The song Phil Collins hated playing live: “It made me leave Genesis”

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Thu 18 January 2024 20:15, UK

Phil Collins‘ solo career stands out as a serendipitous chapter in the annals of rock and roll. While already adept at anchoring everything with Genesis, the emotional catharsis inherent in Collins’ first solo venture, Face Value, gave rise to the emergence of two distinct musical trajectories.

Face Value was home to hits like ‘In The Air Tonight’ which set the stage for a successful solo career that would run parallel to Collins’ work with Genesis. Although this debut performed remarkably well, the pinnacle of Collins’ solo success came with the release of No Jacket Required in 1985. The album won the Grammy Award for ‘Album of the Year’ and solidified Collins’ status as a musical juggernaut with chart-toppers like ‘Sussudio’ and ‘Take Me Home’.

Since they formed in the late 1960s, Genesis embarked on a dynamic journey marked by multiple evolutionary phases. Throughout the years, the band underwent lineup changes and remarkable sonic transformations. Their initial foray into the limelight occurred as progressive rock trailblazers before they began blurring the lines between pop and art rock.

As the lineup experienced changes, with Gabriel and later Hackett departing, the band evolved into a trio featuring Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks. This transformation led to a fusion of their sound with a more commercial approach, catapulting them into their most successful era. Genesis became one of the best-selling bands globally, amassing over 100million records sold.

While Collins holds deep appreciation for the band’s body of work, there’s a notable exception which he finds difficult to swallow, one that became a catalyst for his departure from the band in the 1990s. In a 1997 interview with Modern Drummer, Collins explained: “It’s a cruel thing to say, but [‘Burning Rope’ from …And Then There Were Three…]. It’s a song like this that made me leave Genesis. Tony Banks will never talk to me again after this is published. This is one of his songs.”

Continuing, he added: “To me, this song is a period piece. It doesn’t make it in the twentieth century. I know there are people who like this music, but I just couldn’t get up on stage and play or sing this kind of material anymore. I had a lot of tom-toms back then. The fill just keeps going down and down and down. I think I played this kind of thing back then because I didn’t like some of the material. I was trying to come up with ways to make it interesting.”

Although Collins’ distaste for …And Then There Were Three… is something he’s mentioned in the past, there was one track that made it onto the album that he didn’t hate: ‘Follow You Follow Me’. According to Collins, he knew they had done something right when he received praise on the song from Weather Report. “If Weather Report like it. If Wayne Shorter and Josef Zawinul often listen to this and say, ‘This English stuff is cool’. I thought we’ve done something right,” he said.

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