Although Phil Collins is best known for his work in Progressive Rock with Genesis and in Pop during his solo career, which blended Rock, R&B and other styles, he always had a broad musical taste and was aware of what was happening in music during his career.
Living in London during his youth, he had the chance to see the rise of many incredible British bands, including Led Zeppelin. Over the decades, he spoke about the band formed by John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, sharing his opinion on them.
What is Phil Collins’ opinion on Led Zeppelin
Phil Collins has always been a big fan of Led Zeppelin and John Bonham. He became a good friend of Robert Plant, but Jimmy Page did not say many good things about him after he played with them at Live Aid in the 1980s. He was lucky enough to have seen John Bonham playing with other artists early in his career, as well as Led Zeppelin when they were still called the New Yardbirds, before they finally adopted that classic name.
“I saw John Bonham play at the Marquee Club with Tim Rose who was an American singer. He did this hit version of ‘Morning Dew’ and he was on tour and had this guy John Bonham on drums. I went to see Tim Rose. But when I saw Bonham I had never seen anything like it. He had the best bass drum of anybody I’ve ever seen. I became a convert there. So I started to follow him wherever he was doing rude to be playing in a band. Next time I saw him was with Led Zeppelin, when they were still called The New Yardbirds. The early Led Zeppelin was something to behold because nobody was doing that,” Phil Collins said in an interview in 2016 with BBC 6 Radio (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Phil Collins’ friendship with Robert Plant
Collins’ friendship with Robert Plant started in the early 80s, when he helped him to record some of his solo albums. “I remember being at home one day in Guildford and the phone rang, I picked it up and he said: ‘Hi Phil, it’s Robert Plant’. God, I never met him and he said: ‘I’d like you to play on my solo album’. I said: ‘Well, sure! Where, when? Just tell me and I’ll be there. What about the material?’ He said: ‘I’ll send you a tape’, which he did and had Jason Bonham playing on it. Jason must have been about, I don’t know, 20, maybe less, this was the 80s. The material sounded great, Jason sounded great as well.”
“So I remember going to Rockfield, which is where he was doing his sessions. It was a new bunch of musicians, so there is that trying to get comfortable with other people that you don’t know and Robert, who I didn’t know. But apparently, Robert says now that I kind of came in with a confidence, not exactly to take over, but to be someone to ask advice to and guide us. That’s what he said many times in the last couple of years. I didn’t know that at the time, you know, I was just finding my feet. So I played on that record and then a second record was gonna be made and he asked me to do the same thing again.”
He continued:
“Then he asked me to go on the road with him when he did his first tour. I was always encouraging, because I don’t think I got the impression that he was needing it. But you know, I was just doing what I thought was the right thing to do. We just kind of stayed in touch and we’re doing this thing now, leaving notes for each other. The other day he just left New York and we had the same driver, so he gave him a note for me. When he picked me up the driver gave it to me.”
“So there’s a lot of that going on, (the note said) ‘Where the f*ck are you?’ that kind of thing. Also because he is a director of Wolves (Wolverhampton) I follow their progress now. If they do well I send him an e-mail and he will reply. So we just kind of stay in each other’s pockets, which is nice,” he said in an interview for his podcast “The A – Z of Phil Collins” in 2021 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Why Jimmy Page wasn’t happy with his drumming during Led Zeppelin performance at Live Aid
Led Zeppelin came to an end after John Bonham tragically died in 1980 at the age of 32 and the remaining members decided to stop. But they reunited in 1985 at Live Aid and Phil Collins was the one who played the drums. They performed “Rock and Roll”, “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven” that day, but Jimmy Page wasn’t happy with Collins’ drumming. He told The Times in 2021 that it was “not very clever” to reunite and have Phil Collins. “The drummer couldn’t get the beginning of ‘Rock and Roll’. So we were in real trouble with that,” Jimmy Page said.
Collins had told Classic Rock in 2020 his point of view of what happened that day. “By the time I got there, me and Robert and Jimmy playing together had become The Second Coming Of Led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones was there too. Jimmy says: ‘We need to rehearse.’ I said: ‘Can’t we just go on stage and have a play?’ So I didn’t rehearse when I got there. But I listened to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ on Concorde. I arrived and went to the caravans, and Robert said: ‘Jimmy Page is belligerent.’ Page says: ‘We’ve been rehearsing!’ I said: ‘I saw your first gig in London. I know the stuff!’ He says: ‘Alright, how does it go, then?’”
He continued:
“So I sort of… (mimes the Stairway To Heaven drum part), and Page says: ‘No, it doesn’t! It doesn’t go like that!’ So I had a word with (co-drummer) Tony Thompson. Cos I’ve played as two drummers a lot and it can be a train wreck. I say: ‘Let’s stay out of each other’s way and play simple.’ Thompson, rest his soul, had rehearsed for a week, and I’m about to steal his thunder – the famous drummer’s arrived! – and he kind of did what he wanted to do. Robert wasn’t match-fit. And if I could have walked off, I would have done. Cos I wasn’t needed and I felt like a spare part,” Phil Collins said.
John Bonham got angry when he lost a drummers’ poll to Phil Collins
Phil Collins had been a big fan of John Bonham even before Led Zeppelin, but the late drummer was not happy when, in the late 1970s, he lost a drummers’ poll to Collins. His son, Jason Bonham, told Steve Newton in 2010 that his father became so angry that he taught him how to play Genesis’ “Turn It On Again” just to prove it was an easy song to play and that even a child could do it.
“I think Phil Collins had just beaten him in the Melody Maker drummer’s poll. He came in and said, ‘Play this.’ (So) I went over it a few times. Then he said, ‘Yep, okay, that’s cool.’ I think it was probably his way of going, ‘Hey, what’s the big deal about that guy? My son can play that!’” Jason Bonham said.