Phil Collins Retires: Flashback To A Happier Time With ‘Land Of Confusion’
Last week Twitter went into overdrive when Phil Collins said he never planned on making new music again. This was hardly a revelation. “I’m getting near the point where I’m quite happy to write songs and never release them,” Collins told Rolling Stone in 2007. “I have this new theory that really the most fun is writing it and recording it, doing it yourself, which is what I do at home, and really the act of putting it out as a record is just a self-gratifying thing that we’ve gotten used to doing. Usually what happens is I put a record out and I get beaten over the head with it by the critics, and I just think, ‘What’s the point?'”
Here’s a look back at the classic Genesis video for “Land Of Confusion.” Phil’s unlikely to tour solo again, but he always says that if Peter Gabriel ever agrees he’d be happy to play drums on a short Genesis reunion tour. That may seem unlikely now that a dislocated vertebra in Phil’s neck has left him largely unable to play the drums. “If it’s a cold day I can’t even hold a pencil,” Collins told Rolling Stone last year. “My doctor tells me I gain back a millimeter of nerves a day. And the nerve from my elbow to my hand is about 360 millimeters. That, in the year, is how long it will take to possibly heal. It’s more likely to correct itself than not, but nothing is certain.”
Last November, at the Prince’s Trust concert in England, Phil did play drums on a couple of songs – so Genesis fans still have a sliver of hope that one more tour could happen one day.