Why does everybody hate Phil Collins?
This is a good game for your next drunken night: if musicians were to be represented via the medium of food, what would each one be? It’s mostly a difficult debate, but there’s one man who holds a definitive answer. Phil Collins would undeniably be Marmite. Lauded by some sections of society as not only a sonic stalwart but a genuine visionary mind who has contributed a genre-spanning world to music over the years, to others, he’s just a permanent blot on the industry, whose unnerving presence has become too rich to taste.
It’s worth remembering that when Collins first started climbing the ranks as the drummer of Genesis, he was genuinely like a second coming. No one had ever quite held a command over the sticks like he did, and one smashing beat at a time, he very quickly started turning heads. This even extended into the dynamic of the band itself, with guitarist Mike Rutherford recalling that: “On drums, Phil was immediately a huge lift. We had never had that kind of energy from the engine room before; it was just a whole different level.”
So, where exactly did things begin to sour? Well, it was Collins’ seemingly boundless talent that eventually began to get in the way. Taking over from Peter Gabriel as the leader of Genesis after his departure from the band in 1975, ultimately, the move from the back of the stage to the very front and centre was an intoxicating transition, and Collins’ view of potential sonic horizons began to rapidly expand.
Over the ensuing years and decades, it goes without saying that the musician went on to assume sheer stratospheric fame – and, for better or worse, made him one of the biggest names in all of music. But despite the life of lavishness and luxuries, it’s fair to say that Collins also stoked up his fair share of enemies along the way, both in the form of those judging his sonic efforts and those competing with him for even a small shot of the limelight.
So, why exactly is Phil Collins hated so much?
Of course, it was not only Collins’ catapult into mega stardom that proved unsavoury. His launch into the upper echelons of celebrity was only further strengthened by him beginning to dominate both the prog rock and mainstream pop appeals – not typically a winning combination – and suddenly, he was God.
Or, at the very least, that was how Collins himself viewed it. Certainly, it was true that his burgeoning solo career in the late 1970s and into the 1980s was a welcome gift to him in his musical tenure, but largely to the rest of the world, there was simply too much going on all at the same time.
Was he really still as devoted to the eclectic sound and vision as he ever was, or were the blinding lights of ‘In the Air Tonight’ a far more dazzling and alluring elixir? It definitely seemed so, as Collins’ soaring solo efforts began to take their toll on the rest of the band, who, either in bitterness at his success or frustration at his waning presence, truly began to resent their frontman just as much as those competing against him in the leagues of chart dominance.
There’s also the small matter of Collins’ ego, which more often than not somewhat obscured his desired image of being a singer for the everyman. He became notorious for blasting any journalist or critic who dared to dismiss any of his efforts, lest they fall under the wrath of a pop behemoth. But therein lay the issue – Collins thought he was an invincible titan who was permanently gifting the world his unwavering presence, when in reality, he was becoming a bigger and bigger bugbear.
The truth was – and still is, in any context – that the downside that comes with being the biggest star in the world is that you cannot evade criticism. It was to Collins’ own detriment that he believed he shouldn’t be a victim of this, however, and his tumultuous relationship with the press only led him into even choppier waters. In time, his popularity within the inner industry circles also began to freefall, with everyone from David Bowie to Noel Gallagher having their say, with the latter in particular claiming: “Just because you sell lots of records, it doesn’t mean to say you’re any good. Look at Phil Collins.”
What all the controversy surrounding Collins boiled down to was the fact that there was no missing him, no matter where you went. It was as if one man single-handedly produced the sound of the 1980s and 1990s, and to say that many other artists didn’t take kindly to this is a pretty big understatement. This “omnipresence”, as Collins later put it himself, granted him all the markings of a classic pantomime villain in musical form – so how did this hatred ultimately end up in the eyes of the man in question?
Collins did acknowledge some of his shortcomings in a 2010 interview, noting: “The persona on stage came out of insecurity … it seems embarrassing now. I recently started transferring all my VHS tapes onto DVD to create an archive, and everything I was watching, I thought, ‘God, I’m annoying.’ I appeared to be very cocky, and really I wasn’t.”
That said, a year later, he then hit back: “The fact that people got so sick of me wasn’t really my fault. … It’s hardly surprising that people grew to hate me. I’m sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn’t mean it to happen like that!”
It’s a bit of a confused dichotomy, to say the least. Retiring in 2011 due to backlash, the world thought it was done with Collins – that is, until the lure of fame (and, ahem, money) saw him shooting back into the spotlight with the a string of solo appearances and the Genesis reunion in 2020.
For now, the future is uncertain. As of merely months ago, Collins said he was “not hungry” for making any more music. But, indeed, our original Marmite analogy reaches its perfect conclusion – because is he really sickened by the taste of fame, or can he be reeled back in for one more bite? Only time will tell.
