The musical Phil Collins called the greatest ever: “One of the best scores ever written”
Phil Collins was never going to be confined to one genre for the rest of his days.
As much as Genesis may have fit snuggly into the prog-rock movement when they first began, the whole point of progressive music is to keep the people guessing as to what genre you are going to do next. There’s no sense in making grand-scale epics for the rest of your life, and while Collins had his fair share of pop hits, he did have a soft spot for the more sophisticated side of pop music when he started to reach his twilight years.
No one would have guessed that he would be the kind of artist who would one day be writing songs for Tarzan, but when looking through a lot of his best work, all the building blocks for musical theatre were all there. He had a brilliant sense of rhythm thanks to listening to the greatest soul music as a kid, but given how much he ended up pumping out as a balladeer, it’s not that hard to go from a song like ‘Against All Odds’ all the way to ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’.
But even though the odd song for a film soundtrack suited him fine, making actual Broadway showtunes was going to be a different story. Collins had a lot of homework to do before turning the tale of the apeman inside out, but he already had his fair share of training, having gone through the acting circuit as a young kid. He was out of practice for a while, but that sense of drama never fully goes away.
Because when going through his favourite records from that time, Collins was usually going to productions like West Side Story before reaching for the old Led Zeppelin records. And given that bands like The Beatles had discussed writing a stage musical at various points during their career, it wasn’t out of the question for Collins to see what songs like ‘Tonight’ and ‘Somewhere’ had to offer before getting behind the piano again.
He didn’t know the first thing about music theory when he started, but he felt that everything that he needed to know about staging the right songs for musicals could be found in West Side Story, saying, “It’s the pop classics. When I did the musical for Disney, I listened to a lot of shows, show music. My Fair Lady and Oliver, which I knew anyway, but I kind of revisited. And West Side Story, which I think is one of the best scores ever written. I felt that I should absorb the best of that world and understand what is needed when you write a song for Broadway.”
And when you’re working for the House of Mouse, they weren’t going to accept any old version of a showtune, either. They had already come off some of the biggest movies of the Disney Renaissance, and even though Collins was a proven hitmaker, they needed something that was going to be able to compete with songs like ‘Be Our Guest’ and ‘A Whole New World’ rather than pump out the Fisher Price version of ‘Sussudio’.
Compared to the rest of Disney’s classics, though, Collins was more than cut out to make a production of this scope. Elton John had already shown everyone what a rock star could sound like when they have control over a musical, but a lot of the songs in Tarzan feel like regular pop songs that happen to have a linear storyline to them, especially when you look at some of the more grandiose songs like ‘Strangers Like Me’.
Collins didn’t have to put his back into what could have been a vanity project, but considering the history of Disney musicals, he ended up walking away with a show that actually manages to sound better than some of his mainline albums. That’s not a knock against him as a songwriter in the slightest, but given how well this one turned out, it’s a wonder why Collins didn’t completely devote his time to Broadway after this.
