Haters gonna hate

There are people I know who will never abide Phil Collins. Like, really hate the man. I've never been entirely sure what he’s done to deserve it, personally or otherwise. After all, he’s a perfectly affable bloke (though three wives - including the last, with whom he’s back again - might disagree...). But, the fact that Phil Collins is one of only three artists to have had sold more than 100 million albums as both band member and solo artist (the other two being Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) would suggest, by definition, some degree of popularity. However, there are those who'll just never get along with him. Haters clearly are gonna hate. And this post just ain’t for them.

Collins himself readily accepts that he’s not to everyone's liking. Always a king of self-depreciation, he acknowledges in his highly entertaining - and characteristically frank - 2016 autobiography, Not Dead Yet that his ubiquity in the 1980s and '90s clearly led to familiarity breeding contempt. And he was everywhere: his own solo career taking off in 1981; fronting Genesis as it became a MTV-friendly, Van Halen-rivalling pop-rock monster in sharp contrast to their prog rock origins; singing, drumming and producing collaborations with the post-Led Zeppelin Robert Plant, ABBA's Frida, Paul McCartney, Adam Ant (yes, really), his great friend John Martyn, Earth Wind & Fire's Philip Bailey and many, many more. He even managed to play Live Aid twice, including a drumming set with Zeppelin that, in hindsight, appeared to have not been a great idea.

By the early 1990s Collins was as much a symbol of the age as bankers in red braces had been in the decade before. No coincidence, perhaps, that Patrick Bateman, the psychopath protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho is a fan, pontificating at length on Collins' career in the 1980s ("I thought it was quite funny," Collins has said of the book's film adaptation, "although I don’t know if it was meant to be. I don’t think [Bateman] being a psychopath and liking my music is linked – my music was just omnipresent in that era."). In some respects, Collins was the 1980s, or at least the musical embodiment of the decade. It began in January 1981 with a hissing drum machine and a simple, three-chord hum from a Prophet 5 keyboard. In The Air Tonight was and remains a remarkable song, on a par as an era keynote with Ultravox's Vienna, which was released on the same day. Both songs have mood and gloom (as well as a shared use of the Roland CR-78 drum machine), with one capturing the irreparable collapse of a marriage, the other, a fleeting affair. Only one, however, has that epic drum fill. It appears almost three-quarters of the way in (Collins' US record company had insisted that 'live' drums were added from the outset of the American single release) and, with its legendary 'gated reverb', set the tone for drums on pop records for the decade. Even today, In The Air Tonight is referenced to and even sampled by hip-hop artists. And how much more 1980s can you get than the song appearing in the first ever episode of Miami Vice (in a key scene in which Sonny Crockett's black Ferrari cruises down, appropriately, Miami's Collins Avenue)? The singer himself even landed a starring role in a later episode, playing the crooked game show host 'Phil The Shill'. The '80s, then, belonged to Phil Collins, but it wasn't just his music that became omnipresent, he did too, hobnobbing with Hollywood, picking up Emmy after Grammy after Oscar, and seemingly serving as Eric Clapton’s wingman, all slicked back hair and Versace shirts.

Success can be a strange mistress. Collins' fanbase, up until In The Air Tonight and the Face Value album it was recorded for, had hitherto been constructed exclusively of followers of Genesis who, until they'd had a hit with Follow You, Follow Me in 1978, had largely been long-haired men in army surplus greatcoats listening intensely. A hit attracted women to their concerts, as well as a wider American audience they'd previously only skimmed. With the album Duke and its short, punchy singles Turn It On Again and the Collins-written Misunderstanding (itself a nod to Toto's Hold The Line), the band's trajectory elevated. This ascent had not been without its cost - Collins' first marriage collapsed in the wake of relentless touring, although this led to the catharsis of bedroom-recorded demos that would later become the album Face Value, launching the solo career, launching Brand Collins.

The arc of this career is charted by Plays Well With Others, a four-disc box set which runs from his earliest recording, as a member of Flaming Youth, a constructed boy band that produced the one concept album Ark II in 1969, through side projects like the brilliant jazz-fusion band Brand X, work with Rod Argent and being loaned out by Genesis to work on Brian Eno's Another Green World (reciprocity for Eno contributing noises to the band's The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album), and then the period when you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing something Collins had been involved in. One common thread throughout the last 40 years has been Collins' friendship with the late John Martyn, a relationship forged in the dissolving of their respective first marriages, writing together at Collins' cottage on the Surrey/Sussex borders, occasionally breaking off for bitter phone calls with estranged partners, before returning to work...or drink. For me, the various collaborations with Martyn are amongst the most enduring on Plays Well With Others: from Sweet Little Mystery from Martyn's Grace And Danger album to Could've Been Me and Suzanne from the trip-hop influenced And, and the posthumous Can't Turn Back The Years from the big man's final recording, Willing To Work. There was a genuine warmth to their relationship that comes across like no other in this collection.

Elsewhere, there are inclusions that might come as a surprise if you'd missed them first time around, such as Adam Ant's Puss 'N' Boots, Howard Jones' No One Is To Blame and Tears For Fears' Woman In Chains, on which all Collins provides his precise, melodic drumming, a signature feature to Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, also included. There is also the inclusion of Peter Gabriel's Intruder, a dark song about home invasion made darker by its thumping, cymbal-less drumming (Gabriel had instructed Collins to play without the punctuation of cymbals) in which that gated reverb made its debut, thanks to some experimentation by Collins and engineer Hugh Padgham. Consider this the source of the Nile.

Change can sit uncomfortably with music fans. Just look at how people reacted to Dylan when he went electric. Those who'd followed Genesis from the Gabriel-fronted era of epic, complicated songs like The Return Of The Giant Hogweed and the 23-minute Supper's Ready, struggled with both Collins' commercial success as a solo artist, as well as the nature of his solo music. When Genesis included Earth Wind & Fire's Phenix Horns brass section on the Abacab album, die hards were up in arms, and continued to blame Collins as the band increasingly went down the pop route (despite Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks being equally compliant in the direction). Collins' own argument has always been that people change: "You don't read the same books or wear the same clothes you did years ago," he would say, "so why should I expected to do the same music as I did back then [in his early Genesis era]. Here, though, is where my loyalty began to be tested. His solo albums, up until 1990's But Seriously were mostly brilliant, if - as in the case of No Jacket Required - of their time. But beyond that, not so much for me. Too much repetition, even the impression of a lack of effort (an unfair comment, but perceptions and all that). Collins' soundtrack to Disney's Tarzan, was a high point, if you like that sort of thing (and, again, you don't have to) which, like Elton John's The Lion King work, was perfect for the Disney genre. But, by this point, a duality emerged, two Phil Collins: the gifted, inventive drummer, and the Hollywood star.

For the former, Plays Well With Others offers plenty of examples of the gift, even on the all-star live charity performances, such as backing George Harrison, Clapton et al on the live version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, singing and Ringo-drumming on Golden Slumbers, and the ultimate Beatle collaboration, drumming on Paul McCartney's Angry. However, the selection of charity gig supergroup work also includes The Bee Gees' You Win Again and, at The Party At The Palace, Annie Lennox's Why, Bryan Adams' Everything You Do and Joe Cocker's With A Little Help From My Friends, all of which seem little more than namedropping, even if they're simply examples of Collins fulfilling his teenage ambition to become just a jobbing drummer. More curious is There'll Be Some Changes Made with Tony Bennett, and Stormy Weather with Quincy Jones, examples of Collins' switch to big band jazz in the late 1990s, which included an acclaimed set at the Montreux Jazz Festival. There, just a few kilometres down the shore of Lake Geneva from his then-home, Collins did at least appear to drumming for fun, and the inclusion on Plays Well With Others of the staple Pick Up The Pieces and the Brand X track And So To F demonstrates what he did best before various physical ailments robbed him of his considerable ability on the skins.

Thus it's somewhat difficult to conclude who Plays Well With Others is aimed at or what it is trying to achieve, beyond providing a chronology of a near-50 year recording and performing career. There are curiosities that fans of one persuasion might find intriguing, such as Savannah Woman by the late Tommy Bolin or Al Di Meola's fusion-lite Island Dreamer; and there are somewhat stubborn attempts at proving Collins' unrecognised hipness, such as Lil' Kim's In The Air Tonight cover and a disappointing version of If Leaving Me Is Easy by The Isley Brothers.

As this post will hopefully convey, I've been an unashamed Collins fan for the last 40 years, when I bought the Genesis album ...And Then There Were Three, which opened up their back catalogue as well as his associations as a drummer and singer. Through him I became a huge fan of John Martyn - probably my favourite solo artist of all time (not hindered by the fact he was born in the same town as me), and cultivated curiosity in other artists and, even, genres. There's no doubting that Collins became a force majeure in the '80s and '90s and while his output was mostly impressive, Plays Well With Others highlights where quality control could have been applied on both the who and the what. To say Plays Well With Others is a mixed bag is an understatement but, going back to the Not Dead Yet book, it's very clear that the selection of tracks - good and bad - is a very personal statement. Perhaps he's demanding credibility, perhaps he's highlighting authenticity (which he has no need to do, to be honest). Perhaps he's reminding us that, before he 'went Hollywood', he was just a Chiswick schoolboy, child actor and fan of soul, R'n'B and beat music.

Ultimately, perhaps, this 59-track compilation serves as a settlement to the arguments some put forward about Phil Collins: clearly a good bloke, often under-appreciated as a truly talented drummer (up there with Moon and Bonham, both of whom he came close to posthumously replacing), and undoubtedly heartfelt as a songwriter and a singer, but whose work ethic led to overexposure, which in turn bred the kind of vitriol flung at him even now. You can't turn back the years, as he sung with John Martyn, but there are times when even I as a fan would have preferred Collins to have said no, rather than yes. At least, then, Plays Well With Others provides the argumentation for that dialogue. Perhaps that was its intent.