Phil Collins Can’t Stop
Phil Collins returns to the airwaves this week with his new single,
“Can’t Stop Loving You,” from Testify, his first solo
record since 1996’s Dance Into the Light. Collins crafted
the album, due in stores November 12th, over a two-year period at
his home in Switzerland, and recorded it in a France and Los
Angeles.
“I’m very happy about what I’ve done,” he says. “But I’ve got to
let it go into the outside world now and see how it sinks or swims
. . . The songs, they kind of grew on their own, [with] a little
bit of nurturing, a little bit of watering over the last couple of
years. They’re pretty optimistic. That’s kind of where I am in my
life. I’m very happy. At one point I was thinking, ‘Why do I need
to put these songs out? Why make a record? I know they’re good, Why
let myself open to abuse and criticism?’ And this little thing came
up on my shoulder and said, ‘Because that’s what you do.’ So I
figured, ‘OK.'”
Most of the album’s twelve tracks are derived from demos Collins
made in his bedroom studio and finished off with the help of
producers Rob Cavallo and James Sanger, engineer Allen Sides,
guitarist Tim Pierce, and bassist Paul Bushnell.
Collins will not do any extended touring behind
Testify, because during the album’s recording sessions he
developed Sudden Deafness in his left ear. “I will be playing live
whenever I feel like it,” he says, “but I gotta be there for my
family now.” Collins and his wife Orianne have a one-year-old son
Nicholas.
He is not ruling out a future Genesis reunion, however. “I’ve
talked to Tony [Banks] and Mike [Rutherford] about [how] we should
never rule out doing something together again, either as Genesis or
as three writers writing together,” Collins says. “But I think to
me the most interesting possibility is the original five of us
[Collins, Banks, Rutherford, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett] getting
back together again. But I think depending on who you talk to, you
get varying amounts of enthusiasm. Peter, who I’ve read has said
it’s taken twenty-five years to get rid of the ‘ex-Genesis singer’
stigma, he probably doesn’t want to go back into it. And I kind of
think that’s a little off-centered thinking, because you do it as a
one off. I don’t see it as career threatening, and I think maybe he
does because he’s created something for himself which he doesn’t
really want to dent.”
Collins’ next project will be his second animated feature film
soundtrack for Disney. After the success of 1999’s Tarzan,
for which he won an Academy Award, Collins has been drafted to
co-author the music for upcoming movie, tentatively titled “Brother
Bear.”
For now, he hopes to Testify will open a glorious new
stage of his career. “There’s a certain thing you go through, it’s
like some kind of Stargate or warp where you are established, then
you become a dinosaur then you go through this mist, then you come
out as an older statesmen, this un-knockable,” he says. “It
happened to Elton John, it happened to Eric Clapton, and maybe my
time is just around the corner.”