PHIL COLLINS (UK)

Born: 30 January 1951
Real name: Philip David Charles Collins

Phil was born in Chiswick, a part of West London. When he was 5 he was given a toy drum kit for his birthday. He would play along to bands he heard on the radio and television. As he grew older, he got more and more sophisticated drum sets. Despite his love of drumming, he would first try his hand at acting and landed a role as The Artful Dodger in a stage production of ‘Oliver!’. He would also make an appearance as an extra in The Beatles‘ film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ as well as appearing in the film of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. During this time he maintained his interest in music and tried out for various bands but never quite made it until the August of 1970 when he was accepted by the band Genesis. Originally the band was fronted by Peter Gabriel and they would see 1 UK chart hit before Gabriel left to forge a solo career. Collins took over vocal duties and would go on to see 28 UK chart hits as lead singer of Genesis with a best peak of 4 with 1983’s ‘Mama’. In 1981 he started a solo career alongside his Genesis one and saw immediate success with ‘In The Air Tonight’ which got to number 2 in the UK and has (at the time of writing) seen 37 UK hits with ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, ‘Easy Lover’ (his duet with Phillip Bailey) and ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ all hitting the top spot. In the US he has seen 23 hits as part of Genesis (best peak of 1 with ‘Invisible Touch’) and 27 solo hits or hits as part of a duet with 7 of them being number 1 hits.

Date of entry	Song	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
05-Jun-1981	In The Air Tonight	2	11
18-Mar-1983	You Can’t Hurry Love	9	15
25-May-1984	Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)	9	21
22-Feb-1985	Easy Lover	6	14
31-May-1985	One More Night	21	6
09-Mar-1986	Separate Lives	22	5
12-Jan-1989	A Groovy Kind Of Love	1 (2)	7
		Total hits	7
		Total weeks	79

Biggest climber awards	5
Star rater climbs	10
Biggest fallers	4
Weeks with oldest in the charts	0
Longest run in the charts (weeks)	21
Weeks with more than 1 in the charts	0
Biggest gap between hits (weeks)	144
Top 30 points ranking	=91
Top 20 points ranking	=123
Top 30 points	1197
Top 20 points	525

‘Against All Odds’ was from a film of the same name starring Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges. ‘Easy Lover’ was a duet with Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind & Fire and ‘Separate Lives’ was a duet with Marilyn Martin. ‘A Groovy Kind Of Love’ was from the film ‘Buster’ which Collins starred in the title role.

Phil had clocked up 78 weeks by the time he saw his first chart topper and this was the 3 highest for any act.

Hits as a member of Genesis:

Date of entry	Song	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
25-Dec-1981	Abacab	3	15
13-Apr-1984	That’s All	27	4
24-Aug-1986	Invisible Touch	17	8
		Total hits	3
		Total weeks	27

Phil wrote and produced most of the Genesis hits and his solo/duet ones. In addition he also produced and played drums on the following hit:

Song	Act	Peak (weeks at 1)	Weeks
I Know There’s Something Going On	Frida	5	14
		Total hits	1
		Total weeks	14

Total chart involvement:

Number of hits	11
Weeks	120
Number 1’s	1
Weeks at 1	2