The “tragic” singer Phil Collins could never relate to
Phil Collins didn’t really look the part of a celebrity rock and roll star in the slightest.
He was a brilliant vocalist with a microphone in his hand, but the idea of him playing up his features or being one of the most glamorous icons of the industry was never really in the cards when he started putting out some of his records. It was all about making the best impact with the songs alone, and he felt that some of the best stars in the world tended to forget about that every now and again.
Because as much as Collins worked in the 1980s, the fact that he managed to be a star almost doesn’t make sense. Let’s face it: he didn’t exactly look the part. He looked like someone who would make a half-decent wedding band member, and yet from the moment that he opened his mouth on his first solo singles, there was no one else who could possibly touch what he was doing on all of his solo work.
Half of the reason why was that he knew where all of those great songs came from. He wanted to pay tribute to some of his favourite acts whenever he performed, and that came from him constantly trying to see where he could take his music. He knew that he could work magic in Genesis, but the idea of having David Crosby sing on one of his records or getting Eric Clapton back into shape to be an 1980s hitmaker.
Not all of his experiments worked, and more than a few people are going to have ‘Sussudio’ stuck in their head until the end of time, but no one expected Collins to suddenly become one of the most profitable men in the music industry. No one else had sold nearly as many records as he did, and the fact that he managed to reach the 100 million records milestone both in Genesis and on his own puts him in a class with only two other people.
It makes sense that someone like Paul McCartney would get that accolade, but Michael Jackson seemed to be too big for words by the time that Collins was making his hits. The drummer was there at the dawn of MTV, but by the time that Jackson was making the videos for ‘Thriller’ and ‘Billie Jean’, every single one of his tunes felt like events. He was on top of the world at every turn, but Collins could also see that getting tiresome as well.
If you think about it, Jackson had a spotlight on him since he was a kid, and Collins couldn’t imagine what he was going through, saying, “I’m a fan of Michael’s. It’s extraordinary that he’s lived as he has lived. To have been a huge star since he was five or six. We can’t have any idea of what he thinks like, because he’s never lived a normal life. I met him. He was very nice, but it was like you didn’t want to touch him, because he would break, you know. His story is probably a little tragic.”
And we all know the ending of this story, don’t we? It doesn’t take a super sleuth to see all of the real-life horrors that were in the biopic of Jackson, and given the fact that that movie cuts off after a certain point, it’s not like the film even delved into the real nitty-gritty of his past, especially when he ended up being taken to court after years of trying to be free from the hand of his father.
Collins may have been a much more laid-back figure in the public eye, but that might have been for the best as well. Because if he had been going through what Jackson had to go through, he probably would have bowed out of the industry long before he made records like Testify later down the line.
