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Going Back: A Conversation with Phil Collins & Mike Ragogna

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A Conversation with Phil Collins

Mike Ragogna: It seems like your new soul album, Going Back, has been years in the waiting, especially after your having such a big solo hit with The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" in the eighties. What inspired you to do an album like this now?

Phil Collins: Well, it's something that I've always wanted to do, of course. Sometimes those things get kind of put on the back burner and you never get around to doing them. I listened to this stuff when I was a teenager, basically. I used to go up to London from the suburbs to clubs to listen to bands. One particular band was The Action, and they were a big mod group that played all this stuff as well as Atlantic groups like Don Covay, Sam & Dave and things like that. This is the music I started to listen to and the records I bought. I kind of always wanted to sing the songs, but never got the opportunity because I joined Genesis when I was nineteen, and at that point, we never played anybody else's songs. So, this was the first time that there has been time and an inclination to do it. I'm glad I waited this long because I think the album is better for it.

MR: Can you remember a time when you gravitated more towards soul music than other kinds of music?

PC: Well, when I was twelve or thirteen The Beatles' first album was coming out, and there was a cross section on the first two albums they did. They had some Motown and early soul record covers, and so did The Stones. So, I was getting third hand versions of quite a lot of these songs from other bands -- English bands at the time. This is the music that I kind of lived my life to. I know it sounds weird now because forty years or so later, I've been known, really, for playing with Genesis, which is kind of a million miles, it seems, away from this stuff. But if you listen to some of the really early Genesis things you can hear a soul drummer trying to get his bit in, you know?

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