Any artist will want to inhale as much music as they can when starting out. No one can reach the top of the charts by listening to the same five artists every time they put something on the turntable, and it usually takes tremendous strength to be able to make a song that pulls from as many influences as possible but still manages to be its own original composition. While Phil Collins has had the luxury of balancing many different genres through his time in the spotlight, he could admit when he was defeated by a handful of styles.

Then again, you don’t need a humble writer to tell you that Collins was more than a one-trick pony. Despite being one of the biggest names in progressive rock, one of the major problems people had with him throughout the 1980s was that he refused to go away, whether that was his solo career, his experimental moments in Genesis, or finding himself playing on both stages of Live Aid.

No matter how much you like him, that’s a lot of Phil Collins all at once, but the silver lining was that most of his material was fantastic. It was easy to look at every one of his records as a new artistic adventure, and even if it meant sitting through some cheesy pop schlock like ‘Sussudio’, he usually knew how to make the right kind of hook that would be impossible to get out of your head once it came on the radio.

But that’s only one part of his musical identity. Despite being known for the most excellent drum fill of all time on ‘In the Air Tonight’, he was already the kind of percussionist that could put anyone else to shame, especially when tearing through songs like ‘Dance on A Volcano’ or the massive epic ‘Supper’s Ready’. 

And that’s only the start of his resume. Outside of contributing parts to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, his work with Brand X also gave him a degree of credibility in the fusion world. Both fusion and prog rock knew how to make complicated music, but whereas Peter Gabriel was into making grand epics, it was refreshing to hear him make music that could hang with the likes of Weather Report on the charts.

Collins did have his limits, though, and when it came to avant-garde music from the likes of Tony Williams, he could never really wrap his head around what he was supposed to be doing, saying, “I didn’t know what to make of the first Tony Williams Lifetime album. I’m not really into that area of jazz. It’s good fun to play, it’s not far off what John Stevens was doing, to be honest. But it reminds me of what Phil Seamen said once, avant-garde is great to play but painful to listen to.’”

And it’s easy to see why Collins was more interested in making something different. No matter how strange some of Brand X’s tunes could get at times, there was always a set structure to it, and when everything about proper songwriting is thrown out the window, it can be hard to understand it unless you’re the one playing the music.

So while Collins might get the side eye from some people for making cheap pop songs, it’s probably for the best that we don’t have to worry about him making an avant-garde album. Because if people already had a problem with the omnipresence of Collins at the time, was he really going to endear himself to the public by making his own answer to something like John Lennon’s Two Virgins?

from https://faroutmagazine.co.uk