Check out his work with Brand X if you doubt the man’s chops. It’s not easy to keep up with Percy Jones!
Back when he was huge as a solo act I hated Phil Collins and his “everywhere-ness”. It wasn’t just that you had to change the radio dial - you heard him on TV (even saw him in Miami Vice), on the beach, in restaurants… the man was everywhere. THERE WAS NO ESCAPE.
And the song “Sussudio” used to drive me to distraction - “WTF is a sussudio? What the hell does this crap even mean? And why do I have to listen to it? Why, God, WHY?”
Now… he has my sympathy and the songs haven’t aged badly like a number of 80s songs have.
The basic answer is, Phil tends to make up nonsense lyrics or cliche lyrics to songs he’s working on, intending to write better lyrics later on. “Su-su-sudio” was just a nonsense phrase that he planned to repalce with a girl’s name later.
It just turned out there WASN’T any real girl’s name that worked as a suitable replacement.
Pretty much this for me too, and “In the Air Tonight” was the basis for a great commercialas well.
I’m reminded of a post that appeared in rec.music.progressive, 15 years ago or more. The poster offered this proof that Phil Collins is the Antichrist:
In the '70s, Phil played with Genesis and Brand X, and appeared on many other good albums. In the '80s, he hit it big with his pop dreck. Does it not say in the book of Revelations “and the beast shall deceive many, before revealing his true nature?”
Not my words, but it cracked me up.
Phil Collins was one of the greatest drummers ever. The combination of power and intricacy exceeded only Bonham and Peart. Genesis was fucking FANTASTIC till Abacab. Collins slayed in Robert Plant’s first two solo albums.
In my mind, Collins never had a solo career. Nope. Did not happen. No sir.
Phil Collins was awesome in that episode of Miami Vice
My ex-husband is five foot three inches. Five-six seems tall to me.
I quite like Abacab and their eponymous album that followed. “Mama” is pretty different from what came before and after. Very interesting song to open as a first released single.
As for “Illegal Alien”…wow. The funny thing is if you take out the lyrics it’s a good song. “Home by the Sea” is awesome also. I quite liked their instrumentals, including “The Brazilian” from “Invisible Touch”
Edit: Also, no one has any love for “I Don’t Care Anymore”? That song is frigging primal.
I like Phil Collins music. Always have. I also prefer his era of Genesis. The Peter Gabriel era is all a bit weak for me. He’s one of the main reasons I love Disney’s Tarzan so much. And I think he’s a very funny guy, and I like his music videos.
A long long time ago there was talk of a new movie called Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which would be modernised and urbanised. The plan was for Michelle Pfeiffer to play Goldilocks, and Danny DeVito, Bob Hoskins, and Phil Collins to play the three bears. It, obviously, never went ahead, but ever since I heard about it I think of those three actors as having a connection, height being one of them.
One of my favorite musicians. Technical skill with amazing musicianship, he is one of the greatest drummers ever, and rules from his mighty throne above most of the other rock drum “legends”.
I can certainly pass on some (but not all) of his 80s output, but considering his huge discography, he’s got no more missed cues than any other long-standing recording artist.
My two favorite Genesis albums, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and A Trick of the Tail are Gabriel’s last and Collins’ first as front man, respectively. Both men are musical giants, and it’s a shame that it became “cool” (among a subset of vocal music geeks/critics) to decry one while lauding the other.
I had an old VHS Genesis documentary that came out around '91. They said that Tony Banks was a bigger influence on the band’s sound and direction than either Phil or Mike (but did note that it was a band, not just individuals bringing in their own stuff).
This is very true (in fact they all admit Mike and Tony wrote more of the Genesis songs than Phil, although his contributions grew as time went on.
As for their modern albums all being pop drek, they still had the long songs on those albums, just look at Domino, Home by the Sea, Driving the Last Spike, and even the Duke Suite (which was at one time discussed to be a 28 min album-side in length, but they eventually decided to split it up to fend off comparisons to The Lamb)…
Well, if that’s true… I know Tony has always said his earliest influence was Allan Price, the old organist of the Animals.
So, Tony probably would have been quite comfortable going for a more pop/soul sound in the Eighties, himself. He didn’t start out playing “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” after all. He started out playing “House of the Rising Sun” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
I don’t hate Phil Collins. I just have never heard anything by him that didn’t annoy the piss out of me.
I actually own Tony Banks’ and Mike Rutherford’s (Non Mike and the Mechanics) solo 80’s work.
It’s kind of hard to describe Banks album “The Fugitive”.
Mike Rutherford’s “Acting Very Strange” is all right. The criticism of his vocal work is correct in that it’s a little weak. It is interesting though to hear English singers who obviously were influenced all their lives by Motown.
Actually, along with In The Air Tonight, it’s one of my favorite Collins’ tunes.
That sounds right to me. There was a poster in another thread that said s/he couldn’t tell the difference between mid-80s Phil Collins solo and Genesis work of the same era (or regarded them as a distinction without a difference.) To me, while there were some songs on the post-Abacab albums that sounded a bit like an extension of Phil Collins’s solo work, Tony Banks’s keyboards and arrangements on those albums sounded distinctly Genesis to me, and not really like Phil Collins’s solo output.
+1.
In case anyone’s interested, Phil’s … Hits is a $5 MP3 album at Amazon right now:
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/ref=pe_446540_125798980_pe_row1_b1/?ASIN=B001RHPJBU
Includes Sussudio, which I know everyone loves! 