Phil Collins is a man of many parts. Tony Horkins talks to all of them

It'sa long jump from bearded long-haired drummer in a Progressive Rock band to singer/songwriter for the masses, but Phil Collins seems to have made the transmutation with ease. He also seems to have done it without losing any of his credibility, probably due to the fact that he still does drum for Genesis as well as writing and performing 'Pop' music as a solo artist. Diversification plays an enormous part in his professional life, which is probably why International Musician magazine is interviewing him today, and Honey magazine tomorrow.

Phil Collins today is a multi-faced character with a lot of different things to talk about. I caught up with him as the Townhouse studios in West London, where he'd started work on his third solo album, to talk about the pieces that make up the whole.

THE DRUMMER

It's odd to think that the majority of his fans today don't even realise that Phil Collins is a drummer; even those that should know better refer to him as 'ex-Genesis drummer'.

"In fact it started getting to me a little bit to a point where I thought I should jog people's memories a little, which is one of the reasons why I went on the Robert Plant tour. I also did it for my own benefit because I only get the chance with Genesis to play about a third of the set; the rest of the time I'm singing. Whilst I enjoyed that 30 per cent it didn't really seem to be enough."

To tie in with the tour Phil did the relevant interviews in the US musicians press to further stress that he was, and is, a drummer. However, even though keen to be known as one, the days of practising paradiddles are way behind him.

"I don't practise at all — I know a lot of drummers who don't. To me playing is practice, I don't sit at home and practise. If I'm not actually working on something specific I just do normal things — I haven't even got a drum kit at home. If I'm doing anything at home — I've got a little eight track — I've got a variety of drum machines that do anything I want them to do. If I want to put some extra things on I'll use a Simmons which I've sometimes got at home."

Phil's variety of drum machines include a Linn, "All the Roland ones", Movement and a DMX.

"They've all got their own character really, and some are easier to programme than others. I like them because it saves me getting a drum sound at home. It's really to get the feeling down on tape of the demo/master, because all my demos become my masters."

"What I do is split the drum machines into two halves. There's the Roland stuff which basically don't sound like drums; they sound like percussion or strange drum sounds. The 909 has got quite a few sounds that maybe Prince may use — they don't really sound like drums but they're interesting noises. Then you've got the DMXs and the Linns which are basically real drum sounds. By the time I put that through my AMS with the non-Linear setting — the non-linear setting was apparently designed a little after my Intruder sound with Gabriel — they sound like me anyway.

"Darryl Stuermer tends to spend hours chaining up Linn programmes for different sections, but being a drummer I never worry about that because I know I'm going to replace them anyway, so I just get a pattern which basically gets the thing going anyway."

What about real drums?

"Oh yes, I remember them. No, listen, I'm a real drum man — I was very late coming into electronics and I'm not an electronics boffin anyway. Give me a manual and I give it to a technical bloke in the road crew and say 'You read it and tell me in layman's terms how to use it'.

"But I've always felt that a drum should look like a drum, should be like a drum, sound like a drum and feel like a drum — that's why I was late getting into Simmons, I only got into them because Robert Plant wanted me to play them, and at the same time we were doing the last Genesis album and using them on that, so I became a big fan. But it's real drums that I play the best."

Over the years Phil's accumulated quite a selection of drums, though his favourite make today is the make he started with — Gretsch.

"They're just beautifully made — they have a class about them. They're not individually hand-crafted like they used to be, but they're all really good drums. Having said that, in the studio I usually use my old black Premier kit, which is one of the first concert tom kits they made. I've had that since '76 and that's the In The Air sound, that's the Gabriel sound — everything I've ever done except the last Genesis album, which was done on a Pearl."

As Phil doesn't sell old kits as he gets new ones, he's got eight or nine kits, as well as a cymbal collection of 160 different makes, sizes and shapes. Now when called to do a session, he's got the right kit for the job.

"Like when John Martyn called me for a session I knew what kit I wanted — my double headed Premier. To me a double headed shell has got a leathery sound which suits his mellow sound — that ringing quality that you can't get off a concert tom. More tone comes from a double headed tom because there's more air moving around."

Although quite specific about the type of drum for the job, the tuning of the drums is a much more haphazard affair.

"I just tune the drum to how it sounds good to me. These guys that just kind of tap two inches inside each rim, I don't bother. I just hit them until they sound good. I bought a Radio King snare drum and it sounded fantastic. Then I did a session with Lee Ritenour with this drum and it sounded so good. Then the skin got pretty loose so I had to change it, and it's not sounded as good since, because I can't tune it the same."

So not exactly great recommendation for getting that Phil Collins sound, but obviously so many other factors to make up a complete sound. Perhaps his most noted sound is the drum fill that burst into life in the middle of his first solo single, In The Air Tonight.

"For that we were down in the stone room in studio two, which a few bands like XTC had used, but never to excess. It was a live drum sound which of course runs against the grain of all acoustic engineers. They hate things like that and immediately put tons of padding on it.

"The first time we came up with it was when I was working on Gabriel's third album, and I was playing around in the live room while Hugh the engineer was mucking around with some noise gates and compressors, and this drum sound started developing and I was hearing it through the headphones and I started playing with the sound — my part is written with what I hear — and I started playing (mouths In The Air Tonight pattern) because that was the tempo being set by the gates cutting off. Pete was in the control room and said that was great, just do that for 10 minutes. So I put the drum machine on so I wouldn't wander around — my timing isn't that great — and I started playing the pattern. I knew it was good and I said to Pete afterwards, 'If you don't want it, I do'."

So in answer to criticism that Phil nicked the sound off Gabriel, Phil is keen to point out that it was him that got the sound in the first place. When he made his first solo album he took the same kit into the same studio and set it up as before. With the drum pattern sorted out for the title track, then came that drum roll.

"Although that fill has apparently become a trade mark if mine, it could have been anything. I didn't sit down and think 'What would be the best drum fill to do?' I just decided where I wanted the drums to come in, and sat down and just did that. There's probably another take somewhere with me doing something totally different."

THE SONGWRITER

Although the drum fill and sound played a large part in the success of that song, it was the drum machine pattern featured on the first half that Phil wrote the song around. At the time he was divorced and depressed, and drowning his sorrow in his newly acquired Brenell one inch eight track system.

"I'd just got a Prophet 5, a grand piano, drum machine and Fender Rhodes. I'd programmed a pattern on this square box Roland drum machine which had a very distinctive sound, and the feel I got from that pattern was to play those kind of chords. After that I wanted to put a vocal idea on first so it wouldn't crowd anything else; I opened my mouth and started singing the words — all those words came out spontaneously.

"Originally the song just went on like that, and when I came back to it a couple of weeks later I thought I'd put a bit of drums on, and originally they came in very ordinary all the way through, and that was it. When I came in here to record it it just escalated to when the drums came in as they did with a bang. It was purely accidental really — that Face Value album was all accidental stuff."

The eight track system plays a large part in the finished product, as Phil takes them into the studio to layer on top of what's already down, keeping original drum machine and keyboard parts. At the time of the Face Value album he was augmenting his Brennel with an Allen & Heath desk, but if you read the adverts in this magazine you'll realise he's now endorsing Studiomaster's 16:8:2.

"After the photo session with the desk I took that desk out with me, put it in the car and straight home. It's a very clean desk, very nice to work, and it had a few things the Allen and Heath didn't.

However, when Phil moves home, which at the moment he's in the process of doing, he may go 24 track.

"I never want to get it so that it's out of control — I never want to have a control room and a studio; I want it all in one room so that I can do it on my own. The idea of having someone breathing down my neck — I might as well just be here doing it."

'Feel' plays an important part in the writing process, and writing to order is not something he can do. When asked last year to write the theme music for Against All Odds he said no, but mentioned he had a tune that may suitable. The song he had in mind was an out-take from the Face Value sessions, still only on demo and called How Can You Sit There? He was shown a rough cut of the film, changed the words to suit it, then asked Arif Mardin to produce it.

"I said to Arif I know you'd be able to handle it, I want you to arrange the strings — because he's a brilliant arranger — you produce it. So one day in between Genesis gigs I flew to New York, met up with him, did the orchestra to a click track with a piano player and went off to write the words. Two weeks later he flew over to LA and I did the drums, the vocal and then asked him to mix it. He sent a copy of the mixes and he'd be on the phone while I'd be listening to it, and I'd be saying 'a little less echo on the drums, a bit more on the voice', and the whole thing was done like that. He produced it and we just kept liaising. Considering it was my only number one record in America it was made in a very roundabout haphazard fashion."

THE KEYBOARD PLAYER

"I have a certain amount of technique, but certainly not a keyboard player's technique. I had an aunt that was a piano teacher, and she was capable of teaching me far more than I wanted to be taught, but I didn't really gain that much knowledge. My scales are really painfully slow.

"It's a keyboard player's nightmare... Peter Robinson, Dave Frank, any of these guys I go on tour with, I show them and say 'This is the chords, like that', and they say no, — it's like that, proper', which is a nightmare for them because they have to learn things the wrong way around."

Keyboard equipment recently purchased includes a complete Oberheim system and a couple of DX7s. The Oberheim will be handed over to David Frank, of New York duo The System, for the tour, while Phil sticks mainly to the DXs.

"I use pre-sets most of the time and the DX7s have got great pre-sets. I find that because of my lack of technical expertise on the keyboard I go with the sound, so I made sure that when this album came up I would have some different tools to work with. The tools will make me play different things and therefore write different songs."

With the equipment bought and the songs written, next stage is to record them, another little thing Phil Collins seems to be particularly good at.

THE PRODUCER

"It was all trial and error really. The first thing I produced was my own album, Face Value. After that John Martyn asked me to produce his album, Glorious Fool, and that was the first time I'd ever been asked to produce anybody. I was a bit scared, but we did it and it turned out pretty well. And then..."

Frida from Abba, which Phil regards to be the first bit of 'real' production he did.

"For the first time people were looking over my shoulder about budgets; I had to book the musicians — it was much more of a serious project. John and I were mates, Frida I didn't really know and Stig Andersson wealds a pretty hefty stick. Although there's a lot of money in that organisation it was still a budget-conscious album."

When Phil is faced with a production job he doesn't think in terms of what sound the artist should have, but more about the best people to work with to do the job.

"Once I've got the people I go for the sound that each particular song should sound like. There's many songs on the Frida album that sound very different. I'm not a serious producer in as much as the George Martins of this world."

How much do you rely on an engineer?

"Very much. I'm not technical at all. I'll say 'A bit more top' whereas they'll say 'Another 400Hz,' or something. I don't understand, it's all garbage to me. I'm glad that somebody knows what they're talking about.

"I've worked with some great engineers — this album I'm using Hugh Padgham. In fact what I'm going to do on the credits for this album is have 'Co-produced by Phil Collins and Hugh Padgham, Directed by Phil Collins and Photographed by Hugh Padgham', because I think that's really what it boils down to. I have the ideas but I give the problems to him. I say 'This is what I think it should sound like, you tell me how to do it'."

THE SINGER

If you told someone they sung like a drummer, chances are they'd take it as an insult, but Phil Collins uses the phrase to describe his own vocal style.

"In the early days with Genesis when I started singing, I was a very rhythmic, percussive singer... and I still am, though I'm getting better as a singer all the time. I was thrown in the deep end a bit because I've played drums for 25 years — even though I'm only 33 now and I only started singing in 1975. I sort of grew up to be a professional drummer and suddenly I'm a singer.

"But there's things with my voice that I'm still overdoing, but I am getting better. I don't ever practise though..."

In fact Phil doesn't practise anything, he just does it; practise enough with his heavy work schedule. Obviously he spent a great deal of time when he started getting things right, but now regards playing and recording as enough practise. After all, there's one or two other things to concentrate on...

THE PRODUCT

By the time you read this Phil's third solo album, No Jacket Required, should be in the shops, and he should be getting ready for quite a lengthy tour that will take him around the UK, Europe, Australia, Japan and then America. Has the Phil Collins project become more important than the Genesis one?

"It's more important because it's me, but I never differentiate between what's more important; it's all important to me. I enjoy playing with the band and we all enjoy writing with each other, and we do it all infrequently enough for it to be fun. We do an album every couple of years, that's what it boils down to. By the time I've done what I want to do and they've done what they want to do and we talk about when we're going to do it, it always ends up being a couple of years. There's no legal or binding thing between us except that we actually enjoy doing it."

THE CONCLUSION

Over the past few years Phil Collins has proved himself to be a diverse talent, hugely successful in each of his chosen spheres. When talking generally about what the future may hold for him, he seems to have his ideas set mainly in the direction of production work, with a return to acting (Phil was a child actor) also on the cards. In the meantime, however, he's got one simple aim...

"Basically I just want to be able to do everything I do now... only better."