The classic bands Phil Collins completely ignored: “It just passed me by”
Given his transition from progressive rock icon to mainstream pop svengali, you’d imagine that Phil Collins would also have quite a vested interest in musical happenings going on around him in other genres, too.
Because of the very nature of progressive rock and how it has always consistently borrowed from other genres and styles in order to create a chimerical form of music that often defies convention, you’d think that this would have swayed Collins towards exposing himself to other genres that may have been further afield from his normal comfort zone.
Given that one of his former Genesis bandmates was Peter Gabriel, who has always displayed a wealth of knowledge in different types of music from across the globe and tried to incorporate them into his own material, you’d also think that this would, in part, have had a significant impact on the way that Collins perceived other genres as well, and that this would have left him with an open mind that was ready to explore.
However, his shift as a solo artist to becoming a bonafide pop songwriter brought him further into the spotlight, and while throwing in more unusual or unexpected styles may be considered a risk when the main motivation is driving record sales and garnering widespread acclaim, it still requires a great deal of adaptability, given the wealth of different people and personalities you might find yourself working alongside.
Collins’ adaptability was definitely something that he displayed throughout his solo career, and he’s worked with a variety of names from different musical backgrounds, from classic rock artists such as Robert Plant and Eric Clapton to glam and art rock personalities such as Adam Ant and Brian Eno.
Despite having his fingers in multiple pies, it isn’t always possible to keep tabs on everything that goes on in the world of music, and during long stretches of time on the road or in the studio, your capacity to discover new music from outside of your immediate bubble becomes limited. As a result, many things seemingly passed Collins by during his time with Genesis, and he now reflects on this as being one of his cultural blind spots.
During an interview with The Guardian in 2021, he admitted that the entirety of the punk movement flashed past him without doing so much as registering, and while he can’t ignore the impact that it had on the rest of the music world, he remained pretty oblivious to the bands who were causing a stir as the direct antithesis of the prog rock he was making.
“When punk happened, we were away an awful lot,” he confessed, claiming that “Three American tours and three European tours” were an excuse for his ignorance of punk’s brief moment in the spotlight. “I used to get Melody Maker and all those papers every single week, but I wasn’t getting them any more. The short periods that I was at home, I don’t think I heard a single Clash record or Damned record. It just passed me by.”
It may well have been because progressive rock and punk were so stylistically at odds with one another that he completely neglected to ever give either The Clash or The Damned a listen at the time, but at the same time, you have to wonder how an album with the impact of London Calling was possible to ignore for a man whose status in the industry was so elevated.
