There are many curiosities around the life of musical legend Phil Collins. Did you know, for example, that he was a child actor, whose first major breakthrough role was in the early 1960s, playing the Artful Dodger in the London stage production of the musical, Oliver!?
But when it comes to the most recent of curiosities in Phil's life, many concern the various rumours of his demise. In fact, among the most prominent Google searches for Phil Collins are the questions 'Is Phil Collins really dead?', and 'Is Phil Collins still alive today?'
Well, he most certainly is alive, and he opened his interview with Ryan Tubridy this morning speaking about his autobiography, Not Dead Yet.
“I chose the title. I mean, what do you call a book? It was the black English humour that I liked. A lot was being made about my health, so I thought 'Not Dead Yet', you could say it with a bit of a smile on your face. And it also implies that there are things still to do, probably.”
During an extensive interview, Ryan took Phil through his extraordinary six-decade-long career, reminiscing about seeing one of his favourite groups of all time, the Yardbirds, in the 1960s in London, to attending Led Zeppelin’s first gig. The '60s, says Phil, were most certainly his favourite part of his life, although fame and fortune peaked for him during the '70s, with Genesis, and as a solo artist, in the 1980s.
Phil Collins replaced Peter Gabriel as singer in the enormously-successful Genesis, but was far from convinced he was the man for the role, initially. But given his background as an actor, and the stage performer, this reticence seems curious.
“It would have been totally natural, in theory, for me to have taken Peter’s theatrical direction further. But I wanted to separate the two things completely. When I stopped acting, I wanted to stop acting, and just be a working, slogging drummer. So the idea of picking up where Peter left off wasn’t something I felt comfortable doing.”
On a personal level, Phil Collins certainly has regrets in relation to his marriages, but at the same time, he recognises that being a musician in a successful band, such as Genesis, presents inevitable and unavoidable challenges to any relationship.
“It was my job. I kind of felt that I did a little bit what I was told. ‘We have two to three American tours this year, because we have to break America’, which happened in 1977/78. I never said, ‘this is terrible’. I said, ‘okay, fair enough.’ I didn’t know it was going to have the ramifications it did on my marriage. I’m a musician. I’m a travelling minstrel. And you can't just play in your own backyard.”
Touring was fun, he recalls, although not raucous fun, not debauched in any way. But being away from home is unavoidable, if you are going to be a successful musician.
On his legendary Live Aid experience, where he played in two cities in one day, Philadelphia and London, his memories are also far from fond.
“My career at that point could have been looked like I was showing off. I was in Genesis, I had my own career. Everything was going beautifully. I was about to do Buster. I was just doing anything people asked me to do, because it was interesting … That’s when I started to become annoying, I think. In the book, it’s “he don’t only do Live Aid once, he has to do it twice, bloody show-off.”
You can’t beat that London sense of humour.
Apart from his enormous success with Genesis, his string of solo hits including In the Air Tonight, Against All Odds and Easy Lover, Phil Collins is a four-time Academy Award nominee, winning an Oscar in 2004 with the song, You’ll Be in My Heart, from the Disney movie, Tarzan.
“I really didn’t expect it. When Cher opened the envelope and said “Ph….”. I thought Randy Newman was going to win it… It’s that split second when she starts to say your name, and you think, ‘My God, this is actually happening.’ I was very proud of that.”
Phil Collins has had his problems with alcohol, too, during his life, which he discussed with Ryan. “For me”, he said, “once I knew I had to stop, for a lot of reasons, kids, and also I was killing myself… I stopped.”
Phil Collins has just sold out a five-night residency at the Royal Albert Hall, making his retirement a “work of fiction”, according to Ryan. Listen to the interview in full below:
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Not Dead Yet by Phil Collins is out now.
