“I’m not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I’m a drummer that sings a bit.”
― Phil Collins
“There’s no magic for getting into the groove… just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.”
― Phil Collins
“As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.”
― Phil Collins
“That’s going to be on my headstone: ‘He came. He wrote ‘In the Air Tonight.’ He… died.’”
― Phil Collins
“I’m writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I’ve brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.”
― Phil Collins
“Often there’s a BA crew, because half the time we stay at the same hotels, especially in Australia. I can remember spending quite a lot of time with crews around the pool there. They always make themselves known to us.”
― Phil Collins
“I never stopped thinking about the Alamo from that day to this. I’m a huge collector of memorabilia. I’ve got Davy Crockett’s bullet pouch. I’ve got Colonel Travis’s belt.”
― Phil Collins
“The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.”
― Phil Collins
“I’m sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn’t mean it to happen like that. It’s hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.”
― Phil Collins
“All I set out to do was to earn a living playing drums, you know? And as luck would have it, I’ve surpassed that.”
― Phil Collins
“I don’t really belong to that world and I don’t think anyone’s going to miss me. I’m much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely.”
― Phil Collins
“No seriously… when there’s families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there’s always someone who’s got something going, like the tour manager.”
― Phil Collins
“The world is in your hands, now use it.”
― Phil Collins
“Beyond a certain point, the music isn’t mine anymore. It’s yours.”
― Phil Collins
“I’ll have the music, and then I’ll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.”
― Phil Collins
“You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it’s finished, is a bit of a disappointment.”
― Phil Collins
“And I would like to marry and have more children. I would like to try and do it right.”
― Phil Collins
“I’ve spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.”
― Phil Collins
“I’m just trying to do things that are interesting for me.”
― Phil Collins
“I’m not trying necessarily to become a movie star; that wouldn’t be bad but that’s not the aim. I’m just trying to do interesting things and go into areas where I’ve not been before.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“If Miles Davis hadn’t died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn’t much else that would have got me into the studio… although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“I’m usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.”
― Phil Collins
“I can’t remember much about the early flights, except that it was ages before we got into First Class.”
― Phil Collins
“We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe.”
― Phil Collins
“When we’re touring America or Europe, we use our own plane and a great advantage of that is it cuts out an awful lot of time checking in. You literally drive up to the plane, get on and then drive off at the other end.”
― Phil Collins
“I know it shouldn’t make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren’t sure what day it was – it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better.”
― Phil Collins
“Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.”
― Phil Collins
“I usually hang around the room listening to a bit of last night’s show. If there’s one available, I go to the steam room every day for my voice. I spend half an hour there and then I eat, because I can’t eat later than four o’clock. Then I go for a soundcheck. That’s my day.”
― Phil Collins
“When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food.”
― Phil Collins
“I do that in whatever language of the country I’m in, because the audience appreciate it.”
― Phil Collins
“On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I’m going to say.”
― Phil Collins
“Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project – like now, we’re just finishing off an album – and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.”
― Phil Collins
“Many of the articles printed over the last few months have ended up painting a picture of me that is more than a little distorted.”
― Phil Collins
“In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: ‘It’s OK – we can just do instrumentals.’”
― Phil Collins
“In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan – my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents.”
― Phil Collins
“’Urban Renewal’ was sweet because I’ve been – unfairly, I would say – plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.”
― Phil Collins
“I am stopping so I can be a full-time father to my two young sons on a daily basis.”
― Phil Collins
“I just don’t think of myself as a star. This is what I do for a living; I’m fortunate that I make ends meet.”
― Phil Collins
“Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I’ve always been bothered by that assumption.”
― Phil Collins
“It’s actually come as quite a shock to learn just how many people don’t like me.”
― Phil Collins
“I can’t play anywhere near like I used to, and I was a hot drummer. It doesn’t bother me, because frankly, if you get to that point where you can’t hold a drumstick properly, there are many other things in life which are far more important, like cutting a loaf of bread or a piece of cheese.”
― Phil Collins
“My only saving grace is that I actually collect things that nobody else is interested in.”
― Phil Collins
“You know, I’ve released some great records and I’ve released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.”
― Phil Collins
“And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.”
― Phil Collins
“Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I’ve thought about this. Conceptually, what I’d like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.”
― Phil Collins
“I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn’t seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.”
― Phil Collins
“I’ve bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo, and I talk to my friends that I’ve made over the past 15, 20 years. It’s just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.”
― Phil Collins
“I’ve got one of four known Davy Crocket rifles. It’s fantastic just to know it’s one of the rifles that he actually used. His cousin had it.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“It’s not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I’m very, very proud of that.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“I don’t really listen to music.”
― Phil Collins
“I don’t own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you’re just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.”
― Phil Collins
“I prefer black music in general.”
― Phil Collins
“The difference between the American version of ‘Live Aid’ and the British one – in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar.”
― Phil Collins
“I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the ’50s and ’60s, which may have been an influence on me.”
― Phil Collins
“I’m fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I’m sort of interested in the gory details of life.”
― Phil Collins
“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.”
― Phil Collins
“That’s the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it’ll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.”
― Phil Collins
“When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.”
― Phil Collins
“Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die. That’s without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren’t quite like that.”
― Phil Collins
“The story of the Alamo has touched many more people than one would think. So, I would like to pay my respects to those men on both sides of the walls in those months of February and March 1836.”
― Phil Collins
“I never said I was at the Alamo. Someone else said I was at the Alamo. Now I’m a nutter. I don’t think that’s fair.”
― Phil Collins
“There were ‘big stars’ at the Alamo! Bowie, Crockett! It is a huge political event because it, and the events at Goliad and San Jacinto, changed the look of a map of America. America would be a very different place if Texas had remained Mexican.”
― Phil Collins
“If a musician dares to get out of the box he’s been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I’ve always been known as someone who ‘moves around’ and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we’re put.”
― Phil Collins
“Genesis fans are a religious group!”
― Phil Collins
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