Reviews of Phil Collins later work
I spent the evening in bed, which considering the multitude of things to do in Berlin at night time always feels like a guilty pleasure but ends up being a routine that has crystallised into a form of contempt for Berlin night life. It is always smokey, Berlin being one of those precious places for people who smoke, a sort of smokers retreat. The bars are open late and filled with smoke. And then there are the clubs, which I have been resistant towards which I don't really know why. But last night I was very unwell and it started as a headache, with a wet flannel and some paracetomal and led to a two hour stint vomiting up the lovingly created omelette I had spent that early part of the evening working on. The fresh mint, the chili even the haloumi all came back to haunt me. Haunt me like the poignant strains of Phil Collins later work.
By 12.30am the crisis had been averted, so I looked up Phil Collins. Phil Collins came up in conversation in Scotland and I had been thinking about the unknown Phil Collins records in the oeuvre. The ones those classic record programmes don't focus on. The Phil Collins of love songs to midnight deep cuts where there is a sharp intake of breath from the announcer as he lovingly cues up the track and releases it cupid like into the icy wastelands of the hearts of truckers and housewives, which I assume are the listening audience of Love Songs till Midnight. How Phil Collins slowly envelops with warmth like a soft blanket of indeterminate colour, but definitely non-organic fabric.
Points about Phil Collins I wish to cover in this review.
I. The way that in the process of his remastering of all of his albums, he has taken the approach of getting the cover photographs redone and what this means.
II. The fan reviews of these remastered albums, especially what can possibly be described as Phil Collins worst album - Both Sides.
III. Obviously I will also provide my review of the 1993 album "Both Sides", but in its position as palliative after an evening vomiting rather than as a canonical work of a maligned great artist. It is impossible to hold this position.
I. Phil Collins never seems like a man endowed with a great sense of vanity, in his self presentation he has finally slumped into eternal comfort casual, but there was a time when Phil Collins was willing to be in this video:
This video, I am not entirely sure what the deal with it is, because the actual video of "Home" is set in Geneva, where Phil Collins moved to be away from the British tax authorities and maybe find himself or something. So as to be further surrounded by wealthy people and, in this case, wealthy people in the form of Ruthless Records Bone Thugs and Harmony, who make a big play at seeming tough but a cursory Google search
reveals at the very top the lyrics to "Home", their top 40 single - peaked at #33, taking us back in a recursive loop to our boy Phil Collins.
Whatever because our boy Phil Collins crushed it with this collab. Even though it is ostensibly just the hook of "Take me home", it was enough for him to be made an honorary member of Bone Thugs in Harmony for life. 1.
Is it too far a stretch to say that Phil Collin's greatest triumph was his inclusion on Thug Stories? What is it like to wake up every morning as Phil Collins?
By 2011 in response to Phil Collins' early retirement, immeasurable vicious articles lay down heavy industrial machinery sized loads of derision and scorn on his legacy. We are talking those gigantic mining machines that tear into the landscape in open cast mining, leaving dark rivulets of iron ochre in the water that look like black tears. Emblematic is this example from the paragon of dubious sentiment, the Daily Telegraph, which described him as "the most hated man in rock". In a similar vein, David Bowie subsequently dismissed his own critically reviled 1980s output as his "Phil Collins years/albums".2
In response, Phil Collins took this sad, aggrieved position, like the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Artist of the Floating World. The regret, guilt, the malleability of memory, the pains of ageing, solitude, loneliness are all intensely present in Collins's media output in this period.
Take this quote from the New York Times:
Basically everyone has had a go at Phil Collins, he does make a unrelentingly soft target. Billy Braggcriticised Collins for writing "Another Day in Paradise", stating: "Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn't have the action to go with it he's just exploiting that for a subject." Responding to criticism of the song, Collins stated: "When I drive down the street, I see the same things everyone else sees. It's a misconception that if you have a lot of money you're somehow out of touch with reality.
Phil Collins didn't actually need to comment on Billy Bragg here, a quick look at their relative wealth:
but it is, coming back to the central point, his vanity that is at fault here. One need not look at his recent performances where he looks like some bloke from the audience has inadvertently made his way onto the stage to perform to see that this is a man who has attempted a laissez faire attitude towards fame. A problematic relationship with his success, with the contempt that has come with that success and a crumbling belief in his art. In a 2010 San Franciso Chronicle article he said of his character: "The persona on stage came out of insecurity ... it seems embarrassing now. I recently started transferring all my VHS tapes onto DVD to create an archive, and everything I was watching, I thought, 'God, I'm annoying.' I appeared to be very cocky, and really I wasn't."
So we come to this latest round of reissues for the Phil Collins legacy, for the eighties fans for whom his oeuvre represents a peak of audio fidelity and quality as it was undoubtedly used to sell umpteen hi-fis during the long years of consumerism in the Eighties glut and promise. Now in this ultra modern era, where these true believers have grown like their maligned prince into prosperous middle aged fans revelling in their younger days, Phil Collins has generously bestowed his parting gift. The remasters of his entire back catalogue.3
But Phil Collins has provided fans into the grim mirror d'abyme of his life, as he stares bleakly into the abyss Phil Collins begins to see the abyss staring back at him. He has changed all the covers from the young balding Phil Collins, to the aged, maligned Phil Collins who has faced his critics and generally comes off worse. I think I am meant to get to some sort of central thesis argument here about how Phil Collins fear of death is mirrored in his self presentation on these album covers. But really want to get to this fan review instead. Suffice to say, this whole concept from Phil Collins is a huge mistake.
Take this choice sample:
"For that reason it’s largely been forgotten, considered minor Collins. But in the absence of unforgettable hooks that smash you over the head, “Both Sides” runs deep with a subtlety and an earnestness that on repeat listens may just make it the filet of his work." http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/194505/on-phil-collins-day-appreciating-both-sides-his-most-overlooked-album/
The album certainly runs deep, and is undeniably "earnest" but earnestness is part and parcel of the Phil Collins myth. This little battler who keeps on trying to knock out songs, despite having this irrepressible voice and often writing songs that sound fit for a bad musical about Phil Collins life.
Or this review:
“Can’t Turn Back the Years” is soft rock heaven, perfected with syncopated beat and the coo of Collins’ hypnotic voice, a standard bound to lower your blood pressure." http://www.goldminemag.com/reviews/review-phil-collins-sides
What this review fails to see is the cruel mask that Phil Collins presents to the world, of the illusion of considerable depth but the repetition of a continual theme. The recursive loop of Phil Collins, the simulacrum of emotion, buried deep is this innate sense of regret, the guilt at his failed relationships, the pains of solitude, how he used touring to escape from his responsibilities both as a father and as a husband, and the loneliness that seeps into every over-produced, gloopy recording. Every sharp tiney piano, every culturally appropriated drum loop, the Miami horns all suffused with a deep sense of abject misery. This both the horror and the profound sadness that colours Phil Collin's back catalogue, the disconnect between the reality and what his audience sees in him. Perhaps it is better to be hypnotised into a sense of comfort, this is perhaps why the cover to No Jacket Required Collins resembles some sort of demonic Svengali figure. Because the abyss is never far away when listening to Phil Collins.
III. My review of Both Sides:
Old mate Phil Collins is back! And he is better than ever! The year is 1993, the economy is booming. Do you like Toyota Corollas? Do you like those white vacuum cleaners for the kitchen bench that are small enough to fit on the kitchen bench? There were dark years back there, in the misty predawn of the new age, do you remember Black Monday 1987. Where we you? Were you frightened and alone, drinking prosecco and waiting for the dawning age of a new decade to wash away the regrets and disappointments of a lost decade. So was Phil Collins. But he couldn't escape the past, and eventually he created a new album to listen to. You could listen to it, or you could go out tonight to a smoke filled bar. You cannot do both.
1. Sadly this track was the extent of their collaboration, but a counterfactual history of Phil Collins in the Bone Thugs could have seen "Chrome Bone", Phil's Bone Thugs name, working closer with the group after Bizzy Bone left in 2003. This could have paved the way for Chrome to step again into the spotlight in earnest and join the group for their win at the 2007 American Music Awards "Favourite Rap/Hip-hop Duo/Group/Band". Admittedly the Bone Thugs were up against Pretty Ricky and Shop Boyz so they were a shoe in for that award. But imagine the look of delight on Chrome Bone's face as he stands on that dais, a returning general in his triumphal chariot with rose petals falling like leaves in autumn. Little tears of joy lilting downwards as the glass triangle of the award pierces the air with his arm raising it higher and higher.
2. This is unfair, as David Bowie makes no comment on his nineties output, or the sixties period which are equally up for contempt.
3. Although not including the Tarzan or Brother Bear soundtrack. Aside from it obviously just being about squeezing the maximum amount of money out of the dying embers of his cultural relevance, Phil Collins back catalogue already contains the "Platinum Collection" of remasters done in 2004 that peaked at #4 in the UK. As if this whole exercise is entirely pointless.
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