Tag: Eric Clapton

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Phil Collins’ last gig with Genesis at Cowdray Ruins on 18 September 1993

On 18 September 1993, Genesis played their last gig with Phil Collins at Cowdray Ruins before he left the band.

Genesis in 1993

1993 was a quiet year for Genesis. In 1992, the group had been on their huge’We Can’t Dance tour‘ following their 1991 album We Can’t Dance*. 1993 saw them returning to their solo projects. Phil Collins’ marriage to his second wife Jill started to fall apart with the tabloid press publishing story over story about the family. Phil wrote and released his solo album Both Sides*, a very dark and angry and certainly his most personal album, which unfortunately did not go very well with the critics. In these turbulent times, Genesis only played one gig, when they resurfaced briefly for ‘a charity gig at Cowdray Ruins in aid of the King Edward VII hospice where they were joined by such rock alumni as Pink Floyd and the remaining members of Queen.’1

Queen performed a set of songs with Roger Taylor and Paul Young from Mike and the Mechanics on vocals. Then Genesis took the stage, but not with their regular live members Chester Thompson on drums and Daryl Stuermer on bass and guitar. Instead, Roger Taylor of Queen and Gary Wallis of Mike and the Mechanivs played drums for them and bass/guitar was played by Mike’s bandmate from Mike and the Mechanics, Tim Renwick, who also played with Pink Floyd.

Genesis’ reunion in the picturesque scenery among these famous headliners saw them playing ‘Turn It On Again’, ‘Hold On My Heart’, ‘I Can’t Dance’ and ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’/’Invisible Touch’. According to some sources, they were also said to have played Phil Collins’s solo song ‘That’s Just The Way It Is’, but that is highly doubtable.

Next up was Pink Floyd who played some of their classic tracks from the 1970s, some also sung by Paul Young and with Mike on bass. Phil remembers: ‘The Floyd I’ve never loved apart from ‘Arnold Layne’. But we did this gig…I went to the sound check, and I was listening to the Floyd and a couple of the things they played I thought ‘I quite like that. There’s a couple of things in there that, you know. They show promise.”2

After Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton played a few songs (with Mike playing bass) and at the end, the ‘All Star Cowdray Ruins Band’, a band that featured everyone that had performed that night, played ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’, ‘Can I Get A Witness’ and ‘Gimme Some Loving’. YouTube videos and audio recordings of the show exist, but in a very low quality, which is a shame when considering this was Phil’s last gig with Genesis.

It was a successful, but ‘low-profile show’ and ‘few people would have ever believed that it was also Phil Collins’s final appearance with the band he’d now fronted for 18 unexpected years’3.

The show may have been one of the reasons for Phil to leave Genesis, as he remembers: ‘In the middle of my writing and making BOTH SIDES, Genesis did a concert with Queen. […] But I didn’t enjoy it … As I was singing these songs, it didn’t feel natural. Obviously, it was bad timing, going just like that from doing my most personal thing to a Genesis thing and back. But it definitely felt like ‘What am I doing here?’, like shoes that don’t fit anymore’.’4

Some time after this gig, Phil decided to leave Genesis, but his departure would not be announced until 1996. But that’s another story.

The line-up of the Cowdray Ruins band (according to the programme):

TONY BANKS: Genesis Keyboards
ERIC CLAPTON Guitar
PHIL COLLINS Genesis Vocals
JOHN DEACON Queen Bass
DAVID GILMOUR Pink Floyd Guitar
ADRIAN LEE Mike &. Mech Keyboards
NICK MASON Pink Floyd Drums
TIM RENWICK Mech./Floyd Bass/Guitar
MIKE RUTHERFORD Genesis Guitar/Bass
ROGER TAYLOR Queen Vocals/Drums
GARRY WALLIS Drums
RICHARD WRIGHT Pink Floyd Keyboards
PAUL YOUNG Mike &. Mech Vocals

Source: YouTube

Sources

Hewitt, Alan (2000): Opening The Musical Box. London: Firefly Publishing.

Platts, Robin (2007): Genesis. Behind the lines, 1967-2007. Burlington, Ont., Canada: Collectors Guide Pub.

Thompson, Dave (2005): Turn it on again. Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins & Genesis. San Francisco: Backbeat Books.

Title photo: Genesis in corcerto. Nizza – Luglio 1992 . Source: Wikimedia Commons, Valerio Ravaglia / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

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  1. Hewitt 2000: 64 ↩︎
  2. in Thompson 2005: 254 ↩︎
  3. Ibid. ↩︎
  4. in Platts 2007: 140 ↩︎
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Live Aid, July 13, 1985: Phil Collins appears in London and Philadelphia

Live_Aid_at_JFK_Stadium,_Philadelphia,_PA

On July 13, 1985, Phil Collins was the only performer to appear on both Live Aid shows in London and Philadelphia.

Phil Collins is all over the world

In the mid-1980s, it seemed as if Phil Collins had already achieved everything: As a solo artist and as a member of Genesis he had number one hit singles, chart-topping albums and sold-out world tours. By 1985, his third solo album No Jacket Required had been a massive success and produced hit singles that topped the charts worldwide. Phil Collins’ music was all over the world – and so would he be on July 13, 1985.

Phil Collins made rock history

On July 13, 1985, Phil Collins made rock history. He did something that no-one had done before (and probably not since): He appeared live on television around the world twice in a day from two different continents. And as usual with Phil, this had not been an elaborate act of profiling himself as an artist. It had been for the benefit of millions of starving people in Africa. The two appearances onstage and on television had been part of Live Aid, two shows that had been organized by Bob Geldof. The man of the day however, was Phil Collins.

Live Aid

The famous Live Aid concerts from 1985 were the continuation of the Band Aid single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ from 1984, in which musician Bob Geldof had gathered many famous pop stars to raise money for the poor starving population in Ethiopia. The concept worked and half a year later, the Live Aid performances were celebrated with the same intention. There were two parallel concerts, one in London, one in Philadelphia, and the whole 80s pop world seemed to participate in the event. Phil Collins had already played drums on the the million-selling Band Aid single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. He did not sing on it, as he had recently recorded his own solo album and duets with Philip Bailey and Eric Clapton and the record company told him not to sing anymore until his album No Jacket Required had come out and the tour that followed.

So what exactly happened on July, 13, 1985, ‘the greatest day in the history of pop music’? Phil Collins proved the impossible, playing at both shows. He appeared at Wembley Stadium in London in the early afternoon and played ‘Against All Odds’ and ‘In The Air Tonight’ alone at the piano.

‘lt was blisteringly hot, the white stage. lt was so hot and l made a terrible mistake on ‘Against All Odds’ on the piano’, Phil remembers. ‘l thought, ‘Oh God, what a good start for the day this is.”1 The bum note was not only heard in front of 80,000 people in Wembley, but also by a global telly audience of 1 billion people.

Then he was joined by his friend Sting on guitar and vocals for ‘Long Long Way To To’ off No Jacket Required (Sting had also provided backing vocals for the studio version). Then the duo played ‘Every Breath You Take’. Afterwards, Phil left the stadium, crossed the Atlantic with a Concorde, and played his solo songs in Philadelphia the same way he did in London. In Philadelphia, he also joined his friends Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. Phil had arrived at the John F. Kennedy Stadium at 7pm, was at the show at ten past, went to Eric to ask what they would play and then went onstage with him at 7.30pm. In between, he also rushed to Robert Plant’s caravan to have a chat with Led Zeppelin about their gig. This pretty much sums up the energy of Phil Collins in the 1980s.

Phil Collins had been an international superstar at this point, but his legendary performances as the only one who appeared at both Live Aid shows, certainly boosted his profile as a solo artist and personality.

Live Aid – The aftermath

Looking back, Live Aid was a terrible example of using clichés. It is the prime example of ‘rock musicians trying to help poor Africa’. The intention was certainly good, the realization was maybe good-hearted, but not that effective. The Christmas single with its awful lyrics (‘Do they know its Christmas time at all?’ – this is colonial thinking at its best) and the Live Aid performances raised a lot of money and made people aware of the problems, but the result was that much, if not all, of the money was taken by the corrupt Ethiopian government. They used it to prop up the brutal dictator Mengistu. Furthermore it turned out that part of the relief donations were diverted by a rebel group to buy weapons. And also, very little food and medicine left the port cities of Assab and Massawa. It was more important to unload military hardware from Soviet ships, leaving hundreds of thousands of tons of food rotting on the docks. Bob Geldof, founder of Live Aid, was seen on TV with Mengistu, smiling and joking around, as he handed over the famine money.

Geldof had actually been warned about Mengistu and his dismantling of tribes, resettlement marches and slaughterings in which 100,000 people died. However, here one can see how the charity for ‘poor Africa’ can turn out and how someone like Geldof, who might have had his best interests, can turn his favours against himself.

For Phil Collins, playing at both concerts helped him gain even more popularity and becoming a proper international superstar. He also helped the event to become even more memorable.

Title photo: Live Aid at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA. Source: Wikimedia Commons, own work. Author: Squelle. / CC-BY-SA-2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

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  1. Phil Collins – A Life Less Ordinary (Documentary – 2002) ↩︎
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Phil Collins’ Departure from Genesis in 1996

On March 28, 1996, Genesis officially announced Phil Collins’ departure in a press release titled: “Genesis end twenty-year experiment, decide to replace Peter Gabriel as vocalist.”

It marked the end of an era. But the story of Phil’s (temporary) exit began long before that.

Phil Collins Had Made Up His Mind in 1993

By 1993, Genesis were at their peak. The massive We Can’t Dance tour had wrapped up the previous year, and in the fall of ’93, the band performed at Cowdray Ruins, a charity concert alongside Pink Floyd, Queen, and Eric Clapton. Genesis played a short set and joined the all-star lineup for the encore. No one realized it would be Phil Collins’ last performance with the band for a long time.

At the time, Phil was already deep into writing what would become his most personal solo album, Both Sides. He played every instrument and produced the album himself, much like he had done on Face Value. The deeply introspective songs reflected his personal turmoil – his marriage to Jill was falling apart due to his affair with childhood sweetheart Lavinia Lang. With his family on the verge of breaking up again, he found it increasingly difficult to sing Genesis songs. He wanted to write and perform music that truly reflected his own emotions.

A New Chapter, a New Life in Switzerland

Sometime after the Cowdray Ruins gig, Phil confided in manager Tony Smith about his desire to leave Genesis. But Smith, ever the businessman, encouraged him to finish his solo album and tour first—then decide.

Phil embarked on the Both Sides world tour in 1994 and 1995, during which he met Orianne Cevey in Switzerland. Falling in love, he decided to leave England and settle in Lake Geneva. The British press harshly criticized him – both for his music and his personal life. He grew to resent his ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ image and felt increasingly distant from Genesis.

Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford Decide to Carry On

In 1996, the band convened in Tony Smith’s kitchen, where Phil finally made it official – he was leaving Genesis.

Tony Banks reacted with typical British understatement: “It’s a sad day, a very sad day.”

Mike Rutherford, on the other hand, was more surprised that Phil had stayed as long as he did given his highly successful solo career.

On March 28, 1996, exactly twenty years and two days after his first show as Genesis’ lead singer, the news went public. With Phil’s departure, Genesis lost not just their frontman and entertainer, but also a brilliant composer and drummer.

Still, Tony and Mike decided to continue, eventually searching for a new singer. Meanwhile, Phil focused on his solo career, though his success never quite reached the heights of the 1980s.

Despite going their separate ways, the three remained close. By the early 2000s, they occasionally reunited for special appearances. Then, a decade after Phil’s departure, Genesis officially came back together for the 2007 Turn It On Again tour.

But that’s another story.

Title photo: The world famous band – Genesis. Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford. (Photo 1991) . Source: Wikimedia Commons, David Scheinmann / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).