The most irritating
They queued up to mock Phil Collins. But, he begs can’t you just judge his music without prejudice?
Yes, says Phil Collins. The world is right. He really IS annoying. Or at least, he was, so he can understand why so many people give him a hard time.
‘‘I was ubiquitous throughout the 80s,’’ says Collins from the Miami mansion he bought from Jennifer Lopez for $48 million last year, his voice as gruff as a chain-smoking London cabbie.
‘‘I became unfairly tarnished with the brush of that era. Meanwhile, I was just trying to write good songs and play music with people I loved. But yeah, I think looking back on it, I can safely say, I was pretty irritating.’’ Now 65, Collins has spent the past few years ‘‘taking stock’’, he says, looking back over his life and work. All his solo albums are being reissued with extra live tracks, under the project banner Take A Look At Me Now .Anda spanking new compilation called The Singles was released this week.
It’s a veritable Phil-fest, the sheer volume of revisited music suggesting Collins thinks it’s high time for a critical reassessment of his work. ‘‘Well, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Really, the record company was keen to reissue those old albums, but it also seemed as though enough time had passed for people who couldn’t be bothered the first time around to take another listen . . . ’’
Collins’ autobiography, Not Dead Yet (Century, RRP $40), relives the anecdotes that became part of Collins lore down the decades. His assorted marriages, divorces, infidelities, big hits and famous mates. His early days as drummer with prog-rock behemoths Genesis, and the backlash once Peter Gabriel left and Collins stepped in as lead singer, turning it into a shameless pop band. His vast personal museum of military artefacts from The Alamo that occupies the basement of one of his houses in Switzerland. The fact that he was a shrieking 11-year-old extra in The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night movie. That time Phil’s first wife had an affair with their home decorator, so Phil plonked open cans of paint beside him while he played a song about infidelity on Top Of The Pops. That muchrepeated story about Collins being so cold-hearted, he broke up with his second wife by fax (‘‘Not true’’, says Collins). His recent struggles with alcoholism and depression after his third wife left him.
And then there’s that sorry business that possibly started the whole antiPhil ball rolling, where he once outed himself as a rock’ n’ roll conservative, saying he’d leave the UK if Labour were elected in 1997. True to his word, Collins moved to Switzerland. Eight years later, just before the 2005 election, Oasis singer Noel Gallagher told the British public: ‘‘Vote Labour. If you don’t and the Tories get in, Phil is threatening to come back!’’ There’s a slightly wounded tone throughout his book, and that sense of injury permeates our phone conversation. Collins seems genuinely hurt that so many people have given him grief over the years.
For years, I childishly called him ‘‘Full Colons’’, so jam-packed was his back catalogue with s . . . .
But you have to wonder why Collins cares so much about what his critics think. For every eye-rolling snob who disdains the glossy synths, sentimental lyrics and big hollow drums of his 80s pop ballads, there’s an equally vocal fan who loves the guy.
Phil has been praised by everyone from Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne to US punk band, SleaterKinney. Some of our era’s biggest pop stars also pledge allegiance, including Beyonce, Kanye West and Alicia Keys. Lorde is a fan; Adele, too. Surely Collins must find this gratifying?
‘‘Nah, f . . . ‘em, mate!’’ says Collins, followed by a wheezy little laugh. ‘‘Nah, don’t print that. Yeah, of course. It’s fantastic. I’ve taken a beating over the years and I’ve got used to it, but to hear this underground appreciation is very welcome. I think a lot of these fans either grew up with my music or their parents listened to it, and they then developed into singers and songwriters themselves. I’m thrilled.’’ He doesn’t sound thrilled. Collins is renowned for fixating on the negative, particularly this idea that people find either him or his music irritating. Even on his book jacket, he refers to himself as ‘‘that annoying bloke who kept popping up in the charts’’.
But being irritating is hardly a crime against humanity. I’m annoying, too, though usually in the privacy of my own home, not over several decades in full public view.
‘‘Yes, I imagine that’s true, Grant. I’ve only been on the phone to you for five minutes, and you’re already annoying the hell out of me, frankly. Ha ha! But my point is, there was a time when I appeared to be absolutely everywhere, and you couldn’t get away from me. Everything I did was huge, both solo and with Genesis.
‘‘People just thought I was an unbearable show-off. Here’s this guy who’s not happy to just play one f . . . ing concert at Live Aid in the UK, so he ‘People just thought I was an unbearable show-off. Here’s this guy who’s not happy to just play one f . . . ing concert at Live Aid in the UK, so he jumps on a Concorde and plays a second Live Aid gig in the States! The radio was playing my songs like a conveyor belt, so people simply got sick of me.’ jumps on a Concorde and plays a second Live Aid gig in the States as well! Meanwhile, the radio was playing my songs like a conveyor belt, so people simply got sick of me.’’ OK, fair enough. Collins’ annoyingness is not in dispute. Some of his biggest songs were sickly sweet too, to be fair. But he’s had more than his share of vilification. He became a symbol of everything wrong with 80s pop music; a multi-millionaire soft-rock crooner making the kinds of blandly melodramatic songs a stockbroker might turn up in his Audi.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph labelled him ‘‘the most hated man in rock’’. David Bowie once referred to his own critically reviled 80s output as ‘‘my Phil Collins years’’. In 2014, Brit duo The Beautiful South released a song containing the line: ‘‘Everyone around us agrees that Phil Collins must die’’. Wall Street sociopath Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho was a rabid Phil Collins-era Genesis fan. Influential website The Quietus once ran a piece in which the writer considered the ‘‘hatred, bordering on civil unrest’’ engendered by this ‘‘Tory drumming homunculous’’, praising Collins’ contributions to albums by Brian Eno and John Cale while dismissing his own 80s solo records as ‘‘sonic dysentery’’. And on it goes. But the comment that seemingly hit Collins the hardest came from Noel Gallagher.
‘‘People hate f . . . ing c . . . s like Phil Collins, and if they don’t, they f . . . ing should!’’ announced Gallagher in one famous interview, referring to Collins as ‘‘the Antichrist’’.
‘‘Yes, good old Noel,’’ says Collins with a sigh. ‘‘But the journalist that helped with my book interviewed Noel once and asked what made him say those things. Noel told him he didn’t really know. He said some of that stuff when he was stoned at a concert in Paris, and it just stuck. Now it’s always