The 1982 album Phil Collins had no faith in: “That little lull”
Phil Collins wasn’t the kind of person all that concerned with getting on the charts in Genesis.
Becoming one of the biggest stars in the world wasn’t really a question for people who grew up as prog rock musicians, and when you look at where Collins eventually went, it’s not like he was going to be one of the premier tastemakers of his generation looking like an IT guy whenever he got onstage. He was just happy to have some people who liked his music, but he willingly admitted when he felt that some of his albums weren’t cut out to be hits.
Then again, Collins would have said the same thing about his solo career as a whole. He never envisioned Face Value becoming one of the biggest records on the planet by any stretch, and when you start looking at the record as a whole, you can tell what he’s talking about. He didn’t like the idea of sharing his dirty laundry surrounding his divorce with the public, but the hooks on the record were too good to ignore.
‘In the Air Tonight’ was bound to be a gigantic smash from the moment those drums kicked in, and even when looking past the singles, tracks like ‘Thunder and Lightning’ were proof that he had what it took to write one hell of a pop hook. But even if he was perfectly fine working with Genesis all over again, he knew that there was a lot that he wouldn’t be able to cover with the rest of his bandmates.
And so began one of the greatest balancing acts in rock and roll history. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to go between their solo career and main band as nimbly as Collins did, and while that did make him a bit inescapable throughout the 1980s, it helped that most of the songs were fairly decent. But if Face Value was him lamenting the loss of his marriage, Collins was a bit more aggressive when working on Hello I Must Be Going.
A lot of the lawyers had been brought in around this time, and songs like ‘I Don’t Care Anymore’ proved that he could have a mean streak when he wanted to. But even after making one of the biggest solo debuts of the decade, Collins felt that his sophomore record would be the moment where everyone caught onto his little game, and he would have to go back to his original band all over again.
He didn’t think that Hello I Must Be Going had a shot, and even years onward, he figured that the album would have failed spectacularly, saying, “If Face Value was a nine out of ten or something, Hello would be a six out of ten to me. I went through that little lull after Face Value, where I didn’t know whether I could do it again. But I wanted to do it again, so I kept trying, and that became Hello I Must Be Going.”
And while Collins did have a few songs that seemed a little bit more derivative of his first record, the most important song he made during that time was his version of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. It may have sounded a little bit dorky coming out of him, but his version of the Motown classic is half the reason why he was able to spread out on his next records and make tunes like ‘Sussudio’ later down the line.
Not everyone may have wanted that version of Collins around that time, but this was the whole point of him having a solo career in the first place. He still had a special place in his heart for Genesis, but his solo work was his excuse to do anything he wanted, and even if he felt like it wouldn’t last long, he was to have fun every single time he went into the studio and make whatever struck his fancy.
