Speaker 1: What's up, everybody. Welcome back to Crash Course Pod. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, and today we're diving into the career of
Speaker 1: a man who was so productive in the eighties the
Speaker 1: irs probably thought he was three different people. We're talking Genesis,
Speaker 1: the solo peak, and the gated reverb sound that changed
Speaker 1: drumming forever. But before we get into it, I would
Speaker 1: like to thank you guys for tuning in to this
Speaker 1: episode and the last one and the one before that,
Speaker 1: specifically the Stevie Wonder episode. Loved the participation on that episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. Again, I can't say thank
Speaker 1: you enough. However, I did want to add a little
Speaker 1: bit of music head knowledge to that Stevie Wonder episode
Speaker 1: where I had talked about his collapse, and I briefly
Speaker 1: talked about the one with him and Beyonce with their
Speaker 1: still amazing and all start tribute to Luther Vandros. But
Speaker 1: I completely forgot about the twenty twenty four Cowboy Carter
Speaker 1: album where he didn't sing, but he played his signature
Speaker 1: chromatic harmonica on Joe Lene So yeah. Beyonce officially thanked
Speaker 1: him for the contribution during her twenty twenty four iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: Music Award speech and that's the same time he actually
Speaker 1: presented her with the Innovator Awards. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: say that because I forgot to mention it last episode,
Speaker 1: and what better time than now. So yes, let's get
Speaker 1: into this episode while we're talking about disclaimers. Did you, guys,
Speaker 1: guess who we are talking about. Most people know him
Speaker 1: as the guy who sang the Disney songs or the
Speaker 1: man behind the most famous drum phil in history. But
Speaker 1: if you're a music head, you know Phil Collins. It's
Speaker 1: actually a case study in technical brilliance and accidental world domination. So,
Speaker 1: in case you haven't realized it, in case you didn't
Speaker 1: see the title, we are talking about Phil Collins this episode.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 1: By the way, I thought about doing this episode maybe
Speaker 1: a week ago or maybe two weeks ago. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this episode and it was kind of funny
Speaker 1: because it was good. Originally, it was going to be
Speaker 1: a juvenile, super childish episode because I'm a millennial. I
Speaker 1: know Phil Collins through Tarzan and we'll get into it
Speaker 1: a little bit later. So I wanted to do this episode,
Speaker 1: and Tarzan was my motivating factor. But I realized, let's
Speaker 1: not be childish. Let's not be juvenile. There are some
Speaker 1: music kids that know Phil Collins for his other work.
Speaker 1: So I ended up doing extensive research, and so I
Speaker 1: was thinking about doing the episode, and I think the
Speaker 1: next day it was his birthday. His birthday is January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: for those of you that don't know, he's a fellow Aquarius,
Speaker 1: such as myself. So today is the tenth. He just
Speaker 1: celebrated his seventy fifth birthday about a week and a
Speaker 1: half ago, around the same time I was thinking about
Speaker 1: doing this episode. So sit back, grab a snack, and enjoy.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the journey of Phil Collins. So we
Speaker 1: have to start with the nineteen seventies, the Genesis pivot.
Speaker 1: Phil wasn't the front man. He was the powerhouse drummer
Speaker 1: for the progressive rock giants Genesis. When Peter Gabriel left
Speaker 1: in seventy five, Genesis received about four hundred tapes and applications,
Speaker 1: but they only physically auditioned around like fifteen to thirty people.
Speaker 1: Phil was actually the one teaching the songs to those
Speaker 1: thirty people before realizing he was the best fit.
Speaker 2: What's wild is that.
Speaker 1: He didn't just fill the shoes. He changed the silhouette.
Speaker 1: He took a complex, cerebral progressive band and injected a
Speaker 1: sense of soul and pop sensibility for the music heads
Speaker 1: listening Go back and listen to the time signatures on
Speaker 1: a tray of the tail. Phil was doing all of
Speaker 1: that while stepping into the spotlight for the first time.
Speaker 1: You can't talk about Phil without talking about the gated reverb.
Speaker 1: It's the drum sound that defined the eighties. It happened
Speaker 1: by accident during a Peter Gabriel session for the song Intruder.
Speaker 1: Using the talkback mic on an SSL console which had
Speaker 1: a heavy compressor on it. Phil hit the drums and
Speaker 1: the sound stayed massive but cut off instantly. It was aggressive, sterile,
Speaker 1: and huge. When Phil took that sound to his solo debut,
Speaker 1: Face Value, he dropped in the air tonight it was over.
Speaker 1: He didn't just make a hit, He created a sonic
Speaker 1: template that everyone from Prince to modern synthwave artists are
Speaker 1: still chasing. In the air tonight, do you guys I
Speaker 1: feel callin a night? Ugh? I actually really liked that song.
Speaker 1: I have a friend that she was a musician, like
Speaker 1: heavy musician back in the day, and she was doing
Speaker 1: a cover to this song, and so this song will
Speaker 1: forever remind me of recording in her closet studio in
Speaker 1: the air. Moving on, let's talk about his worth ethic,
Speaker 1: because there's a level of productivity that's almost scary. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, Phil played live AID in London, hopped
Speaker 1: on a concord jet, flew to Philadelphia and played live
Speaker 1: AID again. On the same day he was producing Eric Clapton,
Speaker 1: playing drums for Robert Plant and turning out number one
Speaker 1: solo hits like Against All Odds and more. He was
Speaker 1: the ultimate session guy who accidentally became the biggest star
Speaker 1: on the planet. If I'm completely honest, for someone who
Speaker 1: values staying sharp and productive, looking at Phil's eighties calendar
Speaker 1: is enough to give you a contact tie. Now let's
Speaker 1: talk about my favorite part, shall we? Tarzan Deep Dive.
Speaker 1: That's bring of Tarzan. So in the nineties, the Disney
Speaker 1: formula was Broadway style. Characters would stop everything to sing
Speaker 1: about their feelings think Little Mermaid or Aladdin. Phil and
Speaker 1: the directors broke that. He insisted that the characters shouldn't
Speaker 1: sing because it would look silly to have a gorilla
Speaker 1: burst into song. And I second that I'm so glad
Speaker 1: they didn't have them do that. Instead, Phil acted as
Speaker 1: an invisible narrator. He sang for the characters from the outside.
Speaker 1: This gave me the movie a much more cinematic, adult
Speaker 1: feel for music heads. This was a huge risk that
Speaker 1: paid off. It kept his rock pop identity while still
Speaker 1: telling the Disney story. Now the flex is the multi
Speaker 1: lingual feat huge flex that every music head needs to know.
Speaker 1: Disney wanted to market the film globally, and Phil, being
Speaker 1: the workaholic, amazing aquarius he is, didn't just let translators
Speaker 1: take over. He recorded the entire soundtrack in five languages English, French, German, Italian,
Speaker 1: and Spanish. Specifically two dialects Castilian and Latin American. The
Speaker 1: catch he didn't speak any.
Speaker 2: Of those languages.
Speaker 1: He learned every single line phonetically. As a result, it's
Speaker 1: actually impressive. If you listen to him, it's actually him
Speaker 1: on the track in every territory.
Speaker 2: If you grew up in.
Speaker 1: Madrid or Berlin, Phil Collins is still your childhood and
Speaker 1: his pronunciation was so good that most fans actually thought
Speaker 1: he was fluent. This is something I love about Phil Collins,
Speaker 1: like just that alone. The dedication to the soundtrack and
Speaker 1: the languages, and how he still sounded fluent, like, I love.
Speaker 2: That about him.
Speaker 1: Disney didn't just hire him for ballads. They hired him
Speaker 1: because they wanted jungle rhythms, and who better than a
Speaker 1: guy who revolutionalized the eighties drum sound. If you listen
Speaker 1: to Son of Man, that's a masterclass in percussion drive.
Speaker 1: He used his background in Genesis style complex rhythms to
Speaker 1: create something that felt tribal but had a pop hook.
Speaker 1: He worked with Mark Mancina, the composer, to blend his
Speaker 1: massive studio drum sounds with traditional orchestral elements, creating a
Speaker 1: hybrid score that felt way heavier than a standard kids
Speaker 1: movie Impacts. You know, it was a brief moment when
Speaker 1: it was cool to hate on Phil Collins, but after
Speaker 1: that he went from uncool to legend. By the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: the cool crowd was turning on Phil, but he was
Speaker 1: seen as the face of corporate pop and Tarzan completely
Speaker 1: flipped the script. Like I said, people were trying to
Speaker 1: hate on him in the mid nineties. I think it's
Speaker 1: because he was everywhere at the time, but it was
Speaker 1: just an uncool thing to listen to Phil Collins to
Speaker 1: some crowds. When Tarzan dropped, he he made a fan
Speaker 1: out of the millennials for sure, Like he hit that
Speaker 1: millennial audience and tapped into that market. Maybe because it's amazing.
Speaker 1: He finally took home the Academy Award for Best Original Song,
Speaker 1: beating out likes of South Park and Toy Story Too.
Speaker 1: It introduced him to millennials and gen z. He went
Speaker 1: from being my dad's favorite singer to the guy who
Speaker 1: made the greatest soundtrack of all time. I'm telling you, guys, Tarzan.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to make this childish and just harp
Speaker 1: only on Tarzan. But I'm telling you, I didn't really
Speaker 1: know a Phil Collins until Tarzan came out. But before
Speaker 1: it came out, Disney was doing these series like this.
Speaker 1: There's promo basically on Disney Channel and they would take
Speaker 1: him in and then it'll be Phil Collins showing the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes of how he made Tarzan, Like you
Speaker 1: could see him with the pots and pants and just
Speaker 1: different shut it up, shooting up, don ind Like, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, it was amazing, and I became a huge fan.
Speaker 1: I actually watched the movie Tarzan with tears in my
Speaker 1: eyes because the score, the soundtrack was so good, like
Speaker 1: it literally moved a child to tears with the artist
Speaker 1: Street and the music, I think it made the film
Speaker 1: like out of everything with Tarzan, I remember the songs
Speaker 1: and the soundtrack and the scores more than the actual events. Anyways,
Speaker 1: it proved he could still dominate the charts without a
Speaker 1: drum kit in front of him, though he never really
Speaker 1: left the sticks behind. So let's talk more about this
Speaker 1: Tarzan soundtrack and then we'll pivot off of it for
Speaker 1: a little bit. One last fun fact. You'll Be in
Speaker 1: my Heart was originally a lullaby he wrote for his daughter.
Speaker 1: It started as a personal, simple melody on a piano
Speaker 1: and ended up as a certified is it diamond? Is
Speaker 1: it a diamond certified global anthem? I think it's diamond. Anyways,
Speaker 1: So so good, you guys, so so good. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: actually create a separate episode and we're gonna break down
Speaker 1: this Tarzan soundtrack. We don't have time today, we're actually
Speaker 1: about to end. But yeah, next episode, we are breaking
Speaker 1: down the Tarzan soundtrack for sure. Anyways, Elton gave us
Speaker 1: the songs I want like from Lion King, but Phil
Speaker 1: Collins with this Tarzan soundtrack, gave us a cohesive, drum
Speaker 1: driven concept album that just happened to have a movie
Speaker 1: attached to it. And we've got to do another show
Speaker 1: simply on this. But before I let you go, here's
Speaker 1: a quick reminder. Phil Collins did all of this while
Speaker 1: dealing with the physical toll of decades of drumming. He
Speaker 1: was productive, he was so reminded, and he never let
Speaker 1: the Disney label soften his sound. He kept the kick
Speaker 1: drum loud and the bridges complex. So that's gonna do
Speaker 1: for this episode on Phil Collins, And if you haven't
Speaker 1: listened to Face Value, get you some headphones and give
Speaker 1: it a spin tonight. Thanks for tuning in, you guys,
Speaker 1: and have a great night. Bye.