The Phil Collins song that was too hard for him to play: “I vowed I’d never play it again”
It goes without saying that any good artist should at least have a cursory knowledge of the song they will record. No one just walks into the studio and suddenly nails down a classic, and from start to finish, most artists spend their time slowly honing their skills until they find something that no one else can put into words. Phil Collins is no stranger to working that hard, but when performing the basic track for ‘Against All Odds’, he confessed that no one should ask him to go behind the keyboard during the tune.
Collins was never a slouch behind the keyboards, though. Despite the looming myth that drummers are by far the least necessary members of the group, seeing Collins turn Genesis into one of the biggest acts of all time is still a tremendous journey for any rock and roll musician to go on.
Even when looking at his first proper solo album, Face Value, he was already trying his best to make sure-fire pop hits. ‘In the Air Tonight’ had already sealed the deal with the drum fill to end all drum fills, but hearing him dabble in genres like soul showed that he was at least aware of how to work with other genres.
And, really, the drummer and the piano player should be that far apart. As much as a profession where someone bangs on things for a living is looked down upon with disdain, the keyboard is also its own kind of percussion instrument. Most people like Jerry Lee Lewis weren’t playing the piano to sound like Mozart, and when they flew off the handle, they could turn it into one of the most forceful instruments in the group.
That wasn’t what ‘Against All Odds’ was supposed to be. This was just a lowly ballad centred around Collins peeling back the layers of his broken heart, but when he finally tried his hand at playing it again, he figured that he would leave a lot of the heavy lifting to the professionals behind the scenes.
When talking about finetuning the track in the studio, Collins mentioned how it was near impossible for him to play it like the session player could, telling Storytellers, “I came up with these lyrics, and we got a real piano player to play on the record. And it was the record that was made while I was on tour, so I wasn’t really concentrating on it. I tried to play it at Live Aid, and my finger slipped off one of the black keys, and I felt 70,000 people [tense up]. So I vowed I’d never play it again.”
Then again, ‘Against All Odds’ is deceptively tricky on the piano. Any ballad like this is usually about keeping things open, but the way that the accents land on the finished product was proof that some of those complex time signatures never leave a prog rock musician’s mind.
Collins might be the first to admit that he is by no means a Stevie Wonder-level player, but ‘Against All Odds’ is still a decent showcase for what his pop songs represent. There were still a few tricky moments sprinkled in the mix, but whereas most prog bands spent their time playing as many notes as possible, Collins started to learn the idea of ‘less is more’ rather quickly.
