“I’d be sunk”: why Phil Collins struggled to play ‘And So to Fright’
Not every artist can look at their discography and convince themselves they’ve made every masterpiece they could. Some albums aren’t meant to hold up to the passage of time, and there are usually those moments where the performance is either a little bit rough or things don’t come together between the instruments. Although Phil Collins had learned the ins and outs of playing in a progressive rock band like Genesis, even he had to admit that there were a few moments when he got tripped up.
Then again, Collins was always a bit uncomfortable with the music that Genesis fit into. Sure, they could still be a great prog-rock outfit that put together epic tunes, but from the time that he first stood behind the microphone, it was about finding something that broke away from the same formulaic fantasy songs that Peter Gabriel wrote every time they made albums like Foxtrot.
Even when working outside of that framework, it’s not like they suddenly pivoted immediately towards pop music. Collins might get the reputation as the one who ruined Genesis every time he went out to play a song like ‘That’s All’ or ‘Invisible Touch’, but it’s hard to look at anything off of Wind and Wuthering or A Trick of the Tail and think that it was made to get played on the radio nonstop.
Hell, Collins wasn’t even the one pushing for having a pop career. The whole transition was completely natural on their part, and even when he was working on the more commercial prog-rock during the Gabriel years, Collins was still honing his jazz chops when working with the group Brand X.
Despite being one of the biggest drummers in the world, Collins’s side project seemed like a British complement to the fusion bands happening around the same time, like Weather Report. But while Collins could get into some pretty strange time signature changes in Genesis, Brand X was another beast, especially when having a bassist that was as nimble as Percy Jones as part of the rhythm section.
While Collins had his moments when he could fly off the handle, he credited Jones as being the only reason why he could get through a track like ‘And So to F’, saying, “I’ve never been fluent with time signatures. I’m fine with seven because seven’s an easy one, yet apart from that, I’ve never been able to just flow in and out of odd times. There’s a tune I play with Brand X called `And So To F’, which is in nine. The only way I can play that tune in concert is to actually sing the bass line while I play. If I deviate from that, I’d be sunk.”
That might also have to do with how he internalises the material. A lot of fusion bands are meant to flex everyone’s artistic muscles. However, when listening to a track like ‘Dance on a Volcano’, Collins could still manage to keep the beat with parts that were divided by 16th notes in a few bars rather than the typical quarter notes or eighth notes half the time.
Even if Collins does have a reputation for being one of the most badass drummers that prog-rock had ever seen, it’s not like he’s superhuman. Every musician needs the opportunity to grow, but anyone who still thinks that all Collins does is ‘Sussudio’ and ‘Invisible Touch’ needs to hear that he was the one to pull off this kind of performance.
