Phil Collins Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Phil Collins:
I'm not trying necessarily to become a movie star; that wouldn't be bad but that's not the aim. I'm just trying to do interesting things and go into areas where I've not been before.
~Phil Collins
Link:
To see a lot of the smaller labels disappear or get gobbled up by the bigger labels, that's a shame. It was a bit of a shock at first to see the demise of the record stores.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the '50s and '60s, which may have been an influence on me.
~Phil Collins
Link:
The world is in your hands, now use it.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I never said I was at the Alamo. Someone else said I was at the Alamo. Now I'm a nutter. I don't think that's fair.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I just don't think of myself as a star. This is what I do for a living; I'm fortunate that I make ends meet.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.
~Phil Collins
Link:
The difference between the American version of 'Live Aid' and the British one - in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar.
~Phil Collins
Link:
The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I've bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo, and I talk to my friends that I've made over the past 15, 20 years. It's just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.
~Phil Collins
Link:
As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I'm a drummer that sings a bit.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I'm sort of interested in the gory details of life.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.
~Phil Collins
Link:
If a musician dares to get out of the box he's been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I've always been known as someone who 'moves around' and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we're put.
~Phil Collins
Link:
To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time.
~Phil Collins
Link:
When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food.
~Phil Collins
Link:
You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it's finished, is a bit of a disappointment.
~Phil Collins
Link:
On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I joined Genesis when I was 19. I've earned the right to actually do nothing. I don't want to be a shadow of what I was, so I've kind of just quite willingly stood back.
~Phil Collins
Link:
There's no magic for getting into the groove... just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.
~Phil Collins
Link:
We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I don't really listen to music.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Many of the articles printed over the last few months have ended up painting a picture of me that is more than a little distorted.
~Phil Collins
Link:
All I set out to do was to earn a living playing drums, you know? And as luck would have it, I've surpassed that.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that. It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.
~Phil Collins
Link:
In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan - my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Often there's a BA crew, because half the time we stay at the same hotels, especially in Australia. I can remember spending quite a lot of time with crews around the pool there. They always make themselves known to us.
~Phil Collins
Link:
And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I've spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.
~Phil Collins
Link:
That's going to be on my headstone: 'He came. He wrote 'In the Air Tonight.' He... died.'
~Phil Collins
Link:
When we're touring America or Europe, we use our own plane and a great advantage of that is it cuts out an awful lot of time checking in. You literally drive up to the plane, get on and then drive off at the other end.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I am stopping so I can be a full-time father to my two young sons on a daily basis.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.
~Phil Collins
Link:
That's the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it'll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I prefer black music in general.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.
~Phil Collins
Link:
My only saving grace is that I actually collect things that nobody else is interested in.
~Phil Collins
Link:
No seriously... when there's families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there's always someone who's got something going, like the tour manager.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Everything has added up to a load that I'm getting tired of carrying. It's gotten so complicated. It's the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it's the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting.
~Phil Collins
Link:
If Miles Davis hadn't died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn't much else that would have got me into the studio... although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I never stopped thinking about the Alamo from that day to this. I'm a huge collector of memorabilia. I've got Davy Crockett's bullet pouch. I've got Colonel Travis's belt.
~Phil Collins
Link:
When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I don't own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you're just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.
~Phil Collins
Link:
It's actually come as quite a shock to learn just how many people don't like me.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I can't remember much about the early flights, except that it was ages before we got into First Class.
~Phil Collins
Link:
The story of the Alamo has touched many more people than one would think. So, I would like to pay my respects to those men on both sides of the walls in those months of February and March 1836.
~Phil Collins
Link:
It's always been easy with Mark, he's a rock fan and we speak the same language. He's a big Beatles fan too. We worked a lot via CLI calls, though only meeting up once every couple of months.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I've got one of four known Davy Crocket rifles. It's fantastic just to know it's one of the rifles that he actually used. His cousin had it.
~Phil Collins
Link:
'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.
~Phil Collins
Link:
In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: 'It's OK - we can just do instrumentals.'
~Phil Collins
Link:
Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die. That's without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren't quite like that.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I don't really belong to that world and I don't think anyone's going to miss me. I'm much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Genesis fans are a religious group!
~Phil Collins
Link:
And I would like to marry and have more children. I would like to try and do it right.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I usually hang around the room listening to a bit of last night's show. If there's one available, I go to the steam room every day for my voice. I spend half an hour there and then I eat, because I can't eat later than four o'clock. Then I go for a soundcheck. That's my day.
~Phil Collins
Link:
You know, I've released some great records and I've released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.
~Phil Collins
Link:
There were 'big stars' at the Alamo! Bowie, Crockett! It is a huge political event because it, and the events at Goliad and San Jacinto, changed the look of a map of America. America would be a very different place if Texas had remained Mexican.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm just trying to do things that are interesting for me.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I'm usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I can't play anywhere near like I used to, and I was a hot drummer. It doesn't bother me, because frankly, if you get to that point where you can't hold a drumstick properly, there are many other things in life which are far more important, like cutting a loaf of bread or a piece of cheese.
~Phil Collins
Link:
I know it shouldn't make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren't sure what day it was - it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better.
~Phil Collins
Link:
It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
~Phil Collins
Link:
Share:
Permalink:
Browse: