How divorce turned Phil into a superstar
PHIL COLLINS: Face Value / Both Sides (Atlantic) Verdict: Heartbreak hits and bruised ballads, revisited
When Phil Collins found himself alone after a world tour with Genesis, he passed the time by making music at home on his tape recorder.
The songs, inspired by his troubled family life and created with the help of a drum machine, were ‘just doodles’ for personal, not public, consumption.
So what happened next took everyone by surprise. Buoyed by the response of friends, he applied polish to the tapes and released them as Face Value, assuming the album would be seen as a low-key set by a singing drummer. how wrong he was.
now viewed as his defining moment, that 1981 album turned Phil Collins into an improbable superstar. Fans snapped up a record that was unlike anything he had recorded with prog-rockers Genesis. Thirty-five years on, its blend of pop, soul and jazz still seduces.
Face Value, with 1993’s similarly introspective Both Sides, forms the first part of a series that will see all of Collins’ solo albums repackaged, on CD, vinyl and download. Curated by the singer, now 64, the records have been expanded and the sleeves recreated with new photos.
The power of Face Value lies in its immediacy. Faced with the collapse of his marriage to first wife Andrea Bertorelli, Collins bared his soul on I Missed Again, If Leaving Me Is easy and the brooding In The Air Tonight. his failed marriage looms large. Performing In The Air Tonight on Top Of The Pops, he famously placed a paint pot by his piano in a veiled reference to Andrea’s alleged fling with a decorator.
Twelve years on, Collins’s fifth album, Both Sides, was largely forgotten as Britpop took hold, but its troubled tales (this time inspired by the end of his second marriage, to Jill Tavelman) are worth another listen.
A true solo effort, Both Sides has an understated power, but it lacks the commercial clout of Face Value. highlights include ballad everyday and the bittersweet I’ve Forgotten everything.
BOTH of the reissued albums come with bonus discs of live recordings and outtakes available for the first time on CD. Face Value’s material includes a live version of In The Air Tonight, notable for the cheer that greets its thundering drum rolls.
There’s also an early demo of Against All Odds. ‘I didn’t think it was good enough to be on the album,’ says Phil, in his sleeve notes, of the song that became a U.S. chart-topper.
As for Both Sides’ bonus disc, the live material sounds dated, but there is a fine cover of Curtis Mayfield’s I’ve Been Trying.
With six more reissues in the pipeline, plus rumours of a new studio album, one of pop’s most unlikely heroes appears primed to defy the odds once again.