Phil Collins
Philip David Charles Collins LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer, drummer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and later became the lead singer of the rock band Genesis and had a successful solo career, achieving three UK number one singles and seven US number one singles as a solo artist. In total, his work with Genesis, other artists, and solo resulted in more US top-40 singles than any other artist throughout the 1980s.[7] His most successful singles from the period include "In the Air Tonight", "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", "One More Night", "Sussudio", "Another Day in Paradise" and "I Wish It Would Rain Down".
For other people named Phil Collins, see Phil Collins (disambiguation).
Phil Collins
- Singer
- drummer
- songwriter
- record producer
- actor
- 1963–2011
- 2015–present
Clive Collins (brother)
- Vocals
- drums
- keyboards
Born and raised in west London, Collins began playing drums at age five. During the same period he attended drama school which secured him various roles as a child actor. His first major role was the Artful Dodger in the West End production of the musical Oliver!. As an accomplished professional actor by his early teens, he pivoted to pursue a music career, becoming the drummer for Genesis in 1970, at age 19. He took over the role of lead singer in 1975 following the departure of Peter Gabriel. During the second half of the 1970s, in-between Genesis albums and tours, Collins was also the drummer of jazz rock band Brand X. Collins began a successful solo career in the 1980s, initially inspired by his marital breakdown and love of soul music, releasing the albums Face Value (1981), Hello, I Must Be Going (1982), No Jacket Required (1985) and ...But Seriously (1989). Collins became, in the words of AllMusic, "one of the most successful pop and adult contemporary singers of the '80s and beyond".[8] He also became known for a distinctive gated reverb drum sound on many of his recordings.[9] He played drums on the 1984 charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and in July 1985, he was the only artist to perform at both Live Aid concerts. He also resumed his acting career, appearing in Miami Vice and subsequently starring in the film Buster (1988).
Collins left Genesis in 1996 to focus on solo work; this included writing songs for Disney's animated film Tarzan (1999). He wrote and performed the songs, "Two Worlds", "Son of Man", "Strangers Like Me" and "You'll Be in My Heart", the latter of which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He rejoined Genesis for their Turn It On Again Tour in 2007. Following a five-year retirement to focus on his family life, Collins released his memoir in 2016 and completed his Not Dead Yet Tour in 2019. He then rejoined Genesis in 2020 for a second reunion tour, ending in March 2022.
Collins's discography includes eight studio albums that have sold 33.5 million certified units in the US and an estimated 150 million records sold worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists.[10] He is one of only three recording artists, along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, who have sold over 100 million records both as solo artists and separately as principal members of a band.[11][12] He has won eight Grammy Awards, six Brit Awards (winning Best British Male Artist three times), two Golden Globe Awards, one Academy Award, and a Disney Legend Award.[13] He was awarded six Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the International Achievement Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010. He has also been recognised by music publications with induction into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2012, and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013.[14][15]
Early life[edit]
Philip David Charles Collins was born on 30 January 1951 at Putney Hospital in Wandsworth, south-west London.[16][17] His father, Greville Philip Austin Collins (1907–1972), was an insurance agent for London Assurance and his mother, Winifred June Collins (née Strange, 1913–2011), worked in a toy shop and later as a booking agent at the Barbara Speake Stage School, an independent performing arts school in East Acton.[18][19] Collins is the youngest of three children: his sister Carole competed as a professional ice skater and followed her mother's footsteps as a theatrical agent, and his brother Clive was a noted cartoonist.[19][20] The family moved twice by the time Collins had reached two; they settled at 453 Hanworth Road in Hounslow, Middlesex.[21]
Collins was given a toy drum kit for Christmas when he was five, and later his two uncles made him a makeshift set with triangles and tambourines that fitted into a suitcase.[22] As Collins grew older, these were followed by more complete sets bought by his parents.[23] He practised by playing along to music on the television and radio.[24] During a family holiday at Butlin's, a seven-year-old Collins entered a talent contest singing "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", but stopped the orchestra halfway through to tell them they were in the wrong key.[25][18] The Beatles were a major early influence on Collins, including their drummer Ringo Starr.[26][27][28] He followed the lesser-known London band the Action, whose drummer he would copy and whose work introduced him to the soul music of Motown and Stax Records.[26] Collins was also influenced by jazz and big band drummer Buddy Rich,[29] whose opinion on the importance of the hi-hat prompted him to stop using two bass drums and start using the hi-hat.[30]
Around twelve, Collins received basic piano and music tuition from his father's aunt.[31] He studied drum rudiments under Lloyd Ryan and later under Frank King, and considered this training "more helpful than anything else because they're used all the time. In any kind of funk or jazz drumming, the rudiments are always there."[30] Collins never learned to read or write musical notation and devised his own system, which he regretted in later life. "I've always felt that if I could hum it, I could play it. For me, that was good enough, but that attitude is bad."[30]
Collins attended Nelson Primary School until he was eleven.[22] He was accepted into Chiswick County Grammar School, where he took to football and formed the Real Thing, a school band that had Andrea Bertorelli, his future wife, and friend Lavinia Lang, as backup singers. Both women would have an impact on Collins' personal life in later years.[32] Collins' next group was the Freehold, with whom he wrote his first song, "Lying, Crying, Dying",[33] and played in a group named the Charge.[34] He was childhood friends with Jack Wild, who would become famous for playing Dodger in the film Oliver! (1968); the pair attended the same stage school after Collins's mother June spotted Wild as the two played football in the park.[35]
Critical and public perceptions[edit]
Criticism[edit]
According to a 2000 BBC biography of Collins, "critics sneer at him" and "bad publicity also caused problems", which "damaged his public profile".[208] Rock historian Martin C. Strong wrote that Collins "truly polarised opinion from the start, his ubiquitous smugness and increasingly sterile pop making him a favourite target for critics".[209] According to Guardian writer Paul Lester, Collins would "regularly" call music journalists to take issue with negative reviews.[210] Over time, he came to be personally disliked;[87] in 2009, journalist Mark Lawson told how Collins's media profile had shifted from "pop's Mr. Nice guy, patron saint of ordinary blokes", to someone accused of "blandness, tax exile and ending a marriage by sending a fax".[211] Collins has rejected accusations of tax avoidance, and despite confirming that some of the divorce-related correspondence between him and second wife, Jill Tavelman, was by fax (a message from Collins regarding access to their daughter was reproduced for the front cover of The Sun in 1993),[212] he states that he did not terminate the marriage in that fashion.[211] Nevertheless, the British media has often repeated the fax claim.[208][213][214][215] Collins has been the victim of scathing remarks in regard to his alleged right-wing political leanings. Caroline Sullivan, a music critic of The Guardian, referred to his cumulative negative publicity in her 2007 article "I wish I'd never heard of Phil Collins", writing that it was difficult for her to hear his work "without being riven by distaste for the man himself".[213]
Several critics have commented on Collins's omnipresence, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s.[87][209][216][217][218] Journalist Frank DiGiacomo wrote a 1999 piece for New York Observer titled The Collins Menace; he said, "Even when I sought to escape the sounds [of Collins] in my head by turning on the TV, there would be Mr. Collins ... mugging for the cameras—intent on showing the world just how hard he would work to sell millions of records to millions of stupid people."[216] In his 2010 article "Love Don't Come Easy: Artists we Love to Hate", The Irish Times critic Kevin Courtney expressed similar sentiments. Naming Collins as one of the ten most disliked pop stars in the world, he wrote: "[Collins] performed at Live Aid, playing first at Wembley, then flying over to Philadelphia via Concorde, just to make sure no one in the U.S. got off lightly. By the early 1990s, Phil phatigue [sic] had really set in."[87] Tim Chester of the New Musical Express alluded to the backlash against Collins in an article titled, "Is It Time We All Stopped Hating Phil Collins?" Chester said of the unrelenting derision he has suffered, "a lot of it he brings on himself." He also said that Collins was "responsible for some of the cheesiest music ever committed to acetate".[219] Erik Hedegaard of Rolling Stone mentioned that Phil Collins hate sites had "flourished" online, and acknowledged that he had been called "the sellout who took Peter Gabriel's Genesis, that paragon of prog-rock, and turned it into a lame-o pop act and went on to make all those supercheesy hits that really did define the 1980s".[220]
According to author Dylan Jones in his 2013 publication on 1980s popular music, many of Collins's peers "despised" him.[221] Some fellow artists have made negative comments about Collins publicly. In 1990, former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters criticised Collins's "ubiquitous nature", including his involvement in the Who's 1989 reunion tour.[222] David Bowie dismissed some of his own 1980s output as his "Phil Collins years/albums".[223][224] In addition to the song's negative press from music journalists, singer-songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg criticised Collins for writing "Another Day in Paradise", stating: "Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn't have the action to go with it he's just exploiting that for a subject."[225] Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher criticised Collins on multiple occasions,[226][227] including the comment: "Just because you sell lots of records, it doesn't mean to say you're any good. Look at Phil Collins."[228] Collins said he has "at times, been very down" about Noel Gallagher's comments.[229] Gallagher's brother, Oasis singer Liam, also recalled the "boring" Collins's chart dominance in the 1980s and stated that, by the 1990s, it was "time for some real lads to get up there and take charge".[230] Appearing on the BBC television series Room 101 in 2005, in which guests discuss their most hated things and people, Collins nominated the Gallaghers to be sent into the eponymous room. He described them as "horrible" and stated: "They're rude and not as talented as they think they are. I won't mince words here, but they've had a go at me personally."[231]
Collins acknowledged in 2010 that he had been "omnipresent". He said of his character: "The persona on stage came out of insecurity ... it seems embarrassing now. I recently started transferring all my VHS tapes onto DVD to create an archive, and everything I was watching, I thought, 'God, I'm annoying.' I appeared to be very cocky, and really I wasn't."[232] Collins concedes his status as a figure of contempt for many people and has said that he believes this is a consequence of his music being overplayed.[229][226] In 2011 he said: "The fact that people got so sick of me wasn't really my fault. ... It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me. I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that!"[229][233] He described criticism of his physical appearance over the years as "a cheap shot",[221] but has acknowledged the "very vocal element" of Genesis fans who believe that the group sold out under his tenure as lead singer.[234] Collins denied that his retirement in 2011 was due to negative attention[144] and said that his statements had been taken out of context. He said: "I have ended up sounding like a tormented weirdo who thinks he was at the Alamo in another life, who feels very sorry for himself, and is retiring hurt because of the bad press over the years. None of this is true."[145][219]
Personal life[edit]
Family and relationships[edit]
Collins has divorced three times. From 1975 to 1980, he was married to Canadian-born Andrea Bertorelli. They met as 11-year-old students in a London drama class and reconnected in 1974 when Genesis performed in Vancouver. They married in England in 1975 when both were 24,[212] after which Collins legally adopted Bertorelli's daughter Joely (b. 1972), who became an actress and film producer.[253] They also had a son, Simon Collins (b. 1976), who is the former vocalist and drummer of the progressive rock band Sound of Contact. In 2016, Bertorelli took legal action against Collins pertaining to his account of their relationship in his autobiography.[254]
In 1984, Collins married American Jill Tavelman. They have one daughter, Lily Collins (b. 1989), who became an actress.[255] While married to Tavelman, Collins twice had an affair with Lavinia Lang, a former drama school classmate, while touring with Genesis in 1992. The two were previously engaged, but the relationship ended before they married.[255] In 1994, Collins openly stated that he had fallen out of love with Tavelman and had filed for divorce, which was finalised in 1996. As part of the settlement, Collins paid £17 million to Tavelman.[255][256]
In 1999, Collins married Orianne Cevey, a Swiss national who worked as his translator at the start of his 1994 tour when she was 22.[257][258] They have two sons, Nicholas and Matthew.[259] The latter is an aspiring footballer for the youth squad of WSG Tirol, having previously played in the youth systems of Bundesliga club Hannover 96 and Astoria Walldorf.[260] They lived in the former house of Jackie Stewart in Begnins, Switzerland. In 2006 they divorced. Collins paid £25 million to Cevey, which became the largest settlement in a British celebrity divorce.[261] Collins continued to live in Féchy, Switzerland, while he also maintained homes in New York City and Dersingham, Norfolk.[215]
From 2007 to 2016, Collins was in a relationship with American news anchor Dana Tyler.[124] In 2008, Cevey and her two sons moved to Miami, Florida. Collins recalled: "I went through a few bits of darkness; drinking too much. I killed my hours watching TV and drinking, and it almost killed me." He said in 2015 that he had been teetotal for three years.[262] In January 2016, after moving to Miami Beach, Florida in the previous year to be closer to his two youngest sons,[262] Collins reunited with Cevey and they lived together in Miami.[263] In October 2020, Collins filed an eviction notice against Cevey after she secretly married another man in August.[264] Collins sold his Miami home in 2021 for $39 million.[265]
Collins' brother Clive was a cartoonist. Phil appeared at his brother's investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in 2012 when he was awarded an MBE for services to art, with Phil stating, "I shared a bedroom with him when we were boys and he was always drawing. He used to do Christmas cards and birthday cards for the family."[266]
Wealth[edit]
In 2012, Collins was estimated to be the second-wealthiest drummer in the world, surpassed only by Ringo Starr.[267] Collins was estimated to have a fortune of £120 million in the Sunday Times Rich List of 2018, making him one of the 25 wealthiest people in the British music industry.[268]
Charity work[edit]
Collins has performed at the Secret Policeman's Ball, a benefit show co-founded by Monty Python member John Cleese on behalf of Amnesty International. He made his first appearance at the 1981 show held in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and he subsequently became an activist.[308] Collins was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) in the 1994 Birthday Honours, in recognition of his work on behalf of The Prince's Trust, a leading UK youth charity founded by King Charles III (then-Prince of Wales) which provides training, personal development, business start up support, mentoring, and advice.[309] Since appearing at the first Prince's Trust's rock concert in 1982 which included a performance as part of singer Kate Bush's backing band, Collins has played at the event numerous times since, most recently at the Royal Albert Hall in 2010.[310][311]
On 9 April 1989, Collins topped the bill at a benefit concert for the veteran English comic actor Terry-Thomas. Held at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the event raised over £75,000 for Terry-Thomas and Parkinson's UK.[312]
Collins has stated he is a supporter of animal rights and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In 2005 he donated autographed drumsticks in support of PETA's campaign against Kentucky Fried Chicken.[313]
In February 2000, Collins and Cevey launched the Little Dreams Foundation, a non-profit organisation that aims to "...realise the dreams of children in the fields of sports and art" by providing future prodigies aged 4 to 16 years with financial, material, and mentoring support with the help of experts in various fields.[314] Collins took the action after receiving letters from children asking him how they could break into the music industry. Mentors to the students who have benefited from his foundation include Tina Turner and Natalie Cole. In 2013 he visited Miami Beach, Florida, to promote the expansion of his foundation.[315]
Collins supports the South African charity Topsy Foundation, which provides relief services to some of South Africa's most under-resourced rural communities through a multi-faceted approach to the consequences of HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty. He donates all the royalties earned from his music sales in South Africa to the organisation.[316][317]
Studio albums