The Genesis albums Phil Collins never enjoyed listening to
There are more than a few people who would probably be happy not to hear Phil Collins for the rest of their lives if they can help it.
He may not have been one of the most insulting things that ever happened to music by any stretch, but when looking at how omnipresent he was back in the 1980s, there’s a good chance that a whole generation of music fans would rather punch themselves in the face rather than listen to ‘Sussudio’ one more time. But it turns out that even when you are Phil Collins, there’s only so much Phil Collins that you can take before you start going insane.
Granted, it’s not like the pop star years were the be-all-end-all for what Collins did. A lot of people like to put him down as the person who ended up killing Genesis and taking them away from their prog roots, but that’s not really the case. They were naturally getting more poppy, and considering Peter Gabriel would end up having his pop breakthrough around the same time, it’s not like the band was going to stay prog rock darlings throughout every era of their career or anything.
But in Collins’s case, he would have gladly spent his days away from being a pop star if he could have helped it. His favourite music leaned more towards jazz and fusion, and there was a good chance that he would have ended up making one of the most complex jazz-rock albums had Face Value not blown up. Because, really, he didn’t hone his chops for so long just to not use them.
All of Genesis’ greatest prog records sound like that because of Collins’s drumming. He may not have been the kind of master that Neil Peart would become in later years, but compared to the heaviest drummers that had come out before him, he could certainly hang with the likes of Bill Bruford and Carl Palmer in any jam session. But it took a lot of time before they finally got to that point.
And even when the band started making their masterpieces, it’s not like Collins was clamouring to go back to Foxtrot or The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Those records were technical marvels and deserve their place in the Hall of Fame of progressive music, but even Collins had to admit that a lot of those songs suffer from a fair degree of overplaying. It’s one thing to create a mood on an album like Nursery Cryme, but by the time he became a pop star, Collins started to get a little embarrassed by his playing.
Technically, it was great, but as far as Collins could tell, all it sounded like was a band chasing their own tail, saying, “Personally speaking, I feel I was trying to do a little too much on those early albums. I was trying to prove to people that I could play. In doing so I wasn’t necessarily playing what the music required. We were collectively guilty of that as a group. You tend to try to prove what you’re capable of musically and make the mistake of displaying that technical ability at every opportunity.”
Even if they did get too technical in places that doesn’t mean it isn’t still entertaining to listen to. A song like ‘Supper’s Ready’ probably wasn’t going to get played on the radio, but if you ignore all of the costumes that Gabriel was wearing onstage, most drummers would be proud of coming up with a section like ‘Apocalypse in 9/8’ and lock in perfectly with everything Mike Rutherford was doing.
Sure, those albums aren’t going to get the attention of anyone looking for the next big single, but music doesn’t always have to be about the hit parade. Sometimes it’s more fun just to see what a band can do on a record, and it’s always a joy listening to them honing their chops one time signature change at a time.
