Phil Collins Opens Up About 2024 Organ Failure, Seven-Month ICU Stay

Phil Collins has spoken publicly for the first time about the severity of his 2024 health crisis, revealing that he spent seven months in hospital after his organs began to fail from alcohol-related damage. In an interview with The Sunday Times, the former Genesis frontman described being admitted to a Swiss hospital in November 2023, discharged before Christmas, then readmitted weeks later and placed in intensive care, unconscious, as his body shut down.

“My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up,” Collins said. “People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming.” His five children were told to prepare for the worst. “There were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing,” he added.

The near-fatal episode was the culmination of a long struggle with alcohol addiction, which Collins attributes partly to persistent back injuries that left him immobile and in pain. In his 2016 memoir, he wrote of nights alone “with my good friends Johnnie Walker and Grey Goose.” Earlier this year, he disclosed that multiple knee surgeries had left him reliant on a live-in nurse, and that he’d “spent months in hospital” without specifying how close he came to dying. Now, he makes the outcome clear: “I was very lucky to have come out of that. Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since.”