Phil Collins explains why playing with Bill Bruford didn’t fully click in Genesis
In a band like Genesis, Phil Collins doesn’t exactly have the easiest job in the world.
The fact that he is blamed for wrecking the band when Peter Gabriel would have been enough to carry, but having to be the frontman while also playing some of the greatest drum fills in prog rock history was always going to be a challenge. And while Collins was far more comfortable standing out front once they reached albums like Invisible Touch, he still had a keen ear for what the drums needed behind him.
After all, those iconic drum parts aren’t a walk in the park, and Collins wanted to make sure that he didn’t sacrifice anything by being at the front of the stage. No one could blame him for not wanting to play the massive drum fills and memorise every single time signature change in ‘Dance on a Volcano’ while also belting out those massive high notes, but it’s not like he couldn’t still play those fills if he wanted to.
You have to remember that Collins could have easily given people like Neil Peart a run for their money, and given his history with fusion groups like Brand X, he wasn’t going to relinquish his throne to some random percussionist. But it’s not like Chester Thompson wasn’t prepared from the moment that he started rehearsing with the band as their permanent touring drummer.
Collins had already been a fan of his when Thompson was working with bands like Frank Zappa, and if anyone could manage to figure out how to play any of Zappa’s creations, learning songs like ‘Supper’s Ready’ would have been a piece of cake. But when Collins first had the idea of working with another drummer, it was not like Bill Bruford didn’t fit the bill perfectly when he first sat behind the kit.
Being in both Yes and King Crimson is the kind of resume most progressive musicians would dream of, but Collins remembered that things didn’t come together like they should have with Bruford, saying, “It’s a certain type of discipline. You can’t just throw two drummers together. I played with Bill Bruford when he was in Genesis and it was great fun, but it didn’t really lock in anywhere close to me and Chester now.”
No one in their right mind would have said that Bruford was unqualified for the job, but chemistry is usually what makes or breaks any outfit. He could have easily kept making the most outlandish drum fills anyone had ever heard, but it was more about trying to settle into the groove whenever the band toned it down when working on their pop-friendly material like ‘That’s All’ and ‘Throwing It All Away’.
Bruford was more than capable of laying it down, but Thompson was the one with the extra punch that the band needed. A lot of Collins’s greatest drumming moments come from how he lays back into the groove and knowing when to bring a certain lift to every song, and when Thompson paired up with them during their reunion tours, you would have thought that he and Collins shared the same brain chemistry when songs like ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’ started.
Collins was always going to have the final say in what the backbeat should sound like, but with Thompson, it felt like he didn’t have to worry about the drums anymore. He had someone who could lay down the perfect foundation for every song, and with that out of the way, he could play up the frontman role that he was always meant to have.
