Phil Collins

After Peter Gabriel quit Genesis in 1975, the band auditioned roughly 400 replacement singers before their drummer volunteered. Collins had been in the band since 1970 as the guy in the back, and nobody expected much from the switch. The surprise was that he was better suited for pop than Gabriel ever was. By 1981, 'In the Air Tonight' launched his solo career on a drum fill that wasn't planned. Collins has said he just did it, that it could have been anything. The gated reverb sound was itself an accident from a Peter Gabriel session. Both accidents became one of the most copied sounds in pop music.

The Genesis farewell tour ran 47 shows across 2021-2022 with Collins performing seated throughout, his spinal injuries from decades of drumming having left him unable to hold drumsticks properly. His son Nic played the drums. The 1990s backlash that made him the punchline for commercial mediocrity has faded into something more like historical curiosity. His personal life supplied most of the recent tabloid fuel: a third divorce reportedly cost him over $46 million, his ex-wife moved back in years later, secretly married someone else in 2020, then refused to leave his $33 million Miami mansion until a judge ordered her out.

Before anyone called him a rock star, Collins was a London child actor who appeared in A Hard Day's Night as an extra at 13, played the Artful Dodger in two West End runs of Oliver! until his voice broke mid-performance, and lost the title role in the 1968 Romeo and Juliet to Leonard Whiting. He answered a Melody Maker classified ad in 1970 to join a prog rock band as their drummer. The acting career went nowhere. The drummer career went rather differently.