The nod of appreciation in 2004 that finally satisfied Phil Collins as an artist
In 1966, Phil Collins sat in his room, only 15 years old, attempting to write his first-ever song.
He wanted to write a heartbreaking love song, and so he decided to use the key of D minor, a note which is described as ‘the saddest of chords’. The track he ended up putting together was titled ‘Lying, Crying, Dying’, and if you’re a big Phil Collins fan, then no, this isn’t an unreleased gem that you can go and dig up. Collins first effort never made it to public release, and all we have is his description of said track: “A very naive but heartfelt ballad”.
While he may not have been an expert at the art of the love song in the ‘60s, he did eventually work out how to perfectly put them together, so much so that in 2004, he decided to release a compilation album consisting purely of the different love songs that he’d written over the years. Love Songs: A Compilation… Old and New stands as a testament to Collin’s ability to convey emotion with music.
“The album has been something I’ve been working on on-and-off for four or five years,” he said, “It’s putting together in one place, love-songwise, what I think is my best work, and then some things that you may have missed, because they’re on albums that didn’t do that great.”
38 years, and finally, Collins had enough love songs for an album. Of course, that statement alone seems a tad unfair, as during that period, he did a lot more than just write some odes to longing here and there. When he worked as part of Genesis, he was responsible for putting together some of the greatest prog and art rock music to ever hit the airwaves. He admitted once that when he first started with the band, he focused predominantly on arranging, but then eventually found his feet as a songwriter.
“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.”
He was able to take those lessons from Genesis and apply them perfectly to his solo career. The songs he released during this period moved away from the more chaotic, complicated structure of a lot of Genesis numbers, and instead were pretty wonderful nods to pop. Collins gained plenty of fans when making this kind of music, but a lot of critics hated this more simplistic approach.
When Collins looks back at his career and examines the different pieces that he made throughout it, he doesn’t feel a great deal of regret. Whether he was making complicated prog rock tracks, pop songs, or love ballads, they all appealed to a different group of people. He likes the fact that his fanbase is pretty limitless in that regard, and it was on one night in Vegas, as he looked out to his audience and received the nod of approval from different ranges of people, he knew he had done something right.
“Basically, my audience is the man on the street, which is what I am,” he said, “I just did a show in Vegas, and I looked down and in about the sixth row were these guys with white beards and overalls. They looked like truck drivers […] When I saw them, they lifted their beer bottles to me. But at the same show were six-, seven-year-old kids, then teenagers. It’s not just ‘old people’ who like what I do. That, in the end, gives me a lot of satisfaction, like I’ve done a good job.”
