The Phil Collins song his bandmate thought he would screw up: “What are you doing?”
Phil Collins was probably too ambitious to be in just one band for the rest of his life.
Before he had even started with Genesis, the drummer had already been in some of the tightest progressive rock outfits in the world, even giving fusion drummers a run for their money with how much he put into his different fills. While it wasn’t going to be easy doing a solo outfit and keeping Genesis afloat, Tony Banks was more relieved that he didn’t have to add anything to ‘In the Air Tonight’.
That reaction says a lot about how distinct Collins’ solo instincts were becoming at the time. Where Genesis thrived on complexity and layered arrangements, ‘In the Air Tonight’ proved that restraint could be just as powerful when used with intent.
It also highlights the subtle shift in Collins’ artistic identity. Rather than relying on the intricate interplay that defined Genesis, he was beginning to trust simplicity and atmosphere, laying the groundwork for a solo career that would eventually eclipse the band’s own commercial reach.
By the time Collins talked about going on a solo career, it looked like Genesis was about to fall apart again. The entire ethos of the band had already been torn apart when Peter Gabriel, so how the hell were they supposed to continue on now that the replacement singer wanted to leave the group?
Well, Collins’s departure was a bit more complicated than that. Since he was dealing with the collapse of his marriage, Collins was practically on sabbatical from Genesis, saying that he would return once he got his priorities straight. He may have been right about the family coming first, but he also wasn’t willing to keep all this pent-up emotion inside and not make music out of it.
In the midst of trying to reconnect with his wife, Collins would write most of the pieces on Face Value as a response to what he had been going through. Whereas many songs are about Collins tracing the lines of his broken heart, ‘In the Air Tonight’ is nothing but cold-blooded revenge, talking about the kind of vindictive spirit that comes from someone who feels they’ve been strung along.
While the track is less of a song and more of a buildup for a kickass drum fill for some people, the charm is how minimal the piece is. Although it’s impossible not to air-drum to it when that fill hits, every percussion layer before that was just a drum machine, only being supported by a keyboard and a handful of crunchy guitars in the background.
Even though the rest of the band could have easily gotten upset that their singer made a record without them, Banks thought that he could never improve on what Collins did, saying, “If Genesis had done it, I’d have probably screwed it up. I bet I would’ve added another chord or tried to do something with it and taken it somewhere else. I bet I would’ve said, ‘Phil, what are you doing? You can’t use just three chords in a song.’”
Knowing where the band would be going in just a few years, hearing that a track was too simple for Genesis is honestly hilarious. Between the song’s mainstream appeal and anthemic chorus, this would practically become the foundation for what Genesis would do, going from a prog rock outfit with a mainstream fixation to a pop act dabbling with progressive music.
By the time they got to albums like Invisible Touch, it was practically impossible to draw the line between what they sounded like and what Collins’s solo career sounded like, making the same kind of rock and roll anthems that could fit on MTV alongside Bon Jovi and Asia. The tides were already changing for Genesis, but Banks not wanting to take the plunge on ‘In the Air Tonight’ was practically permission for Collins to run wild in his solo career.
