The 1990s band Phil Collins always wanted to have: “I had a mountain to climb”
Phil Collins has clearly checked off as many collaborations as he could from his bucket list when he was still playing.
There aren’t many people who were more omnipresent in people’s lives than him when the 1980s kicked into high gear, and even though the era was full of flashy performers and people who wanted to shock the audience at every turn, there was nothing wrong with Collins showing up and playing a typical lush ballad. But even after working with the likes of David Crosby, ABBA, and Eric Clapton, there were definitely a few bands that seemed to shine above everyone else in his back catalogue.
Then again, Genesis was always going to hold a special place in Collins’ heart above everything else. Whether he was a solo superstar or not, Genesis is where he cut his teeth when making his way to the top, and while he didn’t consider himself a singer back then, hearing him hash out those first prog epics after Peter Gabriel left was like watching a star get born in real time.
But Collins would have preferred to stay in the back if he could help it half the time. He didn’t feel the need to be in the spotlight for the rest of his life, and even when he was making Face Value, it took a lot of convincing on the part of Ahmet Ertugen for him to even think about releasing it. Because if Collins was going to go solo, he would have preferred to have a more eclectic style than he ended up with.
Don’t get me wrong: a lot of Collins’s best work did cover a lot of bases, but he still wanted to hold onto his progressive roots where he could. His favourite bands when he went solo were people like Weather Report, and when you listen to those first Genesis albums with Collins on the mic, he was still trying to play that kind of complex music. But way before fusion ever got started, the real professional musicians could be found in the world of jazz and swing music.
That seems like the furthest thing away from what Collins was doing, but you have to remember what the biggest drummers of all time were looking up to. Everyone from John Bonham to Ginger Baker had an affinity for jazz drumming whenever they weren’t playing rock and roll, and Collins had to wait years before he had the kind of big band that he wanted to work with once he reached the 1990s.
It took a lot of hardship and Collins dealing with a broken wrist, but he wasn’t going to rest until he had the kind of swing group that he wanted, saying, “The Big Band is something I have wanted to do for about thirty years; ever since I heard Buddy Rich and his band back in ’66, and I wanted to do it since then and as a drummer it is a wonderful opportunity to stretch yourself and believe me, I had to stretch myself as far as I could go. I had a mountain to climb in terms of I’ve got a broken wrist here, I had to learn to play again. I had to learn to read, and I had to write my own charts out because I couldn’t read proper music. I had to invent my own phonetic language – but it was the most exciting thing I have ever done.”
And it’s not like this was some vanity project by any stretch. Collins was still working in the pop field on albums like Dance into the Light, but when you listen to his raw chops on this kind of record, he still had the kind of stamina and power that someone like Buddy Rich needed to have when he was conducting some of his finest big bands long before rock and roll had reached the airwaves.
Collins’s flirtation with this kind of music was never going to be one of the biggest genres in the world or anything, but you can definitely see where his head was at during this time Because after leaving Genesis, he wanted the chance to do whatever he wanted, so why not try his hand at going past rock and roll altogether?
