah, brimstead, it wasn't Collins.

'Invisible Touch' began life much the same way as 'Turn It On Again'... as a Mike Rutherford guitar riff! This whole thing about Collins pushing the band towards "pop" is a line that's even people who are allegedly hardcore Genesis fans follow, which I've never understood.

Why would he need me to defend him? This thread makes no sense.

Problem for PC (not that it's done him much commercial harm) is that he doesn't come across as particularly likeable.
The official take on classic-era Genesis personality types is:
Rutherford: Likeable
Hackett: Likeable
Gabriel: Likeable/creative
Collins: Del-Boy
Banks: Passive-aggressive control freak

Banks is the only one that seems like an asshole.

I think the Collins bad rap came from his later solo career, actually, when he had no one to blame for his mawkishness but himself. Which maybe he always veered toward, anyway, but minus the musicianship/proggy veneer or cool spare arrangements he became mired in mushy A/C.

Reallllly don't think Phil was the driving force behind pushing Genesis towards 'pop' when Mike and Tony were the principal songwriters throughout their transitional period (and beyond)

― PaulTMA, Thursday, October 18, 2018 4:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was totally the other guys pushing pop, after the departure of Steve Hackett. it just so happened that the band's first pop success, after Follow You Follow Me at least, was a Phil track iirc. Misunderstanding? plus his solo stuff gave him clout.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 18, 2018 4:39 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Invisible Touch' began life much the same way as 'Turn It On Again'... as a Mike Rutherford guitar riff! This whole thing about Collins pushing the band towards "pop" is a line that's even people who are allegedly hardcore Genesis fans follow, which I've never understood.

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Friday, October 19, 2018 1:28 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've heard this a couple of times on ILM and it may well be true as a lot of you guys know a lot more about Collins/Genesis than I do. Still, though, as early as 1973, doesn't "More Fool Me" (Collins/Rutherford?) stand out pretty dramatically from everything else on Selling England by the Pound? I think it does anyway. And, as with brimstead, a lot of 80s-onward (esp mid-80s-onward) Genesis does seem more of a piece with solo Collins than with Gabriel-era Genesis to my ears. Afaict, he is credited as a co-writer on most or all of it. I think Turrican gave the example of solo Gabriel: to me, this is instructive because solo Gabriel (even his pop moves) does feel much more like the version of Genesis that I love responding to the 80s and 90s. Could just be that Gabriel was important enough as a frontman presence for me, more so than any of KC's singers or even Jon Anderson (whom I like a lot), idk.

Gabriel also experimented a lot and pushed boundaries, whereas Phil and Genesis, for whatever reason, established the default sound of the decade.

Well, yeah, the version of Genesis I love was one that experimented (in the broad sense) and pushed boundaries [cue argument for the boundary-pushing experimental nature of "I Can't Dance"].

That was ornery (and maybe there's a case that establishing the default sound of a decade requires pushing some boundaries) but I feel like it's something more than that as well.

We may be giving Gabriel, whom I adore, too much credit for innovation and too little credit to Genesis/Collins for hit-making.

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.