Before Genesis, Phil Collins was the Artful Dodger and a Marquee Club sweeper
Long before In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins was a child actor earning £15 a week as the Artful Dodger in the West End, until his voice broke mid-show. He swept floors at a Soho rock club to be near the music, and won the Genesis drum job partly by memorising the pieces rival drummers played before him.
Collins arrived on 30 January 1951 at Putney Hospital in London, the youngest of three; his mother later worked as a theatrical agent at a stage school. He got a toy drum kit at five, practised along to the radio and television, and at seven stopped a holiday-camp orchestra mid-song to tell them they were in the wrong key. He never learned to read music, a gap he later regretted, trusting that if he could hum something he could play it. At 14 he left school for full-time stage training, appeared as a screaming fan in A Hard Day's Night and landed the Dodger role in Oliver!
Music soon won out. He became such a fixture at the Marquee on Wardour Street that the managers had him setting out chairs and minding the cloakroom. He was invited to audition for Yes and failed to turn up. George Harrison later pranked him with a supposed tape of his rejected conga playing. In 1970 he answered a Melody Maker advert from Genesis, swam in Peter Gabriel's parents' pool while waiting, and got the job. His voice blended so closely with Gabriel's that the two sounded like one singer.
When Gabriel left in 1975, Collins stepped up as frontman and steered the band from progressive rock towards mainstream pop until 1996. His solo debut Face Value in 1981, shaped by his first divorce and a love of soul, launched hits including Sussudio and Another Day in Paradise, and his gated reverb drum sound became part of the decade's production style.
Between 1982 and 1990 he scored seven US number ones, and no artist had more US top-40 singles in the 1980s. With an estimated 150 million records sold, he joins Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson as the only artists to pass 100 million albums both solo and in a band. He won an Oscar for Disney's Tarzan in 1999.
Source: Phil Collins
