«Too many people think of me as the ballad guy», says Phil Collins in a new interview conducted by Mojo on the occasion of the musician's entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the upcoming publication of the box set dedicated to the '81 solo album Face Valuethat of In the Air Tonight. There is also a documentary in the works. “I have broader tastes,” he says, but he knows many associate him with slow pieces like Against All Odds And One More Night. «Now I can't play anything, but in any case I've never been able to play complicated parts».
In the interview he recalls the worst moment when «some time ago» (it is not specified when exactly) his manager Tony Smith asked the musician's five children (Joely, Simon, Lily, Nicholas, Matthew) to go and visit their father who was in a Swiss hospital. «He did it without my knowledge to talk about the future. I was very ill.” He was attached to a machine and “it could have ended any way,” meaning there was a possibility he wouldn't have made it. He had kidney problems and had had three pancreatitis cases, all of which were made worse by the alcohol problem he began to have after the age of 50. “I had never been a big drinker before, but at the time I was at home, not on tour, I started having a few glasses of wine during the day and paid the consequences.”
He realized he had a major health problem when he was no longer able to hold his drum sticks properly. One doctor blamed a spinal problem, another a nerve problem. He underwent surgery, eight screws were inserted into his spine, and during his two years of recovery he started drinking. After Going Back in 2010 he had acute pancreatitis for which he was hospitalized, he suffered from hypertension, he hit his head, he broke his foot twice, he underwent various operations on his knees. “Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.”
Meanwhile he continued to drink. It was his friend Eric Clapton who convinced him to go to rehab in the center he founded in Antigua, Crossroads. He was supposed to stay for six weeks, he left after a month to go on tour again. «The nurse who accompanied me to the airport gave me a note to read while I was on the flight. It said: “If you drink even one glass, you die”. Bad to say, but I had a glass of wine.” As is known, during Genesis' last tour he was unable to play the drums, a task entrusted to his son Nicholas. He sang while sitting down. “It was impossible for me to stand for two hours.”
It took him several more hospitalizations to stop drinking. He hasn't touched alcohol in three years and credits Clapton, his management and family. “Believe it or not, I now have a good relationship with all three of my ex-wives.” In December 2025 he organized a large extended family reunion which was filmed for the documentary.
After health problems, Collins uses crutches: “I can walk without them, but when I'm in an environment that isn't entirely safe, prevention is better than cure.” In the chat with Mark Blake he often returns to the criticism he has received. Starting in the 1970s he felt Genesis didn't have much to do with prog bands like Yes and Jethro Tull and recalls a meeting with John Lydon of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd in 2008. “I thought he thought of me as one of those old dinosaurs, but I liked the Sex Pistols and wanted to say hello, despite our differences.”
The interview recalls an old comment by Noel Gallagher that Collins was “the antichrist of music” and that he hoped to have “his severed head in my fridge by the end of the decade”. Collins is sure to meet Oasis at the dinner preceding the induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which this year will host both him as a soloist and the Gallaghers. He is convinced that Noel's comment arose after the video of Mama of Genesis, with his evil grin, and gives him “the benefit of the doubt and I assume that he doesn't believe that I am really the antichrist”. Everyone is sensitive to criticism, he says. “The difference is that every now and then I answer.”
Collins won't perform at the Hall of Fame, “I'm not in shape”, but he wouldn't mind returning to the studio to record sooner or later. «I have a strong idea spinning in my head and I have another finished song, a ballad written at the time of my last great pain. I'm no longer signed to a label, but these days there's no need, you can release music yourself.”
As for Face Value«the truth is that if I hadn't separated from my wife I would have made a solo album at Weather Report». For Collins that record «was the opposite of Genesis» and was influenced by Brian Eno «who had done some things on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and instead of sending me the bill they sent me to play on his Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)which led me to make other of his records.”
On collaborations and many projects in the '80s: «I was too enthusiastic to say no to anything». For the documentary, he reviewed old images of himself and realized that “my enthusiasm could have been mistaken for ambition, but it wasn't.”
