Transcribed by Sean Donovan
New York - Phil Collins is in a rush. He comes striding down a corridor in his record label's office in Manhattan. There's no time to waste. He's got an interview to do, then he's flying to Miami for the opening of MTV's new Latin channel, then jetting back to New York that night to finish a video for his new song, "Both Sides of the Story". The song was the most added radio track in the country last weekend.
"Hi there. Are you ready?" says a wound-up Collins, zipping into a conference room to talk..
Collins leads a whirlwind life -- some fans will recall he was the only act to play the Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia on the same day in 1985 -- but musically, he's the maestro of mellow. His schedule is manic contemporary, but his music is adult contemporary on his new solo disc, "Both Sides", due out Nov. 9. It's his most personal album yet, painting memories of fatherhood (he has three children) and past and present romances, as well as his famed concerns for the homeless and disenfranchised.
"Some of the songs are so personal I didn't want to jar the listener by putting any loud stuff with R&B horns this time. I wanted to set a mood and take them on a little bit of a journey, if you like," says Collins.
Enhancing the fireside tone of many tracks is the fact that Collins played every instrument himself. He plays guitar, bass, banjo, drums, piano, synthesizer, Irish pipes, and sings his own background vocals. Paul McCartney once played al the instruments on a solo record. So did Stevie Wonder. And now Collins.
"David Crosby called me to ask, 'When are we going to sing again?'" Collins, now 42, recalls. "I said, 'I don't know. I may do this one on my own.' And it just seemed I had so many friends who were great musicians that it would be too easy to invite them. It kind of seemed the obvious thing to do and so I thought, 'I'll try to put a trip-wire in front of myself and try to do it without anybody.' That made sense considering the content of the songs.
"I didn't set out to make this a downbeat record -- bleak, desolate, downbeat, intimate, whatever you want to call it. All those words kind of work yet none of them work completely. I just knw that some of the changes you go through in life are going to come out. I think of parts of y past that I hadn't laid to rest, and of people I hadn't laid to rest, though not literally grieving for them," adds Collins.
"People might listen to this [record] and say,'Oh, his marriage has broken up or he hasn't gotten over his first wife.' But those two things have to be taken out of this picture because I've got a great marriage and I _have_ gotten over my first wife. I've put that to rest completely. And I've got a great remariage with a lovely family. But having said that, there are still some ghosts that come back to haunt you".
Haunting is the word for new songs like "Can't Turn Back the Years", "Can't Find my Way" and "We Fly so Close" (about the fragility of life), all sung with that yearning, affecting tenor voice that is Collins' trademark. But there's also very hopeful songs in "Survivors" and "There's a Place for Us". The album is his most graceful yet and can't be pigeonholed, other than to say there aren't many obvious commercial hits (Collins has had a spectacular run of 18 Top 40 hits in the last 12 years, ranging from "Sussudio" to "Against All Odds").
One of the most stirring songs is "We're Sons of our Fathers", which talks about every father's fear of not understanding his children's generation. "I'm relating to me sounding like my dad, which you all do when you hit a certain age and you've got kids and start taking to them the same as your dad talked to you," says Collins, whose father was an insurance manager in London.
"Say you're talking about music. You might ask, 'What are you listening to? It sounds like crap.' That kind of discussion I've has with my son, who's 17 now. He plays various bands that he likes and I kind of like a lot of it until the singer starts. Then it sounds like somebody getting sick into the microphone. Why, I'll ask, what do you see in this? And so we've had that sort of generational battle aleady."
But at the same time, that song is actually a look at the breakdown of the family unit. The family unit I had as a kid doesn't seem to exist in many families anymore because of the advent of television into the house. There's more than one TV, usually, and there's video games. The kids are upstairs doing something, while mom and dad are downstairs doing something else. The kids say, 'I'm gonna step out. See you later.' The mother and father don't know where they go. And you end up with a statistic like there is in England where you get 2 10-year-old kids who abduct and eventualy kill a 4-year-old. So the young offenders keep getting younger because of the lack of guidance from the parents. And the question is, 'Was the world a better place when I was a kid?' I thought it was. Maybe it wasn't but it felt like it was. And that's probably a good representation of the changes I'm talking about on this record, especially when you enter your 40's, as I have now, at 42.
While the album is more personal Collins still includes the type of social protest that helped his song, 'Another Day in Paradise', win a Grammy in 1991 as Record of the Year. The new radio hit, "Both Sides of the Story", describes a homeless person and a gheto kid whose gun is his only means of respect.
"People ask, 'How can I understand these things?' And I probably don't completely underatnd. But I understand enough for it to upset me and to therefore say, 'This bothers me. Does it bother you?' If it bothers us all, why don't we just try to be a little bit more compassionate with these people?"
As for future plans, Collins wll tour next year and likely again hit Great Wos, where he sold out 3 shows last time. (Collins was also asked by Don Henley to play the Walden Woods benefit at Foxboro Stadium in September, but couldn't because of prior commitments). And he also hopes to make more movies. He has so far starred in the comedy "Buster", playd a gay bathhouse owner in the recent TV film, "And the Band Played On", and starred in this year's Australian-made film, "Frauds" ("it's a bit like 'Toys', but better," he says), which will come out soon on video.
Another aspect of his career is the supergroup Genesis, which sold out Foxboro Stadium last year. Collins, who has alternated solo project and Genesis records in recent years, expects to make another Genesis disc but won't promise another band tour.
"By the time that could come around again, I may think, 'Do I really want to do that? Or would I rather dedicate a couple of years to making movies?' I don't know. I haven't asked myself those questions because I haven't had to. But inside, I've thought, well, maybe we could do a record but not a tour, because with a record and a tour, it's a years chunk out of your life. You think, 'how do I want to spend my time?'
I mean, we've never done _anything_ with Genesis that we haven't wanted to do or believed in, so that will ultimately be the question we'll ask ourselves. And God knows, the band is geting a bigger audience every time we do something, so there's no reason to stop other than the fact that you just don't want to do it anymore."