The rock legend Phil Collins thought sounded “lame”
Depending on which kind of progressive rock fan you talk to, Phil Collins is either a brilliant innovator or the death of popular music. Regardless of his pedigree operating in Genesis and into his solo career, Collins has often been ridiculed for his soft-rock demeanour, often playing to his strengths at writing ballads that are too gentle for the hard-rock crowd. Although Collins’ music can be considered lame by some, he believed that one of the giants of the industry was far less fashionable than him.
For as omnipresent as he was in the 1980s, though, Collins was never focused on being in fashion in the first place. Compared to the other giants that walked the Earth, Collins was more than happy to be a sideman for the rest of his career before Peter Gabriel decided to leave the band behind in search of a solo career and to spend time with his family.
While Collins felt like the ideal fit, he soon found himself doing the same with Genesis, straddling his solo career with his time in the progressive rock outfit. Although Collins left most of the mainstream material for his solo years, he never sold out because he wanted the money.
From his first solo record onward, Collins wrote songs that were indicative of where he was emotionally, talking about the heartache he felt after his first marriage fell apart. By the time he started covering pop-rock standards like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, he was still extremely sincere about wanting to share his love for soul music with a new generation.
Around the same time Collins was going pop, another major troubadour was trying to take back his spot on the charts. After years of being known as a blues-rock god, Eric Clapton had started making various inroads to bring his lowdown and dirty guitar licks onto the charts, earning himself some of his biggest solo smashes with songs like ‘Wonderful Tonight’.
Although Collins was proud to call Clapton a friend throughout his career, he could see him leaning into his weaknesses as a songwriter on albums like Money and Cigarettes. Compared to the immortal guitar hero that had once been labelled ‘God’, the album was a decidedly neutered version of what Clapton was used to as if to bring across his blues fury with a bit of pop honey.
While Collins would eventually help Clapton steer himself in the right direction on future albums like Edge of Darkness and August, he admitted that he wasn’t a fan of his early 1980s work, telling Consequence, “I kind of felt like I brought him into this era, because sometimes some of his earlier albums — I’m not talking about Dominoes or Cream or even his early solo years, but Money and Cigarettes was a little lame. I think he was on automatic pilot, and I kicked him out of that and made him start writing.”
Even though Collins’s work with Clapton featured various elements of 1980s music, it wouldn’t be long before Clapton brought everything back to his roots, making a solid return on the album Journeyman before reinventing himself on acoustic guitar for his appearance on Unplugged. While Clapton would see his greatest heights without Collins leading him on, the Genesis drummer can at least take credit for getting him out of his creative rut.
