Not Dead Yet Quotes

“Out of raw emotion emerges instinctive truth.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“not being able to read music is absolutely liberating for me. It gives me a wider musical vocabulary. There”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“People hate a break-up, but they love a break-up song.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“It takes some going to live next door to Keith Richards and be classed as the rowdy neighbor. No, I’m not proud.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Mick Jagger does it and, well, of course he does—he’s Mick. Phil Collins does it and what an arsehole.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“In the Air Tonight” is 99.9 percent sung spontaneously, the words dreamt up from out of nowhere”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“And now I realize: I was fired. They didn’t disappear to watch football, or do drugs. They were getting rid of me.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Well, shall we play Phil the song first?” No one says that.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“When he isn’t drumming with The Who, Moonie seems to like playing barman in La Chasse. I buy a round from him one night, and he gives me back more money than I’d handed over. Another reason to love him.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Because he has a flatmate, I have no option but to share Trevor’s bed. Terrified, I try to sleep, fitfully and fully dressed on top of the blankets. Presently, the fidgeting begins, and soon a hand is creeping over. I’m out of there quicker than you can say “paradiddle.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“kaput.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“I mainly stay out of the conversations about which Genesis tracks will figure—I trust the other guys to carry that torch—but from my albums I pick “In the Air Tonight” (it would be rude not to), “Easy Lover” (partly because it’s not on any of my studio albums) and “Wake Up Call” from Testify (because it’s my favorite song on an overlooked album).”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“The years 2008 and 2009 are the best of times and the worst of times. I’ve bought a new home in Féchy, a village fifteen minutes from our old family home in Begnins. It’s a comfortable, modest place and, as I’m on my own, all I need.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“As soon as talk turns to business, we quickly revert to long-standing type: Peter still a little edgy, umming and ahhing; Tony still digging a little at Peter; Steve still the dark one; Mike still the cordial mediator; me still clowning and joking to defuse any tension. Same as it ever was.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“If I have to sum up what’s causing the breakdown between Orianne and me, I’d say that it’s my fault for not hearing her crying out. I can’t understand why we’re arguing, I can’t understand why I’m being pushed out of the marital bed. I just don’t get it. I’m sorry.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“I’ve come to resent this “Phil Collins” doppelgänger, the one who was out there performing, showing off, hoovering up plaudits and (increasingly) brickbats. “Phil Collins” comes with aggravations, expectations, obligations and suppositions dragging round his ankles and hanging off his neck. He has splintered families and embittered partners and distant children. I don’t like that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I’ve had enough of me. Want me to go out and tour again, and be a pop/rock star again? Sorry, no can do. Doctor’s orders.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“I learn that, in simple terms, the cells in the nerves that lead from my brain to my ear have been attacked by a virus. This has resulted in the loss of my ability to hear middle and bottom frequencies. If I’d dealt with it immediately—with a dose of my old friend cortisone, there’s the possibility of kick-starting the cells’ regeneration—it might have been different. But I left it too late, in true Collins tradition. It’s what killed my dad in the end, him not dealing with his diabetes and heart condition. Now, because this is a viral infection, the noise blast in the headphones was probably not the cause. However, as the months and years pass, it’s the only hearing-related experience I have that’s out of the ordinary, so I can’t help but feel it’s partly to blame.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“It’s incredibly loud. Unbelievably so. Forget ear-splitting—this is head-splitting. The sound crashes from the headphones straight into me, overwhelming and explosive. I go deaf in one ear. As simple and as quick as that. In my left ear I can hear nothing. No ringing, no buzzing, just nothing. Rather calmly, I say to the engineer, “Please don’t do that again.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“By this stage, I’d been dancing around the high notes for a while. This didn’t happen so much on my solo tours since my music was written for me to sing. But portions of the Genesis set were written for Peter’s voice. And for all the uncanny similarities between our voices, some songs were just difficult for my range. But even if Peter had been singing them, they would have been high even for him at this point in both our lives.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“I remember the first time I went on tour with Eric, in 1986. We’d just started and I was complaining about blood blisters. He told me his ritual: a few weeks ahead of a tour he’d start filing the ends of his fingers. He’d literally scrape off the pads on his fingertips, they’d scab, then he’d scrape them off again. Eventually they’d be nicely calloused and EC would be ready for another run of blistering solos.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. Did you hear about the drummer who finished high school? Me neither. What’s the last thing a drummer says in a band? “Hey, guys, how about we try one of my songs?”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Despite the personal cataclysms, I don’t think of the album as being an unhappy experience. It was very pleasurable to make. Writing and playing and recording entirely on my own was utterly liberating. Which is why I decided to liberate myself in other ways. During the promotion of Both Sides—before the tour, before Orianne even—I tell Tony Smith that I’m leaving Genesis.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“This is the damage Faxgate does. It messes up my head, and in my confused mind it blows out the foundations of my career. I certainly didn’t like being Mr. Nice Guy, the Housewives’ Pal. But as soon as I wasn’t that guy anymore, I missed it. Now I’m pop public-enemy number one. Rod Stewart shags around, serially, and it’s just Rod being Rod. Mick Jagger does it and, well, of course he does—he’s Mick. Phil Collins does it and what an arsehole.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“In timing that’s so perfect it’s painful, just as “Faxgate” hits I’m booked to perform an MTV Unplugged show at Wembley TV studios in London, to promote the U.K. leg of the tour. I’m contractually obligated; otherwise it would be the last thing I’d do right now. Walking onstage in Birmingham, a few days later, I’m still thinking this is the worst possible moment to be starting a tour at home. I’ve gone from being Mr. Really, Really Nice Guy (Albeit a Bit Ubiquitous and Annoying) to Mr. Bastard.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“The emotions that are firing these new songs are similar to the ones that gave Face Value its power, impact and, ultimately I hope, resonance. They’re me, laid open and laid bare. On my first solo album, and on this, my fifth, I put it all out there. In the long run this is why Face Value and Both Sides are my two favorite albums, and why No Jacket Required doesn’t come close for me. Specifically, on Both Sides the rage and hurt of Face Value is replaced by the pang of regret, heartache and nostalgia.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Hands up: I do envy Pete. There are some songs he’s written that I wish I’d written—for one thing “Don’t Give Up,” his gorgeous duet with Kate Bush. But even here at the height of my success it seems that, for every achievement or great opportunity that comes my way, I’m starting to accrue bad press as a matter of course. Pete seems to get good press seemingly equally automatically. It seems a bit unfair, which I appreciate is a pathetic word to use in this context.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“If ever I was going to quit Genesis in favor of my solo career, in theory this would be the time, with the tailwind of No Jacket Required still blowing hard. But at the same time, I’ve missed the guys. Tony and Mike have become more lovable as time goes on, which is the reverse of the traditional rock-band narrative. Tony, formerly rather diffident and difficult to talk to, has become a great friend, funny and witty. He’s a different person, especially with a glass of wine in him. Mike, too, has loosened up.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Still, I understand that in some quarters I am an exemplar of the high eighties. But I’m not a yacht-going conspicuous consumer of Ferraris and penthouses. There are some dubious suits, but everyone has them in the eighties. So what if Brett Easton Ellis’s Patrick Bateman views me as all that is glorious about the music of that giddy, gaudy decade? He’s a psycho.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“These are the years when I’m everywhere, all the time, monopolizing the airwaves, MTV and the charts, even the bloody Oscars. Try as you might, when you turn on a TV or radio, you can’t escape me. If you take a charitable view, I simply write a lot of hits. If you take a pragmatic view, me and my music just won’t give it a rest.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

“Mike plays around with a new toy. As he later describes the harsh rhythmic sound he comes up with: “I programmed that with the very first big Linn drum machine. And I did something the Americans would never do: I put it through my guitar amplifier, a small one, and I turned it up so loud that it was jumping up and down on the chair. What the English do well is take a sound and fuck it up. That’s a prime example. It’s just a horrible but great sound.” He’s not wrong. Straight away it works. We all fall in love with it and, inspired, I do my best John Lennon impersonation, and I also take a vocal cue from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” adding in the maniacal laugh. And that’s “Mama,” the lead single from the Genesis album. Our biggest ever U.K. hit, both of its time and timeless, and an enduring stage classic.”
― Phil Collins, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir