Off The Record
“I Need To Find A Real Job” – Phil Collins Says Goodbye To Fans In Emotional Final Concert
Once rivalled by the biggest stars like Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, now he needs to find a ‘real job’ and fans are heartbroken.
In the final concert, Phil Collins left the fans heartbroken after performing for the last time and announced that he needs to find ‘a real job now.’
According to the Daily Mail, Phil Collins had multiple procedures done on his spine, and has been suffering poor health conditions for quite some time now. As a result, he is not able to sit in an upright position.
The band had one final reunion for ‘The Last Domino?’ Tour, which was postponed due to COVID.
The noticeably frail Collins stood with his bandmates for the last time and joked with his fans, “After tonight we’ll all have to get real jobs.”
In April 2009, Collins had surgery to repair dislocated vertebrae in his upper neck, which occurred while drumming on the 2007 Genesis tour.
The operation caused him to lose feeling in his fingers and could only hold drum sticks if they were taped to his hands. His health issues led him to feel depressed and having low self-worth.
In 2010, Phil stated he was suffering depression and had even debated suicide but stopped himself at the thought of his children.
Since 2015, he’s been walking with a help of a cane.
Collins told Rolling Stone: “My vertebrae has been crushing my spinal cord because of the position I drum in. It comes from years of playing. I can’t even hold the sticks properly without it being painful.”
Speaking on the BBC Breakfast Show, the legendary musician hinted that it may be his last tour.
“I’d love to but you know, I mean, I can barely hold a stick with this hand. So there are certain physical things that get in the way,” he said, in addition to this might be the absolute last time he performs on stage.
“We’re all men of our age, and I think to some extent, I think it probably is putting it to bed,” Collins said. “I think yeah, I think just generally for me, I don’t know if I want to go out on the road anymore.”
It may be hard to believe, but Phil started out as a child actor, but not without the touch of his talent. His first major role playing the Artful Dodger in the West End musical Oliver!
Six years after, he assembled together with the band Genesis in 1970 and became the lead singer in 1975 when Peter Gabriel left Genesis.
“There was all this big time stuff happening with long tours being planned way in the future, and I just felt I was getting to be part of a machine,” Gabriel said in the documentary Genesis: A History. “I felt I was becoming a sort of stereotype, sort of ‘rock star,’ or falling into wanting that ego gratification. I didn’t like myself, I didn’t like the situation, and I didn’t feel free.”
When Collins was 19 years old, he saw the ad in the paper that a band was looking for a drummer. After securing his job, the band toured all over US and released five studio albums. When Peter Gabriel left, they auditioned 400 people, but still Phil got it in the end.
“I felt exposed. I’d lived all my life behind the security blanket of a drum kit, and suddenly there was nothing except a microphone stand,” Phil Collins told LouderSound of the moment he became the band’s lead singer.
“And the band sounds different from out front. You hear a different kind of balance out front, and it isn’t comfortable. And I didn’t want the job, frankly.
“I wanted to stay the drummer. We had people down every Monday [auditioning], five or six people, and I would teach them what they had to do. We were writing A Trick Of The Tail and I would teach them some old songs – Firth Of Fifth or whatever – and I ended up sounding better than anyone else,” he added.
“And this [Genesis] was kind of a family. ‘Do we want this person in our family? Will he fit in with the way we do things?’ Anyway, we didn’t find anybody and ended up with me.”
In the 80s, Phil went solo and became one of the most popular singers of that decade and all time.
He hit many covers of all magazines by performing at two fundraisers within hours of each other.
Live Aid raised more than $150 million for famine relief for African nations at Wembley Stadium. He then flew straight to Philadelphia where he performed for the benefit a few hours later.
The 71-year-old actor who performed his final show sitting down admitted that he doesn’t practice at home.
“I don’t do anything at all. I don’t practice singing at home, not at all. Rehearsing is the practice,” Collins told the Guardian in September.
“These guys are always having a go at me for not, but I have to do it this way. Of course, my health does change things, doing the show seated changes things. But I actually found on my recent solo tours, it didn’t get in the way; the audience were still listening and responding. It’s not the way I would have written it, but it’s the way that it is,” he continued.
It’s been an honor to grow up listening to this absolute legend, with and without his bandmates. Whether he choose to find ‘a real job’, or perform again sitting down, we wish him the best!
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