How did a child actor become the front man of Genesis?
Did Phil Collins really break up with one of his wives via fax machine?
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight?
This is the untold truth of Phil Collins.
Long before he entertained any notions of being a rock n' roll performer, drumming,
singing, or otherwise, a young Phil Collins pursued the creative life as an actor.
According to the Express, it was relatively easy for Collins to jump into professional
acting because his mother ran a theatrical agency for a London performing arts school.
In 1964, she received a call from the producers of "Oliver!," a West End-based hit musical
version of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist."
They needed a new actor to play the mischievous street urchin known as the Artful Dodger,
so she sent her son on an audition.
Collins, 13 at the time, beat out around 100 other actors for the part.
He held the role for seven months, quitting after his puberty struck and his voice "began
croaking on some of the lower notes" during a performance.
Nevertheless, teenage Collins made the jump from stage to screen.
He was cast as an audience member in a concert scene in the 1964 Beatles movie "A Hard Day's
Night," according to Cosmic Magazine, but didn't show up in the final cut.
Collins similarly played an extra in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" but was also edited out
because of an unsightly bandage on his head.
Phil Collins' first taste of rock fame and success came as a replacement drummer for
the '70s progressive rock band Genesis alongside frontman Peter Gabriel.
Peter Gabriel wasn't just the lead singer for the early incarnation of Genesis, he was
a commanding stage presence, wearing bizarre and elaborate costumes and belting out vocals
with one of the most soulful and recognizable voices in rock history.
When he left the group in 1975, it represented a monumental shift in Genesis.
Phil Collins told Prog,
"For a time, I thought we'd carry on as a four-piece without any singing."
Deciding against that, the band put out a call for singers to submit their audition
tapes, but the remaining members of Genesis didn't feel that any newcomer really gelled.
That's when they realized they had a pretty good singer in the mix already: Collins, who'd
occasionally taken the vocals on a deep album cut here and there.
Collins told iNews,
"It was the last thing I wanted to do, but when Peter left we couldn't find another singer
and so the rest of the band convinced me to do it."
The top echelon of British rock in the 1970s was a small, tight-knit brotherhood, populated
by just a handful of bands, including Genesis and The Who.
Collins was friendly with the latter act, taking on the role of Uncle Ernie in the star-studded
theatrical adaptation of The Who's trippy concept album "Tommy."
Besides Collins' friendship with Pete Townshend, he may have gotten the gig since he played
the same instrument as The Who drummer Keith Moon, who played Uncle Ernie in the film version.
In September 1978, Moon died.
In the wake of that tragedy, Townshend and Collins collaborated in the studio, and Collins
even offered up his services to the band.
Townshend then sadly broke the news to Collins that he'd already hired frequent Who collaborator
Kenney Jones to replace Moon.
Phil Collins topped the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart at such a rate in the 1980s and
early 1990s that it was almost routine.
Between 1980 and 1994, 18 of Collins' singles reached the Top 40, and six of them hit #1.
Even more impressively, during the same span of time, Collins concurrently served as the
lead singer of Genesis, where the group was almost as successful on the pop chart.
Unlike other singers of the late 20th century who found massive popularity fronting a band
which they then departed for solo success Collins didn't leave his group, choosing to
moonlight and juggle his soft rock solo stuff with the more rock-oriented Genesis.
Collins wouldn't actually leave the group until 1996, well after the band's commercial
peak.
And Collins still found the time to play drums and percussion on other artists' recordings.
He performed on numerous releases by the jazz-fusion collective Brand X, played drums on Daryl
Hall's solo LP "Sacred Songs" and Robert Plant's "Pictures at Eleven."
He even found time to produce, write songs for, sing backup on, and provide the drums
for "Something's Going On," the hit album and single by Frida of ABBA.
Classic rock behemoth Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 following the untimely death of drummer
John Bonham.
But in 1985, at the behest of one of the organizers of Live Aid, the band reunited to play the
massive, two-city charity concert to aid African famine relief.
Tasked with the unenviable role of replacing Bonham were Chic's Tony Thompson and Phil
Collins.
Phil, however, didn't think the set turned out that well because he wasn't a good fit.
He told Q,
"I turned up and I was a square peg in a round hole.
You could sense I wasn't welcome.
If I could have walked off, I would have done."
After musical success, Phil Collins found his way back into the TV and movie business,
with small roles in stuff like "Miami Vice" and "Hook."
He only ever had a few starring roles, such as in the 1993 magician comedy "Frauds," and
the 1988 crime comedy "Buster."
A massive box office bomb, "Buster" earned just $540,000, likely in part due to the controversy
over the film making light of real, tragic events.
Collins played Buster Edwards, a British criminal who in 1963 robbed a train and gravely injured
the vehicle's operator in the act.
According to UPI, the film's premiere was a benefit for a drug-diversion charity with
which Collins was affiliated, the Prince's Trust, and Turning Point.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana of the U.K. were set to attend the event until Collins
advised them to skip it, seeking to shield them from the controversy over the backlash.
Years later, Collins tried to be a leading man again.
After concert reviewers compared Collins' appearance to both Bob Hoskins and Danny DeVito,
the singer joked to reporters that he'd star in a movie version of "Goldilocks and the
Three Bears" with those two guys.
Collins later told Penthouse,
"I actually got a telegram from Kim Basinger saying 'I'd love to be Goldilocks.'"
Allegedly, the movie actually started to come together, with Hoskins and DeVito interested,
but a child instead of Basinger as Goldilocks.
The film never made it into production, however.
"Movies are different now.
You lost a sense of community."
While Phil Collins never "went solo" in the traditional definition of the term, he did
once take the idea of being on his own, professionally and creatively, to the highest possible level.
His fifth studio album, 1993's "Both Sides," is wholly and completely the work of Phil
Collins, and Phil Collins alone.
The only other people credited on the LP helped engineer and master the record.
According to Rolling Stone, Collins isolated himself in his professional-level, 12-track
studio he had built in his home and carefully and individually laid out every track of the
11 songs on "Both Sides."
That means Collins played every instrument and performed every lead and backing vocal
part himself.
As of 2022, Phil Collins has been married three times, with all of them ending in divorce.
Collins split with his first wife, actor Andrea Bertorelli, in 1980 after five years together.
In 1984, Collins got hitched again, this time to Jill Tavelman.
The marriage produced children, including "Emily in Paris" star Lily Collins, but ended
in the mid-1990s with what media reports at the time claimed was an angry message sent
via fax machine.
Phil Collins later said that while the mean fax was real, it arrived in the midst of already
started divorce proceedings — he didn't actually inform his wife he was leaving her
in that way.
He explained to the Times,
"I was in Frankfurt and sent her a fax because the phone kept going down.
I was arranging time to see the kids and referenced the fact that [the relationship] was over,
but it was translated as me finishing our relationship by fax."
Collins married for a third time, to Orianne Cevey, in 1999.
They divorced in 2008, got back together in 2015, and then broke up once more in 2020.
This time, it was Collins who received tough news via electronic transmission.
In July 2020, Cevey sent Collins a text message saying she'd fallen in love with another man,
whom she married a few days later.
The last time Phil Collins hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was in 1989 with the bleak, synth-driven
ballad "Another Day in Paradise," a song about the unimaginable daily struggles of the unhoused
to survive and keep their dignity intact.
He was inspired to write and record the song by a real-life incident that left him wracked
with guilt.
Collins told the Evening Standard,
"I was in Washington, D.C. for an awards show.
In a cab on my way to my hotel we drove past these boxes by the side of the road.
It struck me that these people were living like this within a stone's throw of the Capitol
building."
Collins felt like whatever relatively tiny problems that he was enduring in his own life
were virtually "another day in paradise" compared to the plight of the unhoused.
After the song became successful, Collins said that unhoused people frequently came
up to him and asked for help, and he aligned himself with assistance charities, allowing
them to use the song in their public campaigns for financial support.
When he played the song in concert, he'd have venue staff pass collection buckets around,
and whatever amount was gathered, Collins would personally match it.
Phil Collins is in his 70s now, and as such, has experienced a great number of health issues
that have deeply impacted his ability to perform as well as his quality of life.
In 2000, according to The Guardian, Collins contracted a viral illness that abruptly left
him without hearing in one ear, which nearly forced him to give up music until the condition
cleared itself up.
The Genesis website reported in 2009 that during the band's tour, on which Collins played
drums, he dislocated a vertebrae in his neck, which led to significantly diminished function
in the musician's hands.
He had surgery to correct the issue, but for a long while still couldn't feel much in his
fingers and was thus unable to play piano or the drums, and according to Rolling Stone,
had difficulty using a pen or the restroom without assistance.
"I didn't actually know if I could play anymore."
In 2017, Collins told The Independent that he'd been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and
suffered a related, septic infection in a foot abscess.
That same year, Collins was hospitalized after falling and striking his head on a chair.
Following the departure of Phil Collins in 1996 and the recording of the album "Calling
All Stations" with singer Ray Wilson in 1997, Genesis officially broke up in 2000, only
to regroup briefly in 2007 and then once more in 2020 for "The Last Domino?," an ultimately
pandemic-delayed reunion and farewell tour.
It was also the last hurrah for Phil Collins' musical career.
Collins told the BBC in 2021 that his progressively worse health problems, such as nerve issues
and diabetes, made performing increasingly difficult.
"I can barely hold a stick with this hand, so there are certain physical things which
get in the way.
I'm kind of physically challenged a bit, which is very frustrating because I'd love to be
playing up there."
In March 2022, "The Last Domino?"
jaunt ended with a show at O2 Arena in London.
According to Entertainment Tonight, Collins told the crowd,
"Tonight is a very special night.
It's the last stop of the tour, and it's the last show for Genesis."
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