Phil Collins Health

Phil Collins is 71, has been physically declining for years, and just cancelled the remainder of his tour dates. The headlines make it sound sudden. It isn't. The man has been quietly soldiering through serious health problems since the late 2000s. The honest piece of news here is that he's stopping fighting it, and that's probably the right call.

What's actually wrong

Two main problems, both well documented. Nerve damage in his back, from a 2007 injury during a Genesis reunion tour, which makes drumming impossible and standing painful. And severe hearing loss from decades of stick work and stage volume. He's been doing recent shows seated, with his son Nic on the kit playing the drum parts Phil wrote.

He also had hip surgery in 2017 and walks with a cane. Recent appearances show a man who looks substantially older than his years — the physical bill from a 50-year touring career.

If you want to actually hear what made him one of the great drummers of the rock era, start with Genesis's Selling England by the Pound. The drumming on Cinema Show is generational. Then his solo work — Face Value is the obvious entry, In the Air Tonight on side one, and the rest of the album is better than its reputation.

Why his music holds up

Collins gets dismissed because Easy Lover and Sussudio dominated 80s radio to the point of overexposure. That's a thin reading. The deeper catalogue holds — the Genesis prog years, the Brand X jazz-rock side project, the production work on Frida's solo album, the underrated No Jacket Required deep cuts. He was a drummer with melodic sensibility in an era when those were two separate skills.

The In the Air Tonight gated reverb drum fill is the most-discussed three seconds of percussion in pop history for a reason. Phil and Hugh Padgham accidentally invented a sound that everyone in the 80s spent the rest of the decade chasing.

For drummers, the Phil Collins signature drumsticks are still in print. A Yamaha Stage Custom kit is the entry-level version of the kind of setup he played live. A decent practice pad if you're learning at home and don't want the neighbours to leave.

If you've only got 30 minutes

Listen in this order: In the Air Tonight (Face Value). Mama (Genesis, the 1983 self-titled). Take Me Home (No Jacket Required). I Don't Care Anymore (Hello, I Must Be Going). And the Brand X track Nuclear Burn for the technical side. By the end of those five tracks you'll have a real sense of why fellow musicians have always rated him higher than the general public did.

For a sense of his whole arc, his memoir Not Dead Yet is unusually honest for a rock autobiography. The drinking, the divorces, the back, the lot.

What touring stops mean for an artist like him

This isn't a retirement announcement, but it's effectively the end of him playing live in any sustained way. The body has told him to stop. The fans who saw the Still Not Dead Yet tour got the last live document. Anyone holding tickets for cancelled dates should expect refunds, not reschedules.

The good news for newer fans: the recorded work is permanent. Streaming services have all of Genesis and all of his solo work, and the production quality of those records still beats most of what's released today. A greatest hits CD is a fine starting point. The proper move is the studio albums in order.

Hearing loss took some of the most musical ears in rock. The catalogue is still here. Go listen.