Those tens of millions of dollars worth of Alamo artifacts have been donated to the state of Texas. Crown Archetype will publish his autobiography this fall. He’s back together with his third ex-wife and eager for their two teenage sons to see him onstage now that they’ve watched his career highlights on YouTube. I’ll go to bat for the mawkish ballads of his late career, too.īut just as I resigned to never seeing the guy sing “I Don’t Care Anymore” again, Collins announced his unlikely unretirement. I still regularly return to Collins’ first five solo albums, especially the eerie, eclectic Face Value with its Earth, Wind, & Fire horns Indian strings banjo and slide guitar and the gated snare sound that went on to define ’80s pop-rock. It’s not my favorite Genesis album, but it led me to the band’s earlier albums, to Collins’ and Peter Gabriel’s solo catalogs, to John Martyn and Brian Eno, and to prog and jazz and indie rock and ultimately everything else. Genesis’ We Can’t Dance was the first album I ever bought, despite the fact that I didn’t yet own a stereo (I ended up playing it on a Panasonic tape recorder). … I don’t think anyone’s going to miss me.”Ĭollins’ sentiments were unnerving if understandable, but to hear the iconic songwriter internalize hate from rock critics and, naturally, Noel Gallagher was the part that was so disheartening for fans like me. “I sometimes think, ‘I’m going to write this Phil Collins character out of the story.’ … Phil Collins will just disappear or be murdered in some hotel bedroom.” He offered FHM an alternative scenario: “I’ll go on a mysterious biking holiday and never return. I’d overdose or do something that didn’t hurt” - and relayed how tired he was of being misunderstood and disrespected. He told Rolling Stone about suicidal thoughts - “I wouldn’t blow my head off. Still, interviews Collins gave around his retirement were shocking in their bluntness. Nice Guy ended up living a dismal existence. Couple that with hearing loss in his left ear and the dissolution of his third marriage, and it’s apparent how pop’s Mr. A spinal cord injury resulting from decades of performing, and the fallout from unsuccessful reparative surgeries, left him unable to write his name much less drum duet with Chester Thompson. But there was a good explanation for the retreat. Eventually holed away in his Swiss chalet, he drank, watched cricket, and focused his attention and royalties from 150+ million album sales on acquiring the world’s largest collection of Alamo memorabilia. As omnipresent in the ’80s as Madonna and Prince, the actor-turned-drummer-turned-reluctant frontman had begun extricating himself from the spotlight with the cheekily named “Finally” farewell tour. 2002’s Testify was the pop star’s last album of original tunes, and he sang his hits on tour for the last time a few years later. The writing was on the wall for Phil Collins fans long before he officially announced his retirement in 2011.
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