“No backbone”: The artist that Phil Collins considered spineless
Most of rock and roll is about having some guts behind every note being played. Even if it’s a tender ballad, there’s usually a bit of heart that gets artists from sounding like a typical lounge singer to one of the most emotional vocalists in history. Although Phil Collins had his fair share of tunes that people could consider sappy, he thought none of them had as little to say as one particular artist.
That’s not to say that Collins couldn’t create something heavy when he wanted to. He had some of his greatest moments in Genesis playing the most complex drum patterns, and even if the former members of Zeppelin don’t look back on their Live Aid performance fondly, having Collins in the background subbing in for John Bonham worked out much better than anyone could have predicted.
At the same time, Collins had a softer side that leaned slightly towards pop music. Even when making his first solo records, becoming the biggest pop star in the world was something that he fell into rather than anything he did by design, but when ‘In the Air Tonight’ started taking off, it wasn’t out of the question for him to cover songs like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ when he had the time to.
But compared to the other balladeers from around his time in the spotlight, Barry Manilow started to look increasingly passe as the years passed. While he was about as rock and roll as The Osmonds during his prime, it’s hard not to see what Peter Gabriel was doing as the antithesis of what Manilow tried to do with tracks like ‘Copacabana’ and ‘I Write The Songs’.
If anything, though, Collins was feeling the role of the soppy balladeer a lot better than Manilow was at the time. He may have turned in time making odd time signatures groove, but no one was expecting to hear something complex out of a man who had made songs like ‘Against All Odds’ and ‘Take Me Home’ during the 1980s.
Still, Collins knew that what he was doing was miles ahead of anything that Manilow could have done, saying, “Well, it defines a certain area of music to me: soft, spineless music. I never met Barry, so I don’t know what he’s like, but though the music may be very well produced, polished, smooth and glossy, it has no spine, no edge, no backbone.”
And say what you want about Collins’s solo ventures, but he at least knew how to get the lead out every now and again. He did have some musical crimes that he has yet to be tried for, like ‘Sussudio’, but it’s not like the audience isn’t in his favour for giving them the gift to all air drummers everywhere with the signature fill on ‘In the Air Tonight’ or when he made something dark and moody on ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’.
So, while Collins may have been known as a bit sappy compared to his other prog veterans, he knew enough to know that he and Manilow were never in the same ballpark. Because even if he played the piano on a few tunes, Collins was more than happy to get behind the kit and bring the fire whenever needed.
