Trivia / Phil Collins

• Breakaway Pop Hit:
  • "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", one of his most popular songs, was written for the mostly-forgotten film Against All Odds.
  • "Separate Lives", Collins's famous duet with Marilyn Martin, was recorded for the less famous White Nights.
  • "Two Hearts" and "A Groovy Kind of Love", the former a Collins original and the latter a cover, were both recorded for the obscure film Buster.
• Breakup Breakout: Averted. Unlike Peter Gabriel, Collins didn't need to leave the band to find his solo success. His biggest solo success was contemporary to the greatest success of Genesis as a band in the 1980s and early 1990s. Though Collins did find some success after leaving Genesis (especially with his Disney contributions), he never again reached the heights of his prime.
• Chart Displacement: For all of Collins' chart success, the fact that "In the Air Tonight" isn't one of his Top 10 hits in the U.S. (it hit only #19) might be a surprise - especially since it's arguably his Signature Song now.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Collins has admitted that over the years, he hasn't liked "Sussudio" as much, saying that he "wasn't being authentic" making it and was just trying to reach a more popular sound at the time. He even stopped playing it live for over a decade at one point, though he brought it back into his setlists for the last couple years of his solo shows.
  • He admits that he is not fond of watching his older interviews because he felt like he came off as arrogant in them.
  • In his autobiography, Collins discussed his regret at performing with the Led Zeppelin reunion at Live Aid (which Led Zeppelin also hated), citing the lack of rehearsal (he at first thought it was only going to be him with Robert Plant and maybe Jimmy Page), Page being too high to play properly, and drummer Tony Thompson playing different drum parts than what Collins was playing.
• Creator Breakdown: Many tracks on Face Value and some on Hello, I Must Be Going! (including the rather dark songs "In the Air Tonight" and "I Don't Care Anymore") were inspired by his divorce from his first wife. Later on, when his second marriage was failing, he came out with …But Seriously and Both Sides, which are both darker than the preceding album No Jacket Required.
• Creator Recovery: Both Dance Into the Light and Testify are more upbeat and happy than his previous albums, since at the time of both albums' release, he was happily in his third relationship/marriage.
• He Also Did: He was an uncredited young extra in A Hard Day's Night. He's also done a lot of session work for his former Genesis bandmate, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, among others, and was a member of the jazz fusion band Brand X.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The video for "Take Me Home" is the absolute embodiment of this trope.
• Inspiration for the Work: Phil came up with the idea for "Another Day in Paradise" after seeing some homeless people on the street.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: "In the Air Tonight" has multiple rumors attached to it, usually ones about Phil giving a rapist or someone who committed Murder by Inaction their just desserts. Snopes has more on this.
• Promoted Fanboy: Aside from the Grand Theft Auto example above, Collins was also a huge fan of Motown growing up. As an adult, when he was making Buster, he got to collaborate with Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier of Holland-Dozier-Holland fame to write some songs for the movie (one of those songs, "Loco in Acapulco", was even performed by the Four Tops). Later, when recording his Motown cover album Going Back, he was able to get surviving members of the Funk Brothers (Motown's studio musicians) to perform with him on the album, and he has said that he was really excited and amazed at this.
• Referenced by...: Eminem makes reference to "In The Air Tonight" and the urban legend of the song being inspired by a drowning accident in the song "Stan":
  You know the song by Phil Collins, "In the Air of the Night" [sic]
  About that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drownin'
  But didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a show he found him?
• Throw It In!: The powerful drum sound during "In The Air Tonight" came from a happy accident while working on former bandmate Peter Gabriel's Melt. The studio he was recording in used a Solid State Logic 4000 console which had a "listen back" circuit, using an omnidirectional microphone with a powerful audio compressor allowing everyone in the live room to be heard. During the sessions for the track "Intruder", Collins started drumming while the circuit was still engaged, producing a powerful compressed drum sound. The engineers at the studio cracked open the console and rewired it by hand to allow the sound to be recorded to tape.^note Subsequent models of the SSL 4000 included a "listenback to tape" feature The compressed drum sound was then put through a sound gate, resulting in Collins' trademark drum sound, as well as popularizing the "gated drum" sound of the '80s.
  • On the same album, Collins' brief cover of "Over the Rainbow" just after the fadeout in his cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" was an unconscious improvisation on his part; he had been informed of John Lennon's murder during recording and lapsed into singing "Over the Rainbow" without thinking, catching himself after the first few lines (hence the "okay" at the very end).
  • Third time's the charm: During the recording sessions for Duke, Phil accidentally played "Behind the Lines" back at a faster speed, at which point it changed from a moderate, andante maestoso art-rock piece to an upbeat, R&B piece. It then appeared on Face Value with this new tempo and modified arrangement and lyrics to reflect this.
• What Could Have Been: Collins, Danny DeVito, and Bob Hoskins expressed interest in starring in a film based on Goldilocks, based on multiple interviewers' remarks during the No Jacket Required tour that the trio bore a strong physical resemblance to one another (obvious height differences aside) and Collins' subsequent joke that the trio could play the three bears; reportedly, Kim Basinger was looking to play the role of Goldilocks. DeVito was the one who turned the joke into a legitimate idea, and Collins went as far as researching bears for the film. However, the three men abandoned the idea due to problems with writing a suitable script, with Hoskins' death in 2014 permanently ending the film's chances of getting off the ground.

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