Phil Collins is a spry, restless man with seemingly limitless amounts of energy and intense drive. It is this drive that has made him one of Britain's finest group drummers and has enabled him to assume the tremendous responsibilities of fronting Genesis, one of the most exacting and musical bands now gracing the stages of rock.
It is hard to believe that Phil managed to contain so much of his talent in days of yore when one sees him now as fully-fledged singer and focal point of a band full of character and with such a solid tradition behind it.
Much of the frustration has been swept away, and Phil should be a much more contented musician now that he can work as a drummer, singer, and even incorporate his other talents as an actor.
The spell has broken with the passing of Peter Gabriel to pastures new, and each member of Genesis has developed and opened up in extraordinary fashion. Steve Hackett hurling his bottleneck at the audience - unheard of!
The testing ground for Genesis when they finally set out on the road, with Bill Bruford on drums, and Phil as vocalist and drummer, was America, where it was felt the music was better known, perhaps, than the personalities.
And America accepted the new, approved Genesis with open arms, as have their British fans.
Phil appeared at his London office to meet me sporting what seemed a greatly enlarged beard. His eyes twinkled behind his whiskers and he looked a bit like a Cornish rum smuggler.
Boost
"Is it a pouch or two of baccy ye'd be after sir, or mebbe some brandy for the parson?" Actually, he didn't say that, but explained the beard as a psychological boost.
"It's just that I feel more at home with a beard. It's just another thing to hide behind.
"It's always been very short in the past. I've taken it on and off. But on tour I let it grow and become the Wild Man of Epsom.
"We had a good time on the road. Bill fitted in very well, and one assumes that musically, people are flexible enough to fit in, but personality-wise, he was tailor-made for the job.
"And it was good fun - we bounced off each other a lot. Having two drummers in the group means there is a lot of energy on stage."
Did they clash at all or find themselves playing across each other?
"No, not really. Obviously, it got better as we got into it. He'd start a break and I'd know what was coming and I could put a full stop at the end of his phrase. Punctuation - yeah, right.
"There are some things we did spontaneously, perfect together. It was that knife-edge stuff that was good. Some nights, it's great, other just okay.
"With two drummers, neither of you are doing much. Bill plays the song while I'm out front. He stays within the framework but obviously injects his personality.
"On something like "Cinema Show" we play a bit together. "Los Endos" and "Firth of Fifth", on those instrumental passages, we get in a groove. It's very interesting.
Changed
"Of course, we're alike in a way. I feel that in the past we were more similar, say a couple of years ago. But during Bill's stint with Crimson, he changed a bit, and I've changed.
"I'm very bottom heavy - good at the bass drum, whereas he's good with his hands. So together we make a pretty good drummer! Any new man brings his energy into Genesis.
"And, for me, the novelty of singing on stage hasn't worn off. Doing the album was a big shot in the arm.
"I knew I could sing the acoustic songs okay, with a kind of frail voice. But actually coming out and doing things like "Squonk", well, I was obviously an unknown quantity.
"I knew I could do it but didn't want to force the others into letting me do it.
"In the end, they just said, 'Well how about doing it?' and that's really what happened. It was born out of necessity."
So the changes have all worked out for the best then?
"The band is really strong. A very strong group. We tend to do things in yearly cycles.
"We're starting work on an album in July and there will be a period when we're not working. If Bill gets anything together during that period, then we'll have to find somebody else.
"But we're off to Europe now so we've a got a month or two with Bill. The next big change he wants to do is get into a group, and it will have to be the best for him, not a half-way thing.
"But, until then, if we offer him the gig on a touring basis, he'll probably do it. I know he enjoyed the touring side of it with us. Often the vibes on the road when he was with King Crimson were a bit strange.
"In terms of establishing Genesis, the American tour was the most successful yet. Pete's going doesn't seem to have halted anything at all.
"The album did the best in America that any album has done, and it's been very encouraging. There was that first night and we wondered what was going to happen. The first gig was in London, Ontario, at a roller rink, and the people kinda knew us and they enjoyed it.
Shouts
"We were waiting for people to shout out: 'Bring back Gabriel!' There was none of that at all. There were two shouts, but apart from that nothing - which is a pretty good average.
"Everybody, Mike, Tony, and Steve, has come out of himself a lot more. Steve is much more energetic now. All the way down the line we've made a point of changing - producers, studios, even down to the credits which now say who wrote what.
"We started off "A Trick Of The Tail" on a better basis all round - and we got a good bass drum sound!"
Whence came this new freshness about the band?
"I dunno - we did that long tour with "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway", and came back with Peter, and talked about the band quite a bit, and about what we were gonna do.
"We had a couple of months at home writing, while I was doing my Brand X thing (Phil's own jam band), and Steve was getting his solo album ("Voyage of the Acolyte") together. Basically, the vibe was to get some new ideas and instill freshness.
"So we started work downstairs at a rehearsal room in Acton, and within the first two days we knew the new album was going to be pretty good.
"We felt confident until it was time for the album to come out and we thought of our little baby being exposed to the world. What was going to happen to it?
"To us it was a foregone conclusion it was a success."
It was hard to think of a similar situation in rock, where the lead singer of a powerful and successful band had quite and the band had survived. It was rather like Mick Jagger leaving the Rolling Stones - right?
"I think people just underestimated our contribution. The same with singing. In the States, a lot of people were saying, 'It's remarkable how similar your voices are - it doesn't sound any different.'
"In fact, I had been singing with the group for five years, and my voice had always been subliminally in the background, or singing just behind Pete's voice.
"So when you take Peter's voice away, it's really not so different. And, of course, Genesis melodies are going to sound pretty similar, even if they're sung by different people. They're tunes y'know.
"Right now we're looking forward to doing the next album."
Did the band run into any controversy about the split in America?
"No, but towards the beginning of the tour we ran into some pretty strange reviews, but we know for a fact that of the two reviewers, one was a James Brown fan and the other was a gardening correspondent. They didn't particularly like the show, but that's what you'd expect."
Did Bill and Phil talk drums throughout the tour together?
"Oh yeah. We'd get together in the hotel after the gig and play each other tapes of Brand X and National Health, and well, you know what Bill's like - he gets his pad and his books and he's away for two hours.
"I can't discipline myself to do that. I can't get enough out of a pad. But we have a lot of mutual ideas and I learnt much more about him as a person.
Admired
"We didn't really know much about each other, although we'd ring each other up and exchange tapes. Now we're good friends. I'd always admired Bill and I still think he's one of the best we've got."
Phil loves to work and even while he is thinking ahead to the next Genesis album, he is busy with a new album for Brand X and various session projects.
"I'm doing Billy Lyle of Pilot's solo album, so you can see I've got my irons in a lot of fires.
"I did some stuff with Eno which was beautiful - I think Eno is fantastic. He's making a very strong contribution.
"Also - oh, one of the best things of the tour happened to me in LA. I got in the lift at the hotel with a big, lanky black guy, and I knew him from somewhere and it was Alphonso Johnson.
"I'd been very fond of his bass playing with Weather Report, so I introduced myself and it transpired that he'd got most of our albums and knew all about Peter leaving and was trying to get a ticket for our LA concert.
"I got him a ticket and the next night he invited me round for dinner and asked me to do one side of his solo album. I was very chuffed at the chance of playing with guys like George Duke and Airto.
Session
"Patrick Moraz might be doing it as well, or Jan Hammer. I'll be going to LA in August. Alphonso is now with Cobham and George Duke, but he's basically a session guy and did all those Philadelphia sessions, and then moved to LA and worked with Airto and Flora Purim. He was with Weather Report for two years.
"I found a lot more energy having more to do. As Brand X was coming along, I was quite prepared to leave Genesis and do something else, but it became apparent that I could do both.
"And that's what I really wanted, obviously: have my cake and eat it. Singing as well with Genesis, I can now play the interesting pieces, the strange times and obviously Bill and I are having a good time.
"With the opportunities to do all these sessions, I can put on whatever hat I want. But if I'm with Genesis, I put all my energy into them, and if I'm with Eno I put my different cymbals on, tune my drums up, and go and play with Eno.
"Brand X veers towards the Weather Report area, and if it's a session and the producer says, 'tune your snare drum head down,' even though I can't do a fast roll, I'll do that, too.
"It's different. I don't want to play with a pin if it's a four-to-the-bar slog. I'd like to learn to read, but I prefer to play intuitively - off the top of my head.
"You go through all the possibilities of how a bit should be played in rehearsal. In Genesis we improvise for ages on small sections to wring them out and see which are the most potent ideas.
"They're all head arrangements, but by the time we get into the studio we've been playing them for weeks."
What will the new Genesis album be like?
"No idea yet. There are plenty of ideas in people's heads but they're likely to change. When we went into 'the Lamb' rehearsals, we had the idea of doing an acoustic album, and it was going to be a single.
Around
"But it turned out to be a double - with a story. Quite heavy as well. So we follow our noses. It depends what's around at the time.
"There are always pieces that hang over. For example, the track 'Trick Of The Tail' was around four or five years ago. Then the energy gets diverted into a different song.
"A song has its moment of glory and then gets forgotten again. We don't do 'Musical Box' on stage anymore and we don't do 'Watcher of the Skies' as a separate tune; we've played those out. 'Musical Box' they've been playing for years - they played that before I joined!
"'Cinema Show' has been a showstopper. Everyone is waiting for the drum battle, right? In 'Cinema Show,' Bill and I do an unaccompanied eight bars, and they think its going to be a drum solo, but then everybody comes back in again.
"We just give 'em a taste. It would be easy to lay a drum solo, but my licks are spread out around the set.
"To condense them into ten minutes for a drum solo I'd find a bit tedious. I couldn't sustain a drum solo for my own personal enjoyment. And I couldn't be that good every night."