Phil Collins British Drummer and Singer Born 1951 in Putney

Early life

Phil Collins is a British drummer and singer, born on 30 January 1951 in Putney, in southwest London. He was educated at the Barbara Speake Stage School and at Chiswick School. Music and acting ran side by side in his youth. In 1964 he appeared as an uncredited extra in the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, and in the same year he played the Artful Dodger in the West End stage musical Oliver! He had been given a toy drum kit as a small child and kept practising by playing along to records and broadcasts. By the end of the 1960s he was working in club and studio bands, among them Flaming Youth, and he gradually moved away from acting toward a full-time life in music.

Career

In 1970 Collins joined the progressive rock group Genesis as its drummer. When the original lead singer, Peter Gabriel, left in 1975, Collins took over the vocals and the band moved toward a more direct pop and rock sound. Alongside Genesis he played drums for the jazz fusion group Brand X during the second half of the 1970s.

His solo career began with the album Face Value in 1981, which included the single "In the Air Tonight". Hello, I Must Be Going! followed in 1982 and produced a cover of "You Can't Hurry Love". In 1984 he recorded "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" for a feature film, and in 1985 No Jacket Required became one of the best-known albums of his solo catalogue. The 1989 album ...But Seriously carried the single "Another Day in Paradise". Throughout this period he continued to record and tour with Genesis, and he left the group in 1996 to concentrate on his own projects.

Collins also worked regularly on screen. He starred as Buster Edwards in the 1988 film Buster, for which he contributed songs including "Two Hearts" and a version of "A Groovy Kind of Love". He made cameo appearances in Hook (1991) and And the Band Played On (1993), and he later wrote and directed the 2014 film Tomorrow Is Always Too Long.

In 1996 he formed the Phil Collins Big Band, whose concerts were captured on the live album A Hot Night in Paris, released in 1999. For Disney he wrote and performed songs for Tarzan, including "You'll Be in My Heart", and later supplied music for Brother Bear in 2003. His studio albums of the 2000s include Testify (2002) and Going Back (2010), the latter a collection of songs from the Motown catalogue. Genesis reunited for a tour in 2007, and the band returned once more for The Last Domino? tour, which ended with a final show in London in March 2022; Collins's son Nicholas played drums on that tour. His autobiography, Not Dead Yet, appeared in 2016 and shared its title with a concert tour. The album Plays Well with Others was issued in 2018.

Recognition

Collins won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2000 for "You'll Be in My Heart". He had earlier been nominated in the same category for "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" in 1985 and for "Two Hearts" in 1989. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received the Echo Pop Award for Best International Rock/Pop Male Artist in 1992. Other honours include MusiCares Person of the Year (1997), the Disney Legends award (2002), an honorary NRJ Music Award (2003), the German Radio Award and the Johnny Mercer Award (both 2010), the Royal Victorian Order and a Silver Clef Award. In 2010 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis.

Personal life

Collins was married to Andrea Bertorelli from 1975 and to Orianne Cevey from 1999; both marriages ended in divorce. He has five children, among them the actress Lily Collins, the musician Simon Collins, the actress Joely Collins and the drummer Nicholas Collins.