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.
Beyond a certain point, the music isn’t mine anymore. It’s yours.
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.
Like last night I had a sequence with a gun and, to be honest, for me to be threatening with a gun and not be comical is quite hard.
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.
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.
And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.
Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.
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.
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.
God is a spa-bath of water and we are all individual bubbles.
I suppose Phil Collins offers something for everybody, and in hipdom that’s not cool. But in the real world, there’s no shame in that at all.
Out of raw emotion emerges instinctive truth.
People hate a break-up, but they love a break-up song.
When he isn’t drumming with The Who, Moonie seems to like playing barman in La Chasse. I buy a round from him one night, and he gives me back more money than I’d handed over. Another reason to love him.
It takes some going to live next door to Keith Richards and be classed as the rowdy neighbor. No, I’m not proud.
And now I realize: I was fired. They didn’t disappear to watch football, or do drugs. They were getting rid of me.
Mick Jagger does it and, well, of course he does – he’s Mick. Phil Collins does it and what an arsehole.
Well, shall we play Phil the song first?” No one says that.
In the Air Tonight” is 99.9 percent sung spontaneously, the words dreamt up from out of nowhere.
Because he has a flatmate, I have no option but to share Trevor’s bed. Terrified, I try to sleep, fitfully and fully dressed on top of the blankets. Presently, the fidgeting begins, and soon a hand is creeping over. I’m out of there quicker than you can say “paradiddle.