Phil Collins

Early years and child acting

Philip David Charles Collins was born in London on 30 January 1951 and grew up in the city's west side. He began playing drums at about five years old, first on improvised surfaces and then with lessons, and he later trained at a professional drama school that gave him an early route into stage work. Acting and music competed for his attention throughout his teens, but the drums never lost their pull.

Acting came first on the professional credit list: Collins played the Artful Dodger in a West End production of Oliver! as a child and took small film and television parts, including an appearance in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Music won out, and by his late teens he was already a working drummer with session experience, including time on a George Harrison recording date that later became part of Genesis lore when Peter Gabriel recognised it at his audition.

Auditioning for Genesis, 1970

In August 1970, after Genesis signed with Charisma Records and guitarist Anthony Phillips departed, the band advertised in Melody Maker for a drummer sensitive to acoustic music. Collins, who already knew the label's owner Tony Stratton-Smith, auditioned with his guitarist friend Ronnie Caryl and was hired on 8 August 1970 as Genesis's fourth drummer. Caryl did not join, and the group carried on as a four-piece while it searched for a second guitarist.

Working with bassist and guitarist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks and, from January 1971, guitarist Steve Hackett, Collins helped shape the records of the Gabriel era, from Trespass (1970) through Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972), Selling England by the Pound (1973) and the double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974). Gabriel's costumes and staging kept the frontman in the spotlight, while Collins's drumming anchored the band's shifting time signatures.

Collins never limited himself to one style. In 1975 he co-founded the jazz-fusion band Brand X, which gave him a second creative home between Genesis cycles, and he also took session work as a sideman. That parallel life as a player, rather than a frontman, would shape the feel of his later records, where drum texture and pocket often carry as much weight as melody.

Taking the microphone, 1975-1980

Peter Gabriel's departure was announced in August 1975. Genesis advertised for a replacement and auditioned hundreds of singers while Collins sang guide parts behind the drum kit for each hopeful; the band eventually agreed that he should take the role himself during the making of A Trick of the Tail (1976). For touring, former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford covered the kit while Collins sang, and from 1976 onward the group used Chester Thompson whenever Collins needed to move to the microphone.

The gamble paid off. A Trick of the Tail reached number three in the UK and restored the band's momentum, and ...And Then There Were Three... (1978) delivered Genesis's first UK top-ten single in Follow You Follow Me. Duke (1980) and Abacab (1981) confirmed a leaner, more pop-oriented direction under Collins's dual role as singer and drummer, even as he was already sketching ideas for solo work.

Face Value and the solo breakthrough, 1981-1985

Face Value appeared in February 1981 on Virgin Records, with WEA handling the American market, and Collins produced it with Hugh Padgham, his collaborator on Peter Gabriel's 1980 album. The record topped the chart in the United Kingdom and several other countries and reached number seven in the United States. Its opening song, In the Air Tonight, peaked at number two in the UK and became Collins's signature recording, built around a dramatic drum break that showcases the gated-reverb sound developed with Padgham.

Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982) delivered a UK number one in his cover of the Supremes' You Can't Hurry Love. In 1984 the film ballad Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) gave Collins his first US Hot 100 number one, and his duet with Philip Bailey, Easy Lover, spent four weeks at number one in the UK that autumn. No Jacket Required (1985) followed with Sussudio and One More Night, and in July of that year Collins performed at both the London and Philadelphia concerts of Live Aid.

The period also established him as a producer and session specialist of the first rank. He produced records for Adam Ant, Frida of Abba and Philip Bailey, and he played drums on Robert Plant's first two solo albums and toured with him. That studio craftsmanship fed straight back into his own singles, which married soul and R&B arrangements to the clipped, reverberant drum sound that had become his calling card.

Peak years and leaving Genesis, 1986-1996

No Jacket Required won Album of the Year at the 1986 Grammy Awards, together with Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for Collins and Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for Collins and Padgham together. Collins also wrote for and appeared in the 1988 film Buster; Two Hearts and his reading of A Groovy Kind of Love both reached number one in the United States during that cycle, and Two Hearts brought him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

...But Seriously (1989) turned toward social themes, and Another Day in Paradise gave him another US number one along with a BRIT Award for best British single. He balanced the solo run with Genesis albums such as We Can't Dance (1991) and his own Both Sides (1993), then announced in March 1996 that he was leaving the group to concentrate on solo projects. Around the same time he formed the Phil Collins Big Band, returning to the drum seat for summer jazz festivals with guests including Quincy Jones and Tony Bennett.

After leaving Genesis he released Dance into the Light (1996), the career-spanning hits collection The Hits (1998) and the big-band live set A Hot Night in Paris (1999), and he continued to write for other artists, including work with John Martyn and Eric Clapton. Live performance remained part of his plans, but the drumming injuries that first surfaced during the 2007 Genesis reunion were already reshaping how he could work on stage.

Film songs, honours and the final Genesis years

Collins wrote and performed the songs for Disney's Tarzan (1999), singing numbers such as Two Worlds and Son of Man as well as You'll Be in My Heart. That ballad won the Golden Globe for best original song in January 2000 and the Academy Award the following March, and the soundtrack also took a Grammy. He returned to Disney for Brother Bear (2003) and was named a Disney Legend in 2002, between a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1999 and induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.

Collins reunited with Genesis for the Turn It On Again tour in 2007 and again for The Last Domino? Tour of 2021 and 2022, which the band presented as its last run of shows, or as Collins put it in a BBC interview, a way of putting the band to bed after more than five decades. Back surgeries in 2009 and 2015 left him with lasting nerve damage, and he told the BBC and reporters in September 2021 that he could barely hold a drumstick, so he sang from a seated position while his son Nic played drums.

Away from the stage, Collins published the memoir Not Dead Yet in 2016 and has since seen expanded reissues and box sets revisit his solo catalogue, including a deluxe treatment of Face Value. Genesis entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, and in April 2026 Collins was announced as a solo inductee in the Hall's class of 2026, a second entry that recognised the parallel careers he has sustained since the 1970s.