The first drum solo Phil Collins ever truly loved: “It was very new then”
Phil Collins naturally found himself in the realm of jazz drummers when he first began laying his trade from behind the drum kit. The future star was influenced, just like so many others, by the unique balance of the percussionists that littered the jazz genre.
Buddy Rich, Chester Thompson and Charlie Watts all provided a unique move between jazz and rock music, allowing Collins to crossover alongside them. But while jazz certainly appealed to Collins, his preference for pop was hard to ignore. One of the clearest signs of this was that Collins, for the most part, wasn’t really into solos.
Drum solos were natural and expected part of jazz percussion, but s the 1960s developed fewer and fewer drum solos were welcomed by those pouring pop music into the ears of the masses. One such drummer was Ringo Starr, who was even selected by The Beatles because of his lack of desire to lay one down.
“Ringo would never do drum solos,” Paul McCartney once said. “He hated drummers who did lengthy drum solos. We all did. And when he joined The Beatles we said, ‘Ah, what about drum solos then?’ and he said, ‘I hate ’em!’ We said, ‘Great! We love you!’ And so he would never do them. But because of this medley I said, ‘Well, a token solo?’ and he really dug his heels in and didn’t want to do it.”
But Collins would eventually find himself enamoured by the notion of a drum solo, and it would take another monumental player to give him the impetus for appreciation. The magical John Bonham.
Most classic rock fans would consider themselves lucky to see John Bonham playing in his prime. Although ‘Bonzo’ didn’t last long in Led Zeppelin, his animalistic tendencies came out in full force whenever he stepped behind the drumkit. While casual fans were just looking to rock out whenever they came on the radio, the drummers in the audience were taking notes.
Coming from the traditional old blues acts, Bonham tapped into a swing that was always slightly behind the beat. While keeping the tempo low to the floor and grooving, Bonham’s swing was the perfect coil for Jimmy Page, who tended to be slightly ahead of the beat every time he began playing.
As Bonham cut his teeth in his first handful of pre-Zeppelin bands, a young Phil Collins was in the audience. Before he became a rhythmic force of nature with Genesis, Collins was a child of the theatre, first getting the bug to become a musician after serving as an extra on The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night.
Despite his penchant for bombastic drum fills, Collins notoriously didn’t like drum solos…until Bonham came along. When talking about witnessing the animal for the first time, Collins was shell-shocked by what he saw, recalling to Modern Drummer, “When I saw Bonham play before he joined Led Zeppelin, he did a solo, and it was the first solo I’ve ever stood up for and applauded. He was wonderful.”
As opposed to the raw aggression that Bonzo was working with, Collins was focusing on the intricacies of his playing as well, explaining, “He was doing all the crossover stuff with his hands, no sticks! It was very new then. He used to be a bricklayer, so his hands were as hard as rocks. He was doing all this stuff and triplets on the bass drum.”
That no-stick technique would also become a staple of Bonham’s playing in Zeppelin. During his famous drum solo in the song ‘Moby Dick’, an entire section is made up of Bonham throwing his sticks to the ground, beating the drums with his hands and making for a harmonious cacophony of noise that few could match.
Though Collins was not as much of a fan of Bonham’s style of music initially, his sheer tenacity behind the kit was enough to sell him, telling BBC 6 Radio, “He had the best bass drum of anybody I’ve ever seen. I became a convert there. So I started to follow him wherever he was doing rude to be playing in a band. The early Led Zeppelin was something to behold because nobody was doing that.”
Once Collins got the opportunity to drum alongside Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, though, he had already begun applying the lessons of Bonham’s playing. Throughout songs like ‘Dance on a Volcano’, Collins’ power behind the kit on the various breaks can only be acquired after studying under Bonham’s guide to rock and roll drumming. There might have been jazz and blues takes on percussion, but what Bonham created on the kit opened up a new world for rock and roll.
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