Philip Davis Charles Collins, better known as just Phil Collins, was born in Chiswick, England, on 31 January 1951. He has made his career as a drummer, singer-cum-songwriter, and an actor. He found fame by becoming the drummer and lead singer of Genesis, a progressive rock group, as well as a solo artist, winning the Grammy as well as the Academy Award. As an actor, he has starred in a number of films.
Early Life of Phil Collins
Phil Collins’ career as a drummer began early, when he was gifted a toy drum when he was just five years old. He immediately fell in love with it and decided to learn it properly, and become a professional at it. When he grew a little older, his uncle made a makeshift drumming kit for him, which he practiced upon either in front of the TV or the mirror, becoming a highly skilled drummer by the time he became a teenager.
His acting career too began early, with him joining stage school, and then playing the role of the Artful Dodger in Oliver as well as an extra in the The Beatles’ number ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
The Rise of Phil Collins as an Artiste
‘Face Value’, Phil Collins’ first album as a solo artist was recorded by him after he separated from his first wife, Andrea, in which he vented all his frustrations of his marital life. The number ‘In the Air’ is what popularized him as a solo artist.
In the year 1983, Phil Collins carried on recording with Genesis and as a solo artist, bringing out the rendition of the number ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ of the Supremes, which became a top hit and the album called Genesis, which climbed to the Billboard Album Charts’ Number 9 spot.
1984 saw him writing as well as performing the title song of the movie ‘Against All Odds’, which went on to win an Academy Award, and participating in Bob Geldof’s charity project, Band Aid, as a drummer in the number, ‘Feed The World (Do They Know It’s Christmas’.
The next year, he was asked to perform at the charity concert Live Aid, organized by Bob Geldof, both at the Wembley Stadium, England as well as the JFK Stadium, in Philadelphia, United States. He managed to achieve this by giving a performance in the early part of the day at Wembley, both as a soloist as well as with Sting, and then flying to Philadelphia on board a Concorde to give a solo performance, as well as be the drummer for Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin.
1985 was also the year in which ‘No Jacket Required’, the album that was his most successful, was released. It had hit numbers like ‘Take Me Home’, ‘One More Night’, and Sussudio’. It also had Sting and Peter Gabriel, an ex-bandmate, providing backing vocals. Phil Collins also recorded a couple of duets in this year, ‘Easy Lover’ with Philip Bailey, which reached the top position in the UK, and ‘Separate Lives’ with Marilyn Martin, which got critical acclaim.
The year 1988 saw Phil Collins playing the role of Buster Edwards, a train robber, in the movie ‘Buster’, in which he took part in three songs, ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, which went on to top the charts, ‘Two Hearts’, which was co-written with Lamont Dozier, the Motown songwriter, and ‘Loco In Acapulco’, for which he gave the music and lyrics.
‘…But Seriously’ was another of Phil Collins’ successful albums, which came out in 1989, and contained ‘Another Day in Paradise’, the anti-homelessness number, which climbed to the Number 1 position on the Billboard Charts, and for which he won the Record of the Year Grammy award of 1990. It then went on to top the US pop hits during the 1980s, while the album was the first Number 1 US album during the 1990s. Some of the other songs included in it are, ‘I Wish It Would Rain Down’, with Eric Clapton on the guitar, ‘Do You Remember?’ and ‘Something Happened on the Way to Heaven’. The songs he wrote about homelessness and apartheid was an attestation of Collins’ seeking to vent his political thoughts about matter he felt deeply about. The albums that came out later kept featuring these themes. ‘Serious Hits… Live!’, which was a live album, soon followed.
The Decline in Record Sales
The release of ‘Both Sides’ in 1993, in which he deviated from his usual style, which had brought him such success during the 1980s, saw the sales of his records falling. In 1996 he went back to his previous style with ‘Dance Into the Light’, which included numbers like ‘Wear My Hat’, featuring Danny DeVito, a rendition of the famous Bob Dylan number, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, and ‘No Matter Who’. Although this album sold more than 800,000 copies in the United States, however, it did not match the popularity of his previous albums.
The fate of his most recent studio album, ‘Testify’, was the same, although liked by the fans, it did not have much success on the mainstream music scenario, overtaken by the likes of teen pop, nu-metal, hip-hop, and rap.
Big Band music had always been one of Phil Collins’ passions, which lead him to form the ‘Phil Collins Big Band’ in 1996, with him as the drummer, performing jazz renditions of the hits of Genesis and his solos. The band participated in the Montreux Jazz Festival and went on a world tour in 1998.
In 1999, the Walt Disney Company asked Phil Collins to create the score for ‘Tarzan’, the animated film, winning him the Academy Award for his number, ‘You’ll Be in My Heart’. He was hired again by Disney to create the soundtrack of the animated film, ‘Big Brother’
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