Phil Collins has been completely absent from concert stages ever since Genesis wrapped up their Last Domino farewell tour in March 2022. But in a new interview with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame less than a week before his induction as a solo artist, Collins revealed that he’s been contemplating a return to the road.
“Once you’ve been on stage all your life and tasted that, it’s difficult to stop,” he said. “I never say exactly never. Every now and again, I think about, well, going out on the road again. You can’t do that kind of thing just for a half a dozen shows, because it’s not financially practical. So I do think every now and again that I haven’t finished.”
Collins took an extended break from the road following the conclusion of his brief Going Back Motown covers tour in 2010. When he returned in 2017 for the Not Dead Yet Live tour, he had to spend the duration of the show seated in a chair due to severe nerve damage stemming from a spinal injury that also made it impossible for him to drum. His teenage son, Nic Collins, drummed in his place. And despite Phil’s physical limitations, the tour was a tremendous success that packed arenas all across the globe.
In 2021, he reformed Genesis for the Last Domino farewell tour. Nic Collins was once again behind the drum kit, and the show revisited every era of Genesis, including several songs from Peter Gabriel’s tenure as frontman. Gabriel himself was in the audience when the tour wrapped ups March 26, 2022, at London’s 02 Arena.
Not long after the tour concluded, Collins began drinking heavily and nearly died. “My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up,” Collins told the Sunday Times in August. “People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming. I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong … here were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing.”
Miraculously, Collins recovered. In January, he told the BBC that he was “totally healthy and mobile” following recent knee surgeries. “I can walk,” he said, “albeit with assistance, you know, crutches or whatever.”
Throughout all the comeback tours and ups and downs of his health, one thing Collins hasn’t done is enter the studio and create new music. His last collection of new songs was 2002’s Testify. But he told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that he’s not willing to say that he’ll never again make new music.
“I mean, I’ve got a studio that’s totally in working order downstairs in the basement of my house, and I keep saying to myself, I should go down there,” he said. “I’ve got ideas. I’ve got things I’ve finished. I’ve got things that I’ve half finished. So who knows? I’m now back to being where I think I could do it.”
