The Full Biography
Phil Collins. Drummer. Singer. The Chiswick kid who took a stool behind Peter Gabriel and then a microphone the 1980s could not turn off, then spent the decades after learning what a pair of hands does when the nerves say no.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a fill. A dark studio. “In the Air Tonight.” A gated reverb that became a climate. What the still cannot show is Philip David Charles Collins of Chiswick, a child actor in Oliver!, a Genesis drummer who became the throat when Gabriel left, a man who played both ends of Live Aid in one day, and a living musician who now sits to play because the hands that made the fill no longer take orders.
He was born on January 30, 1951, at Putney Hospital, and raised in Brentford and Chiswick. His mother, June, ran a toy shop and then an agency at the Barbara Speake Stage School. His father, Greville, sold insurance. A sister, Carole. A brother, Clive, the cartoonist. A toy kit at five. Uncles made him a suitcase set. He entered a Butlin’s contest at seven, sang “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” and stopped the orchestra to tell them they were in the wrong key. Ringo. The Action. Motown and Stax. Buddy Rich on the hi-hat. He studied rudiments with Lloyd Ryan and Frank King. He never learned to read notation. He quit Chiswick County Grammar at fourteen for Barbara Speake full time.
He was an uncredited screaming face in A Hard Day’s Night (1964). He was the Artful Dodger in two West End runs of Oliver! at fifteen pounds a week, “the best part for a kid in all London,” until the voice broke mid-show and he had to speak the rest. Calamity the Cow (1967) for the Children’s Film Foundation. A cut scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He swept the Marquee. Hickory. Then Flaming Youth and the concept album Ark 2 (1969). He played congas on a George Harrison session that did not use him; Harrison, years on, pranked him with a fake tape of a bad take. In July 1970 Genesis advertised in the Melody Maker for a drummer “sensitive to acoustic music.” He arrived early at Peter Gabriel’s parents’ house, swam in the pool, and memorized what the men ahead of him were playing. August 8, 1970, he was the fourth drummer. Steve Hackett arrived in January 1971.
He was the drummer first. That is the fact the singles skip. Nursery Cryme (1971), lead vocal on “For Absent Friends.” Foxtrot (1972), “Supper’s Ready” as a twenty-three-minute cathedral the church still argues about. Selling England by the Pound (1973), lead on “More Fool Me,” the first time he sang Genesis in front of a room; “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe),” the first hit single, his voice doubled with Gabriel’s until it sounded like one strong throat. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974), a double concept, Rael in New York, costumes and slides, a tour that spent the band. He wrote the staccato figure that opens “Watcher of the Skies.” He played drums on a Brian Eno track after Eno had treated two songs on The Lamb. When Gabriel left in 1975, the band auditioned singers — hundreds, the lore says — and then noticed the man who had already been singing the high parts. A Trick of the Tail (1976) proved the cathedral could stand without the founder. Wind & Wuthering (1976). He was, suddenly, the face. He did not stop being the drummer. In the same years he kept a second kit in Brand X, a jazz-fusion shop, 1975 to 1979, because the hands wanted a different grammar. He sat in for John Martyn, for Robert Plant, for Eric Clapton. The solo fame made people forget the hands. The records do not forget.
...And Then There Were Three... (1978) after Hackett left. Duke (1980). Abacab (1981). The progressive church was already arguing with the pop. He did not pick the argument. He played it.
Face Value (1981) is the door to the second climate. A marriage to Andrea Bertorelli had ended. “In the Air Tonight” is a divorce record that the world filed as a crime-show hymn. The fill — gated, huge, a pause that is also a threat — became a civic object. He did not invent the gated sound alone; Hugh Padgham and a talkback circuit at The Townhouse are in the shop. He played it. That is enough. The album also carried “I Missed Again” and a cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows” that told you the Beatles kid had not left the building. Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982). “You Can’t Hurry Love,” a Motown record he had loved before the cathedral, taken to number one in Britain. Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) (1984), his first American number one, a film song for Taylor Hackford. No Jacket Required (1985) made him the most complete male pop star of a mid-decade Saturday: “Sussudio,” “One More Night,” “Don’t Lose My Number,” “Take Me Home.” Album of the Year at the Grammys. He played drums for other people’s hits. He produced. He showed up. Between 1982 and 1990 he took three British number ones and seven American ones as a solo name. No other artist put more singles in the American top forty in that decade.
Live Aid, July 13, 1985: he played Wembley with Sting and then flew Concorde to Philadelphia and played again, with Led Zeppelin a wreck and a Plant, and with his own songs. It is a stunt and a work ethic. Both. He had already played on Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” the December before, the drummer in a room of throats. Genesis, in the same years, became a stadium fact. Genesis (1983), “That’s All,” “Mama.” Invisible Touch (1986), five American top-five singles from one album, a pop machine that the old cathedral never fully forgave. The Invisible Touch tour filled parks and bowls. Buster (1988), a film in which he played Buster Edwards of the Great Train Robbery; “Two Hearts,” written with Lamont Dozier, and “A Groovy Kind of Love” both went to number one. ...But Seriously (1989) put “Another Day in Paradise,” a song about a woman on a pavement, at the top of the American chart and won Record of the Year. “I Wish It Would Rain Down” with Clapton on guitar. We Can’t Dance (1991), “I Can’t Dance,” “No Son of Mine,” a last huge Genesis studio climate of the classic trio. He left the band in 1996 to keep the solo shop, came back for Turn It On Again in 2007, left again. Both Sides (1993) was a quieter record he played largely alone, a man talking to a tape machine. Dance into the Light (1996). The Phil Collins Big Band the same year, jazz charts of his own hits, the drummer’s first language spoken in public. He wrote for Disney. Tarzan (1999) put “You’ll Be in My Heart” in a generation’s nursery. An Oscar. Two Golden Globes across the Disney work. Brother Bear (2003) continued the cartoon shop. The child actor had come home by a strange road. Testify (2002). The First Final Farewell Tour, 2004–05, already a joke in the title. Going Back (2010), Motown covers, a man returning to the records that had taught the hands.
The turn is the body. A dislocated vertebra after a 2007 incident on tour. Nerve damage. Drop foot. Hands that would not hold the sticks. He has been public about the drinking that arrived when the hands left. He has been public about the sitting-down tours, a throne behind the kit, a son Nic on drums when the father could not be. He is living. The fill is a clip. The hands are the file.
Six things most people never knew
- The Artful Dodger is not a press-kit joke. He was a child on a West End stage before he was a fill.
- He was hired as a drummer. The microphone is a second occupation that ate the first in public.
- The gated reverb is a shop, not a lightning bolt. Padgham. A circuit. Then a pause the culture kept.
- Live Aid was two continents in one day. Concorde. A stunt. Also a shift.
- Tarzan is an Oscar, not a footnote. The nursery song is a second life the stadiums did not predict.
- The sitting tours exist because the hands said so. A son on the kit. A throne. The fill still plays. He does not always.
He married Andrea Bertorelli in 1975; he adopted her daughter Joely; they had Simon; the marriage ended in 1980 and wrote Face Value. He married Jill Tavelman in 1984; a daughter, Lily, who acted. That marriage ended in 1996. He married Orianne Cevey in 1999; sons Nicholas and Mathew; a divorce in 2006; a return to the marriage in 2016; an end again in 2020. The private life was in the papers when the papers wanted a fall. Friends from the Genesis years describe a professional who was first at the kit and last to leave a mix. The Collins on a sitting-down tour is a man who had already been a climate and is now a colleague with a medical schedule. Both are the life.
The later years
The last chapter is still being lived. He has said he is done and then not done. The catalog is a utility. The hands are a negotiation. The chair is the instrument the body allowed.
- Going Back (2010) — Motown songs he had loved before Genesis. A last studio climate as a singer who still had the throat.
- Rock Hall, 2010 — inducted with Genesis. The drummer and the singer in the same sentence, which is the correct sentence.
- Not Dead Yet (2016) — a memoir that did not sand the drink, the tabloids, the 2007 retirement that did not hold, or the three marriages. The title was a joke and a medical file.
- Not Dead Yet Tour, 2017–19 — he sat. Nic played the kit. The fill was a recording the room already knew. He sang the Saturday from a throne the body required.
- The Last Domino? 2021–22 — Genesis on a last road after a North American postponement for his health. Collins in a chair. Banks and Rutherford beside him. Daryl Stuermer on guitar. The old cathedral played as a hymn. The final night was March 26, 2022, at the O2 in London. He has said he is not hungry for the studio now.
- Rock Hall, 2026 — a solo induction. The second occupation recognized without making the first a footnote.
The spine and the nerves did not reverse. A 2007 tumble on tour dislocated a vertebra; the drop foot followed; the hands that had been the shop would not close on a stick. He has spoken of being very sick, of a live-in nurse, of thinking he should walk downstairs to a studio and then not wanting the hunger. In interviews around his seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth birthdays he said the hunger for a new record was gone. He lives, at times, in Miami, at times in Switzerland, at times near the children. He is in his seventies. Children who never bought Face Value know the fill from a cartoon or a drama. “In the Air Tonight” still arrives in films when a director needs a threat. Cadbury used the fill. Miami Vice used the climate. A generation that mocks the Saturday still knows every bar of it. Genesis still arrives in the same sentence as Gabriel. The sentence is the right double bill. The nursery Oscar is the correction. Eight Grammys sit on the solo file. The Modern Drummer Hall of Fame took him in 2012, a room that does not care about Sussudio. The hands are the file.
He has not vanished. He has changed the job description. A man who once flew an ocean between two stages now measures a day by whether the feet will take him across a room. That is not a tragedy he has asked anyone to perform. It is a schedule. Joely acts. Simon drums and sings in his own bands. Lily is on screens. Nic has the kit the father cannot hold. The 1980s Saturday still plays. The microphone was the climate. The stool was the job. The chair is what remains of both.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to whoever the next Saturday hired, and then came back every time a drama needed a pause before a hit. Genesis still arrives in the same sentence. Gabriel still arrives. Lily is on screens. Nic has the kit. The nursery Oscar is the correction. The hands are the file.
He came out of Chiswick, played the Dodger, sat behind Gabriel, took the microphone, made a fill into a climate, flew an ocean in an afternoon, wrote a nursery hymn, and learned to play sitting down. If you only remember the pause, you have the still. If you remember the kit, the Concorde, and the chair, you have him.
Portrait: Will Ireland, Courtesy of Concord · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons