Photo: JOHAN HULTENHEIM / AFP / Getty Images
This week marks the 55th anniversary of Phil Collins joining Genesis. Back in the summer of 1970, Collins and the guitarist from his then-band Flaming Youth responded to an ad from a group looking for a drummer and guitarist. That group turned out to be Genesis, and the auditions were held at Peter Gabriel’s parents’ house in Chobham, England. Collins recalls being sent out to the swimming pool while other drummers auditioned, giving him a front-row seat to their missteps. “One guy warmed up for 10, 15 minutes with a drum solo,” he said. “I knew that was the wrong attitude to take… by the time I actually played, I knew all the bits they were auditioning people with.”
Collins ended up replacing John Mayhew, who had played on Genesis’ second album, Trespass. According to keyboardist Tony Banks, Mayhew simply wasn’t equipped for the band’s increasingly ambitious musical direction. “We had a lot of ideas in terms of sounds… but we didn’t have the drummer to cope with it at the time,” Banks explained. Mayhew passed away in 2009, but his brief tenure helped pave the way for Collins’s transformative role in the band. And while Genesis became a defining chapter in Collins’ career, he once admitted he would have left the band to join The Who after Keith Moon died. “I said, ‘What’s happening with The Who? I’d love to play,’” Collins recalled telling Pete Townshend, only to learn they had already asked Kenney Jones.
Collins was offered another shot at playing with The Who—this time for a show at the Royal Albert Hall. But he turned it down, choosing instead to stay in Switzerland, where he had just settled. “There’s one thing I should have done was to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that,’” he admitted. Phil has no regrets about his journey with Genesis, which began 55 years ago.
[Source: Premiere)