The drummer Phil Collins always worshipped: “He’s totally unique”
A lot of people tend to forget the kind of legend that Phil Collins was behind the drum kit.
Everyone might take one look at him and see the menace that gave the world songs like ‘Sussudio’, but even if you’re not a fan of his pop and adult contemporary side, the work that he did in the days of Genesis was unlike any other percussionist who had ever lived. He was looking to be in the same conversation as the Gene Krupas of the world, but the only reason he found a pathway into rock and roll was because of the other animals behind the drum kit.
Then again, Collins learned the one lesson that every drummer needs to figure out quite early: SERVE THE SONG. Ringo Starr may have been ridiculed for not being the most skilled drummer in the world, but his fills have become iconic solely due to his listening to every Beatles tune and giving it that perfect heartbeat, and Collins was no different when he first joined Genesis.
Granted, a lot of his songs were a bit technically challenging, and not everything that turned up on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway could really be described as subtle. Collins was willing to fly off the handle when he wanted to, and had he not had the breakout hit with ‘In the Air Tonight, there’s a good chance that we would live in a world where he reimagined himself as one of the biggest names in fusion drumming in his spare time.
Because outside of making brilliant pop songs, Collins wanted to make the kind of tunes that would make all the musicians in the audience swoon whenever they heard his lines. His favourite drummers were from bands like Weather Report during his prime, but when looking at rock and roll, there was hardly anyone that beat their kit up in the same way that Keith Moon did with The Who.
While John Bonham tends to get a lot of the praise as one of the best drummers in rock and roll history, Moon fit the wildman bill a lot better than any other percussionist. There seemed to be no real rhyme or reason to the way he plays at times, and yet his drum fills in the middle of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ were a stroke of genius when it gave way to those brilliant power chords of Pete Townshend.
He may have seemed insane at every single show, but Collins always had a dream of playing those kinds of fills alongside The Who, saying, “Pete and I became very good friends, as did Roger [Daltrey] and I said ‘I’d love to do it’. He had said that I had a big solo career and it probably wouldn’t have worked, and he’s probably right. But Keith Moon is one of those drummers that I worship. He’s totally unique and he gives the band the life.”
Which probably explains the stark contrast between the band’s sound in the pre- and post-Moon eras. Who Are You might not have seen ‘Moon the Loon’ in top form the same way he was during Quadrophenia, but while Kenney Jones could do everything he could to bring a sense of power to all of their later songs, an album like It’s Hard is a lot more difficult to accept as The Who when you realise that their heartbeat is gone.
The core of the band still remains, and most of us should be lucky to see Townshend and Daltrey still among the living today, but their shows are practically a celebration of what Moon brought to the world. Other drummers will try all they want to match him, but whenever Moon stepped behind the kit, it was impossible to think of anyone having that same sense of reckless abandon.
