The 1970s musician Phil Collins called the underdog of music history
Phil Collins is one of those unique musicians whose ability extends well beyond just writing songs as an individual.
He has an innate ability where he can listen to someone’s music and, in a short space of time, work out exactly what it is that they have to offer and how he can coexist alongside them. Look at Genesis, for instance. Collins joined that band late when they were already making music, and that meant that he was putting himself in a creative unit which already had its feet on the ground.
Collins was already writing music at this point in his life, but he also didn’t want to ruin a good thing. When he joined Genesis, he could see that as a creative unit, they already had a pretty good system in place. As such, even though he eventually did start writing with them, at first, after spotting what they were already doing well at, he opted to take a step back and just let them work.
“The spirit of Genesis was Tony, Mike and Peter,” said Collins, “I didn’t regard myself as a songwriter then. But there were things in Genesis I was highly influential in. My strength was arranging […] I was very into the first line-up of Yes, the one with [guitarist] Peter Banks. I remember listening to them and loving the way they took other people’s songs […] And did something different with them.”
It’s for this reason that even outside of Genesis, Phil Collins has been able to work with so many different artists. He has a very unselfish approach to the art of songwriting, one where he knows that the track itself is king, not the people who are making it. Every move he makes when crafting music is done with the intention of finishing up with an excellent piece of music, not necessarily writing a song where he sounds like an unstoppable musician on it.
Just look at some of his great collaborations over the years. You have tracks like ‘Easy Lover’, where he teamed up with Philip Bailey in a bid to create a number two hit single that people still love singing to this day. Equally, you have his work with Marily Martin on ‘Separate Lives’, which was one hell of a ballad that the public just couldn’t get enough of.
However, one of his more significant collaborations came on the song ‘No One Receiving’, which he did with Brian Eno. The song isn’t as big a hit as the two mentioned above; however, it did expose Collins to the work of Eno, which is something he’s always been grateful for. To this day, he still doesn’t think that Eno gets the credit he deserves, and considers him one of music’s true underdogs, thanks to his ability to craft beautiful soundscapes often going unrecognised.
“I played on this track, actually,” said Collins, discussing ‘No One Receiving’, “I’ve done a couple of albums with him, and he is very fresh to work with. He’s got a lot of good ideas and a lot of strange ideas. He really should be listened to, because he is doing some very nice things. He works in [those] two-minute soundtrack moods, which is a lot of what we’re about, I think, Genesis. So I feel very strongly about what he’s doing. [He is] another one of the underdogs.”
Collins has a point. Eno seems to be one of those artists where those who know, know. He is appreciated well by those who are lucky enough to have been introduced to his work, but with that much talent and creativity, he should be a household name at this point.
