Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins are among the few musicians who were able to achive success both as members of a band and as solo artists. They were bandmates in Genesis for five years until Gabriel decided to leave the band, which eventually led Collins to become the lead singer and later have an extremely successful solo career. Over the decades, their solo careers were often compared and Gabriel talked about Phil, giving his opinion on him as a musician.
What is Peter Gabriel’s opinion on Phil Collins
Although the press and many fans created a kind of rivalry between the two, they have always been good friends and admired each other’s music. “You can sometimes tell (when someone is) a good musician from the way they sit down at their instrument, before they played a note. That was definitely the case with Phil. He had a confidence about him, I would enjoy his humor a lot. If the two of us were working on stuff, there were a lot more jokes (being told),” he said in an interview with VH1 Classic.
After he decided to leave the band in 1975 and Collins also became the vocalist, the band changed its sound a bit and achieved enormous commercial success. Although Peter had a really successful solo career himself, he revealed that it wasn’t easy to deal with his ego at the time and see them becoming more successful without him.
He said:
“On one hand you’re happy that the people you’ve known since childhood did well. But my ego got twinged too, you know. So I went from a point, when I was fronting the band, when everyone assumed that I did everything to the point where I left the band and they got more successful and people assumed that I’d done nothing. (…) It was definitely the right thing for me to have done and clearly it was good for them. Because it sort of brought Phil out front and gave everyone a bit more space, I think. So I always look upon that time as a healthy part of growing up,” he said in VH1’s Behind the Music (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
He had already joked about that feeling when he recorded a message to Phil that was aired on the TV This Is Your Life in 1988. “I remember a lot of things. I remember the fiver (5 pounds) that I lent you in 1972 (Collins’ smiles). (Also that) you could play the drums a lot better than I could. Anyway, I have been really pleased to see your meteoric success. How well you’ve done everything, production, singing, writing, acting. I can think of a lot of words of how I feel but jealous, of course, isn’t one of them (audience and Phil laughs). Anyway, I’m very pleased. I wish you a great evening tonight and lots of love,” he said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Peter said Phil Collins was the only one in the band that understood when he was absent to take care of his child
When the band was making “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”, Peter wasn’t with them in the studio all the time. His first kid had a difficult birth and had to stay in the hospital for a while. He said Collins was the only one who understood why he was giving more attention to his newborn baby and wife because Phil already had a child and the others didn’t.
“It was the time of the birth of my first child. There was a really rough birth and the hospital didn’t think she was going to make it. She spent her first month in an incubator. Now, to me there was no question of priorities, you know, (between) a living being and a record. We were in the middle of making ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’. So I was spending a lot of time at the hospital. Phil (Collins had a) kid but the others really weren’t appreciative of all that family side of things, which now they are. Their lack of openness and understanding of that situation, for me it was a deciding factor as well (for leaving the band),” Peter Gabriel said in the interview with VH1 Classic.
Both of them remained friends and Phil was even an important part of some of the albums Gabriel released. He played drums on the songs “Intruder” and “Not One of Us”, snare on “Family Snapshot” and surdo on “Biko”. It was while making that record that Phil discovered a way of recording drums that he would later use on his big hit “In the Air Tonight.”
Phil Collins said that there was never a rivalry between them
“(Peter and me are) great pals. I mean, for a while (people said we were rivals) but it’s never been that way. Some (people) even suggested that I wanted and was very pleased when he left (Genesis), you know. (It was the) last thing (I wanted). Peter is not only a great singer and a great writer, he’s a great person all around. It was fun, him and I were kind of soul buddies, really. Because we were both drummers and some of the time we laughed a lot,” he told John Eddington in 2014.
After Phil Collins started his extremely successful solo career, Peter Gabriel was often compared to him. Especially when he released his best-selling album “So”. It sounded different from his previous albums and had a few elements that people compared to Collins’ solo music. But at the time Gabriel denied it was intentional and said he admired what his former bandmate was doing. After being asked in 1986 if the single “Sledgehammer” was the “first step of a concerted effort to rival Phil Collins” success.
He said:
“No, It wasn’t deliberate! I knew that by using any brass at all I would invite comparisons with Phil. But ever since I was at school, Atlantic soul and Stax have been a pivotal influence on me. I’ve always wanted to emulate them. In fact, I’ve been considering doing an R&B/soul album – it’s still possible. It’s sitting on the shelf as a project. On ‘Sledgehammer’ I had the opportunity to work like that. I consider my approach to be very similar to ’60s soul, whereas I think Phil’s style is more contemporary.”
“I respect Phil’s music and I would like my own to reach as large an audience as possible. But I would strongly refute the suggestion that I’m just trying to copy him. That pisses me off, because about the time of my third album there were considerable stylistic changes in Phil’s music. I feel that my influence on him hasn’t been fairly acknowledged,” he said in an interview with Sounds magazine.
What Peter Gabriel said about the final Genesis show with Collins on vocals
In 2022, at the O2 Arena in London, when Genesis played their final show. Peter Gabriel went there and sat in the front row to watch them. He hung out backstage with Phil, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. Also had the chance to meet Collins’ son Nic, who played drums, for the first time. Gabriel later shared his feelings about that night with Mojo. He said: “Phil wasn’t in as great shape as he used to be, but they did a great job. Me going was a rite of passage, really. I’d been part of the creation of Genesis, so I wanted to be there at the end.”
They got together over the years many times, including at each others weddings, even playing together during the parties. Rutherford and Collins backed Gabriel on his hit “In Your Eyes” at his second wedding to Meabh Flynn in 2002.