“Our best spontaneous moments”: the Genesis song Phil Collins calls one of the band’s finest
There tends to be a certain stigma surrounding the Phil Collins era of Genesis.
Even though every pop fan knows them for creating some of the greatest pop-rock songs of the latter half of the 1980s, there was always going to be a bit of side-eye coming from everyone who knew the band as one of the greatest prog acts of all time before Collins “ruined” them when he first started singing. And while there might be some truth to that statement, it’s not like Collins even skimped out when it came to being one of the most complex drummers that the world had ever seen.
You have to remember that Collins was one of the leading forces behind the band, even when Peter Gabriel was behind the microphone, and a lot of the band’s greatest moments came when they worked together as a group. Nursery Cryme was already a sign of things to come when Collins got behind the kit, and when you listen to a record like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Collins was bashing the hell out of his drums like he was recording the last thing he would ever get to play.
That reputation may have taken some dents when he started making songs like ‘Sussudio’ and ‘Against All Odds’, but the truth is that Collins never envisioned being a pop star. The drums were his security blanket whenever he performed, and even when he was working in Genesis, the rest of the band were equally responsible for making songs like ‘That’s All’ and ‘Invisible Touch’ some of the biggest tunes of the 1980s.
But when looking through their prog-rock years, Foxtrot stands out as the best of both worlds in many respects. There aren’t many songs that were cut out to be singles when looking at most of the track listing, but the theatricality was what made every one of their shows great. Gabriel was unlike any performer that the world had ever seen around that time, but the only reason why he was able to wow people in a fox’s head and a dress was because of what the music brought out of him.
The band were toying with different ideas all the time, and compared to every other prog band, ‘Supper’s Ready’ was their magnum opus for a while. Every one of their contemporaries had had songs that went on well past the traditional pop song length, but this massive epic across the second side of the record was an absolute treat for Collins to work when he was presented with ‘Apocalypse in 9/8.’
Most drummers would be terrified playing in that kind of odd time signature, but Collins was more than happy to challenge himself with something like that, saying, “I came back and Mike [Rutherford] and Tony [Banks] had written ‘Apocalypse in 9/8.’ Tony had written them not thinking about time signatures. I maybe played it once or twice and never thought about it too much. It was one of those moments where the tape was rolling and we just captured it. That was probably one of our best spontaneous moments.”
Which is refreshing considering how many prog rock acts needed to have their parts worked out well in advance before they played them. Anyone else would have needed a road map to keep track of where they were throughout any Rush or Yes song, but since Collins had already learned to be on his toes when working with bands like Brand X, it wasn’t that hard for him to make that transition when it came to working with songs that aren’t exactly in an even metre.
These kinds of hurdles are enough to make most other bands’ heads spin, but Collins didn’t sign up to become a part of your average rock and roll group. Genesis had already tried to break out of the usual rock and roll conventions, and they weren’t about to start selling themselves short once they started making an epic.
