Phil Collins Doesn’t Write Songs Anymore, but He Still Has a Title Waiting

Phil Collins has spent the weeks before his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction doing interviews, and his conversation with Piers Morgan on Uncensored produced something more useful than the usual nostalgia circuit: a songwriter talking about his own craft in the past tense.

Collins said he no longer writes songs. He no longer keeps a drum kit at his house, and mentioned that he does not have a stereo at home either. That admission sits inside a discussion otherwise built on looking back at a catalogue he is not adding to.

On Genesis, he agreed with Morgan that the 23-minute “Supper’s Ready,” from 1972, works as an introduction to the band’s early incarnation, describing it as “lots of little songs strung together” and placing it somewhere in his top 15 or 20. His favourite passages, he said, are the instrumental section “Apocalypse in 9/8” and the triumphant close that follows it.

From his solo work he singled out “I’ve Forgotten Everything,” from 1993’s Both Sides, which he calls his most personal album, written during what he describes as a great sorrow. The song came to him, he recalled, after seeing Harry Connick Jr sing Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well” at the Albert Hall. He sang the words rather than writing them down.

Asked which song he wishes he had written, he named “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” the Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin composition Bonnie Raitt first recorded in 1991, with Bruce Hornsby on piano. He also has a title for something of his own that does not exist yet. Given the rest of the interview, that may be where it stays.