Phil Collins
Phil Collins
Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins LVO is an English singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, record producer and actor. He is known as the drummer and lead singer in the rock band Genesis and as a solo artist. Between 1983 and 1990, Collins scored three UK and seven US number-one singles in his solo career. When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, Collins had more US top 40 singles than any other...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth30 January 1951
CityLondon, England
I joined Genesis when I was 19. I've earned the right to actually do nothing. I don't want to be a shadow of what I was, so I've kind of just quite willingly stood back.
Testimony is contingent on experience, that's why we're all free spirits
I don't really listen to music.
I'm fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I'm sort of interested in the gory details of life.
Genesis fans are a religious group!
The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.
And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.
To see a lot of the smaller labels disappear or get gobbled up by the bigger labels, that's a shame. It was a bit of a shock at first to see the demise of the record stores.
It's always been easy with Mark, he's a rock fan and we speak the same language. He's a big Beatles fan too. We worked a lot via CLI calls, though only meeting up once every couple of months.
I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.
Everything has added up to a load that I'm getting tired of carrying. It's gotten so complicated. It's the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it's the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting.
I've spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.
It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time