Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Phil Spector is best known for writing several No. The longtime host of 'Donahue,' Phil Donahue established the modern daytime talk show format with his focus on audience participation and hot-button social issues.
Mental health professional and life strategist Dr. American golfer Phil Mickelson has won more than 40 PGA tournaments, his Masters win marking the first of his five major titles. David Bowie was an English rock star known for dramatic musical transformations, including his character Ziggy Stardust. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in British musician Ozzy Osbourne fronted the heavy metal band Black Sabbath before embarking on a successful solo career.
He later became a reality TV star with 'The Osbournes. Phil Collins was one of the most successful musicians in the world during the s, releasing thirteen U. Top Ten hits between and I think there is talk of trying to do another one. We built up a live reputation, but people don't wait to see people live now like they used to.
There is music on tonnes of television channels and that means we hear a record constantly for a month and then don't hear from the act. The only Grammy Genesis ever won was for the "Land of Confusion" video. Which, it's worth noting, we weren't even in. That was a trailblazing video. No one had seen anything like that. Ours was more blatantly humorous, and Peter's was more artistic. I still have one of the Phil Collins puppets at home. This is what I've got to work with, you know, what you see here, and that doesn't really conjure up Paul Young , Simon Le Bon , that kind of traditional thing.
So I've never really bothered with it to be honest. That's been overlooked for years. Everybody talks about him being the joker, the cheeky chap, but he's a great musician. I sound surprised 'cause I would have thought that someone like that wouldn't have wanted something to do with someone like me. I still think about him everyday, and I consider him to be one of my greatest friends I don't know. I used to use two bass drums years ago, and then I stopped because I read that Buddy Rich said that hi-hats are very important.
I thought, 'Yeah, he's dead right. I have quite a lot of good speed on the bass drum. I'm more of a foot player in some respects than I am a hand player. I'm very conscious of what the hi-hat is doing all the time. Tony Williams is great at that.
It was good fun, but it doesn't really set a precedent for what we're going to do. We've always done different things. That's one of the essences of what we do - the variety of material. I like to keep the variety, but at the same time try to get some more instrumental stuff back in. I write songy stuff, as well as some from the Brand X area. I'm also hip to what Eno [ Brian Eno ] does - those kind of soundtracks which I've always been interested in - two or three minutes of just mood.
The album, when it does come out, will have a lot of different styles on it. That's what I want to try and do next year, if possible. I'm looking forward to doing it. I'm quite happy to play with two drummers because I think that's an experience in itself - trying to get that happening. Bill [ Bill Bruford ] is one of those players who plays himself. If Bill's playing something, once he's done it two or three times, he'll play something else.
I'd do a fill where I would usually do a fill. He would, just by chance, do one as well, and so it goes completely haywire for four bars. With Chester [ Chester Thompson ], we're both more aware of each other, I think. When you're playing with a band, from behind the drums it really sounds like it's all happening. When you get in front of the kit, it sounds very different. The group doesn't sound as beefy. It was strange at first to sing with that sound.
You find you're listening to it rather than being a part of it. The bass drum is miked individually. There's one mike for the snare drum and hi-hat, one mike for each pair of tom-toms, and a couple of overhead mikes to pick up the cymbals. Live, I prefer to have more control which having fewer mikes gives me.
When you're dealing with 40 channels of music at one time at a gig, your fourth tom-tom might be out of balance with the rest of the kit. That's not the kind of thing the sound engineer can pick up on in a concert. In theory, I would like to have two overhead mikes that are turned up and I just play. Then I'd know that whatever balance I'm putting out, he's getting. I love to play small gigs where the audience hears you, and not the system.
When you're playing in 20, seat auditoriums, you have no alternative. What you do is almost inaudible.
It's just whatever comes out of those speakers. I don't dampen any drum. That's the big difference between me and a lot of other players. If I had my way, I would record the bass drum a couple of times with the skin on because I think it alters the sound. I do tend to tune the drums a lot tighter. There's a tendency on stage to tune the drums so they sound good from where the drummer is - a loose sound which doesn't project through the sound system if you've got a loud band.
I tune everything tight because it really cuts through and is more melodic that way. I've got four snares, one for each occasion. I've got a Ludwig Type orchestral snare drum which I use most of the time because it's sharp and has some depth.
With snare sounds in the studio, I just go for whatever sound the song needs. It usually ends up that I don't dampen at all. I think in America when you're a studio musician, time is of the essence. With so much music being made so quickly, it has to be there straight away. The person will have a snare drum sound that he got from the last session where a cigarette pack was taped on and all the nut bolts are finger tight.
It will sound like what everyone thinks a snare drum should sound like. Everything's done for convenience. I did a session with Robert Fripp in New York with a live kit, and the guy ended up liking it because it was different.
In Genesis, there are a lot of things that demand heavy playing, and a lot where you have to be light. We play a lot of different styles. We play a few things in time, almost fusion music. At the other end of the scale, we play very straight, almost Elton John songs. I don't want to play on one like I would on another, I prefer to play what is right for the song, as opposed to playing what's me, because I don't know what is me.
I always think I look very awkward. I look at Bruford [ Bill Bruford ] and he's got a great stance, the way he sits. It's just that some people look as if they have authority. I sit there slouched. I've got very bad positioning, and being left-handed always looks a bit weird. Some drummers sit up dead toward the front and all the tom-toms are set up in the usual way.
I tend to sit more diagonally. I don't like the way I look - it's a bit odd. I rarely see myself on TV or something, but when we made a film, I remember looking. The arm movements are fluid, but at the same time, it's a bit awkward.
Americans are much more diet conscious than we are in England. I think that's because of the amount of junk that's about. At home, I mostly eat home-cooked food. I was playing from the age of six along with records.
That's how I taught myself. I learned the basic rudiments, then I stopped. I went back to Frank King when I was about I was with him for a couple of years. I liked the way he taught. I never really came to grips with the music. I should have stuck with it. I've always felt that if I could hum it, I could play it. For me, that was good enough, but that attitude is bad. To me, there are two types of players.
You have Tony Williams who obviously just sat down and started playing and liked it. Then there's Carl Palmer who was taught and it shows. That is the basic difference - one is an intuitive player and the other is taught. Because of that kind of difference, I've always shied away from being taught.
I'd love to be able to sit down and read music. I can bust through chords on a piano, but it would take me a long time to read a chart. Rudiments I found very, very helpful - much more helpful than anything else because they're used all the time.
In any kind of funk or jazz drumming, the rudiments are always there. In , following the final tour supporting the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway , Gabriel left the group to pursue a solo career. Collins became lead vocalist after a lengthy but ultimately fruitless search for Gabriel's replacement where he sang back-up with the over hopefuls that reportedly auditioned. Bruford was soon replaced by ex- Frank Zappa band member Chester Thompson , who became a mainstay of the band's live line-up as well as Collins's solo back-up band through the following decades.
Collins, however, continued to be the band's exclusive drummer on all of the group's studio recordings. Said Rolling Stone , "Genesis has managed to turn the possible catastrophe of Gabriel's departure into their first broad-based American success. The group decided to continue as a trio for recording with Tony Banks on keyboards and Mike Rutherford playing guitar and bass in the studio, although the line-up was regularly augmented by Chester Thompson and American guitarist Daryl Stuermer for concert tours.
Collins simultaneously performed in a jazz fusion group called Brand X. The band recorded their first album, Unorthodox Behaviour , with Collins as drummer, but because Genesis was Collins's priority, there were several Brand X tours and albums without him. Collins credits Brand X as his first use of a drum machine as well as his first use of a home 8-track tape machine.
Collins also performed on Steve Hackett 's first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte , on which he sang lead vocals and played drums. As the decade closed, Genesis began a shift from their progressive rock roots and toward more accessible, radio-friendly pop-rock music. The album And Then There Were Three In the s, while Collins developed as a songwriter and established a parallel career as a solo artist, Genesis recorded a series of highly successful albums including Duke , Abacab , Genesis and Invisible Touch.
The latter album's title track reached No. Considine stating, "every tune is carefully pruned so that each flourish delivers not an instrumental epiphany but a solid hook. Collins left Genesis in to focus on his solo career. When in the mids discussions of a possible Genesis reunion arose, Collins stated that he would prefer to return as the drummer, with Gabriel handling the vocals. The dominant theme running through Collins's early solo recordings although never specifically mentioned in his songs was the acrimonious breakdown of his first marriage and then-recent divorce.
Two songs he wrote on the Genesis album Duke , "Please Don't Ask", and the Top 20 hit "Misunderstanding", dealt with failed relationships. One year earlier, he had played drums and contributed backing vocals on John Martyn 's Grace and Danger , an album whose main theme is also marriage break-up. With the recording of his first solo album, Face Value , Collins attributed his divorce as his main influence, [41 ] as can be inferred from songs such as " If Leaving Me Is Easy ".
Face Value became a surprise international success topping the charts in at least seven countries and hitting the top ten of the Billboard eventually going quintuple-platinum in the US. Regarding Face Value , he says, "I had a wife, two children, two dogs, and the next day I didn't have anything. So a lot of these songs were written because I was going through these emotional changes.
Hello, I Must Be Going! The album went triple-platinum in the United States. The album also reached No. Two years before, Collins had played drums on Peter Gabriel's third self-titled record often referred to as Melt , the first record to feature the " gated reverb " sound, which was used on the song "Intruder". Gabriel reportedly "didn't want any metal on the record" and asked Collins to leave his cymbals at home, to concentrate on the sound of his kit more heavily than usual.
Studio engineer Hugh Padgham augmented the drum sound by using a microphone normally intended for studio communication rather than recording and feeding it through a signal processor called a noise gate. This allowed the reverberation added to the drums to be suddenly cut off before it naturally decayed.
The result was the arresting "gated reverb" which became Collins's signature sound. But Seriously The ballad was written to bring attention to the problem of homelessness Collins changed his musical style with the release of the ballad, " Against All Odds Take a Look at Me Now ", which was the main theme song for the movie of the same name in The more pop-friendly and radio-accessible single became Collins's first solo single to reach number-one on the Billboard Hot [37 ] and gave him his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.
Collins released his most successful album, the Diamond-certified No Jacket Required , which reached number one in U. It contained the U. No Jacket Required received criticism that the album was too safe, despite its upbeat reviews and commercial success. A positive review by David Fricke of Rolling Stone ended, "After years on the art-rock fringe, Collins has established himself firmly in the middle of the road.
Perhaps he should consider testing himself and his new fans' expectations next time around. He accomplished this by performing early in the day at Wembley as both a solo artist and alongside Sting , then transferring to a Concorde flight to the US enabling him to perform his solo material, and drum for Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton in Philadelphia. While being a guest on major artists' hit recordings, Collins continued to enjoy solo success even while on tour with Genesis supporting their successful album Invisible Touch besides from his number-one duet with Marilyn Martin in , Collins would score two more hits from movies with the singles, " Two Hearts " No.
In , Collins produced another successful album, But Seriously , featuring the anti- homelessness anthem " Another Day in Paradise ", with David Crosby on backing vocals. Collins later went on to co-write, sing and play on the song "Hero" on Crosby's album Thousand Roads.
But Seriously became the first No. This theme recurred on his later albums. A live album, Serious Hits After a hiatus of five years, Genesis reconvened for the album release We Can't Dance , which was to be Collins's last studio album with the group. Collins's record sales began to drop with the release of Both Sides , a largely experimental album that, according to Collins, included songs that "were becoming so personal, so private, I didn't want anyone else's input".
Collins used no backing musicians, performed all the vocal and instrumental parts at his home studio, and used rough vocal takes for the final product. The album was not well received by radio. Its two biggest hits were "Both Sides of the Story" and " Everyday ". Collins worked on the album completely independently of his record company, and took them by surprise when he delivered them a completed album that they were unaware he was making.
Collins officially parted ways with Genesis in to focus on his solo career Genesis would produce one album without Collins— Calling All Stations In , Genesis announced they were embarking on their Last Domino? Tour, which was rescheduled due to the Covid pandemic. It was a baking hot summer's day with barely a cloud in the sky. A complete sell-out, 72, people bought tickets for the Wembley Stadium raising funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine.
Paul Weller, Martin Talbot and co. Earlier, another poignant moment came when Geldof halted 'I Don't Like Mondays' just after the pertinent line "The lesson today is how to die" to rapturous applause.
Appropriately, here they are sat in front of rock royalty, Queen. They left shortly after Boomtown Rats missing many of the iconic moments that would happen on stage later. Live Aid co-organiser Midge Ure was rightfully met with a hero's welcome at the start of Ultravox's set. Bedecked in kaleidoscopic suits and sporting glorious eights hair, pop chart-conquers Spandau Ballet treated the crowd to three songs — 'Only When You Leave', 'Virgin' and 'True'. One of the most successful solo artists in the UK at the time of Live Aid, Nik Kershaw was granted a whopping 18 minutes on stage.
While Queen were rightfully crowned the standout act at Live Aid, U2 were also rapturously received and the phenomenal performance helped propel them into international superstars. Opening with 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', they then played a sprawling minute version of 'Bad' extended as Bono went into the crowd midway through that included snippets of 'Satellite of Love', 'Ruby Tuesday', 'Sympathy for the Devil' and 'Walk on the Wild Side'.
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