The album that inspired Phil Collins and Chester Thompson’s partnership: “I simply wanted some of that”
Friends, enemies, drum battles: the relationship between Phil Collins and Chester Thompson had everything.
When the Genesis frontman hired Thompson to take over his reins in the drumming hotseat, they could only be described as being as thick as thieves. But what happens when these kinds of friendships fall apart? They do so spectacularly, with no chance of things ever being repaired. What was once a partnership of drumming virtuosity has now firmly been left dead in the water, the weight of which has sunk to the depths of the ocean floor.
In this sense, it seems highly unlikely – virtually impossible – that Collins and his once treasured friend would ever be seen reconciling their differences, given that the reason for their fracture boiled down to their skills on the kit itself. They were almost like the real human embodiment of the film Whiplash, where the drum kit came at the mercy of life and death. After decades of being intrinsically connected by that instrument, it was ultimately the one thing that pushed them to the brink.
In this context, you can look back at the start of Collins’ and Thompson’s relationship and start searching for the earliest cracks and tears that would eventually turn into a chasm. But at that point, in all honesty, there were none to see. The Genesis frontman’s praise of his newfound drummer was utterly dazzling – and certainly significant, given that he was handing his most prized possession over to somebody else. Put simply, he saw the man who tore up Frank Zappa’s band, and needed a piece of the action.
“The thing with me and Chester was actually born out of one little moment in a Frank Zappa track. Frank recorded an album called Frank Zappa & The Mothers Live At The Roxy back in 1973 which featured both Chester and Ralph Humphrey on the drums,” Collins later explained, recalling how all in one moment, everything changed in his search for someone new to pick up the sticks for Genesis.
However, it wasn’t as if Thompson was an industry buddy that Collins could simply get on the phone and ask to switch over – he didn’t even know him. But sometimes the stars just align. “When I heard the power of that on certain things, I simply wanted some of that,” he enthused. “I wanted to be a part of it and that is when I asked Chester to join Genesis. At that point I hadn’t even met him. I just asked him to join the band because I knew that he and I could do some good stuff together.”
It was indeed good stuff that they did, recording albums and traversing the world together as a dynamic duo who simply couldn’t be stopped the second they got behind the drum kit. But when tensions frayed and the temperature turned up a notch, it was all bound to come tumbling out through that very medium. Music can make or break people, lives, and careers, but also the bedrock of the relationships they were built on.
