Phil Collins Couldn’t Crack the ‘Dancing In The Street’ Drum Fill

Phil Collins has never hidden his devotion to Motown. His 1982 cover of The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” was a global hit, and decades later, he co-wrote with Lamont Dozier for the Buster soundtrack. But the most concentrated tribute came in 2010 with Going Back, a full album of ’60s soul covers on which Collins played drums himself, aiming to replicate the feel of the original records.

In a recent BBC Radio 2 appearance, Collins admitted that one legendary moment resisted all his efforts: the opening drum fill from Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing In The Street.” “We played that what must have been 1000 times to work out what it was,” he said. The problem was deciphering the exact sequence of snare and tom-tom hits — a blur of motion that, to him, “sort of breathes … like a little furry animal.”

Collins knew the Motown house drummers — Benny Benjamin, Pistol Allen, Uriel Jones — each had distinct tics, but this fill’s ambiguity proved insurmountable. After endless listening and attempts, he settled for an approximation. “We kind of got it,” he said, “but I didn’t get that one.” Still, he stands by the album’s overall fidelity: “We nailed a lot of those little touches that only musicians would hear.” The project’s aim was never modern gloss; it was to sound like a record from that time, not from today. On those terms, one unresolvable flurry of percussion hardly undoes the work.