The smash hit Phil Collins song that Genesis snubbed for being “too simple”
The iconic drummer, singer and songwriter Phil Collins began his remarkable career in 1970 when he joined Genesis alongside guitarist Steve Hackett, who was brought in to replace founding member Anthony Philips.
He was joining a force that was undoubtedly a great band, but you’d be hard pressed to crown the great preceptors of the commercial side of music. In fact, shortly before Collins became a member, the band saw their debut album flounder in the charts, in part, because it was stacked in the religious section of record stores, given their biblical names.
This set them off on shaky ground. “Genesis seemed to be dying a death around our second album,” co-founding member Peter Gabriel told Q Magazine in 2011. However, with the addition of Collins and Hackett, Genesis entered a period of commercial and critical resurgence following the disappointment of Trespass.
It wasn’t just their brilliant musicianship that made a difference, but also the impetus they gave the band to search for at least a little bit more of the spotlight and nudge up the charts. After all, neither were that experienced with prog.
“My only knowledge of Genesis was through seeing the ads for their gigs. It seemed like they were constantly working. I thought, ‘At least I’m going to be working if I get the gig’,” Collins, who was largely raised on Motown, reflected on his audition of August 1970 in Genesis: Chapter and Verse.
He got the gig and throughout the 1970s, with him laying down the grooves, Genesis became a cornerstone of the prog-rock movement alongside virtuosic bands like Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Following Gabriel’s exit in 1975, Collins took the wheel, gradually guiding Genesis towards the more pop-oriented sound associated with the band’s later work.
In 1980, Collins kicked off his popular solo catalogue with Face Value, which topped the UK Albums Chart for three weeks and hit number seven on the US Billboard 200. The album was conceived as an overflow of sorts, allowing Collins to exercise his passion for soul music and record any music that wasn’t accepted by or suited to Genesis.
Face Value was best known for its lead single, ‘In The Air Tonight’, a moody study of anxiety. “I wrote the lyrics spontaneously,” Collins said of the song in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone. “I’m not quite sure what the song is about, but there’s a lot of anger, a lot of despair and a lot of frustration.”
“I was just fooling around,” he told Dave Thompson for Turn It On Again: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, and Genesis. “I got these chords that I liked, so I turned the mic on and started singing. The lyrics you hear are what I wrote spontaneously. That frightens me a bit, but I’m quite proud of the fact that I sang 99.9 per cent of those lyrics spontaneously.”
Despite the eventual popularity of ‘In The Air Tonight’, owing much of its thanks to Collins’ enrapturing drum solo, Genesis allegedly passed up the opportunity to record the track. Speaking to Melody Maker in 1981, Collins claimed that he had played a demo to his bandmates Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, but it was dismissed for being “too simple”.
However, Banks has since denied that Collins ever showed the band the song before recording it. If nothing else, the contrasting tales show how manic things were in the band towards its end stages. Was there a missed hit in their midst, or was Collins just so frustrated that he wove those feelings into a myth?
Listen to Phil Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’ below.
