My relationship with Phil Collins and his music is a contradictory one. His voice and his sound are part of the pop fabric of my earliest music memories, I would have been nine years old when my memory of him gurning in the video of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ was sewn and as a fan of The Police at the time, one of my first album purchases was a ‘Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’ record because it featured Sting; Phil was there as well doing a live version of ‘In The Air Tonight’, which I also remember liking. But as the eighties unfolded and Phil became ubiquitous, I did not become a Collins fan as I did other artists and bands I got into in my early teens. By the later end of that decade, I had crossed the barricades to the growing masses of Collins detractors. Something in the way he was impossible to escape, in tandem with my parents rating him highly and the nagging sense around the time of ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ that he was churning music out on auto-pilot and getting a disproportionate amount of praise for it in the mainstream media (not the music press) established him as scorn worthy by a then music obsessed seventeen year old. That he received press attention in the nineties with accusations of being a tory loving tax exile and sending his ex-wife a fax to notify her of their divorce only served to reinforce my anti-Phil feelings.

Maybe I would never have moved on from this position if not for the fact that in the summer of 1987 I attended, with school friends, my first concert, Peter Gabriel at Earls Court in London. Gabriel is a performer who grabs an audience’s attention with visuals, dynamic energy, and wonderful, often challenging music. Here was an artist I was sure to be a fan of and the subsequent months saw a process of back catalogue digging which returned me to the early seventies and those superb, flowery, and crazy prog rock albums when he was the singer in Genesis. Those albums remain among my favorites to this day and of course who was the Genesis drummer for most of them? None other than old Buster Collins. And rather brilliant behind the drum kit he was too. Not only that but Phil was also an audible presence with his voice long before he took over as lead singer, he is the main backing vocalists and even then, got a couple of leads. So despite my negative position towards the man in general, my whole hearted agreement with Billy Bragg when he said in the music press that if Phil Collins is singing about the homeless (on ‘Another Day In Paradise’) but not engaging with the problem he is to some degree using the situation to his own benefit, I still had to give him the kudos for being an important member of one of my favorite bands. “I love Genesis” I used to say, “but only when Peter Gabriel was the singer, they lost their magic when Phil Collins took over.”

That position has slowly changed over the last couple of decades. For starters I came to appreciate just how important the Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford writing was to the band and how that flare remained after Gabriel’s departure. In fact, for the next ten years Genesis continued to make music with much to dig in and enjoy, it just so happened that by then it sat alongside hit singles. Tracks like ‘Turn It On Again,’ ‘Mama’ and ‘That’s All’ are rock/pop classics of the era for sure, favorites of mine in fact, something which I have taken it all too far in my denial of. My suspicion about Phil was, I believe, not entirely inaccurate. Having recently listened to the audiobook of his ‘Not Dead Yet’ autobiography, it is obvious his problem by the mid-eighties was that he put himself about too much, said ‘yes’ too often and the quality of both his solo and Genesis output did suffer. But the book also suggests this was less his naked capitalist ambition and more a modest humility at his core, a sense that he could not possibly decline the opportunities flying his way because they might never happen again. Producing heroes like Eric Clapton, working with Motown legends on the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, accepting Robert Plant’s offer to “do something together” at Live Aid. Phil got caught in a never-ending cycle of “what an opportunity, how can I not do that?”

It is plausible that if Phil Collins had just gone underground in the mid-eighties, disappeared out of view for a decade or so, by the end of the nineties he would have been hailed as a musical genius. I am inclined to believe him when he says he did not want to be such an ever-present irritant, looking so smug riding the scree on all that success. He made himself an easy target which served to diminish the relevance of all the superb music created up to that point. If only he had held firm against the pressure to be the voice of the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, just nurtured his creative instincts in the background. If only he had refused to do the Atlantic crossing at Live Aid when it became apparent it was just him travelling, not Duran Duran and others as he had been led to believe. Alone it just looked like a massive, literal ego trip. If only he had stepped back from the Led Zeppelin reunion that same day when it was obvious they could not rehearse with him. Instead, they just let Phil take the flack for this massive shit show blot on their reputation. Look at the footage, Jimmy Page was a dribbling, stumbling wreck that day and Phil did his best under impossible circumstances. The way they acted with the MTV interviewer afterwards was embarrassing, no wonder Phil stepped in with a few helpful answers. You see his eternal problem in those moments, say nothing and you are just being a dick like the rest of the band, speak up and people will say you are muscling in on something that has nothing to do with you.

Having finished the book, I felt the urge to try out some solo Phil so went to a first stop essentials collection on Apple Music. I have to say there are some gems in there although equally there is bland stuff that I will probably never get past. But how many artists can I honestly say I unconditionally like all their output? Not many for sure. If you get a chance to read ‘Not Dead Yet’ I would strongly recommend it to music fans, regardless of their overall position on Phil and his music. It is awash with fantastic anecdotes featuring the biggest names of the era; the George Harrison story around the recording of ‘All Things Must Pass’ is a fascinating time capsule to those 1970 sessions with a hilarious punchline years later to boot. The stories about his relationships and marriages are as gloriously honest as they are messy and complicated, whilst the Collins years of atypical rock star excess and flirting with death come in the period you would least expect. Overall, it is hard not to come away from this life story with a warm feeling towards the man, even if I never wholly lose touch with the things that once pushed me away. Nevertheless, against all odds, I am a bit of a Phil Collins fan these days (there I’ve said it!)