“I also reconnect with Peter Gabriel. He has a very expensive American band on retainer. I say, “If you ever need a drummer…” I end up going down to Ashcombe House, Peter’s home in Somerset, and me and some other musicians live with him for a month or so. We help him spitball the ideas that are going to become his third album, and we do some gigs: Aylesbury, Shepton Mallet, Reading Festival. During these shows I leave the drums and join him down in front for “Biko,” “Mother of Violence” and “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”
Considering all the historic interest in supposed tension between Gabriel-era Genesis and Collins-era Genesis, it’s not often noticed that I play with Peter a lot at this time. If I may be so bold, I’m the best drummer he knows. He can rely on me. With Peter being a drummer himself, he’s pretty picky.
But our connection is deeper than the merely musical. Contrary to what people might like to think, there was never any bad blood between us. We were great friends. But as they say in the muckier newspapers, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. After leaving Genesis, he may have occasionally have voiced his feelings—“Finally, I’m free of the bastards!” (I’m paraphrasing)—but he didn’t have anything against any of us personally. Within Genesis he and I bonded closely. I was someone he could always rely on to be his stooge for comedy routines during his stories. Unlike he and Tony Banks, we had no baggage. Perhaps Peter was pleased that it was me that took over vocal duties in the school band, rather than some new-boy incomer. Not that he ever voiced an opinion before, or after, his leaving. He always just seemed to accept my assuming the frontman role. Sure, compared to the Charterhouse chaps, I was a grammar-school oik. But I was his grammar-school oik.”
- Not Dead Yet, Phil Collins