Phil Collins: Drummer First

[NeonKnite]

Total fucking legend.

https://youtu.be/WdGmydR715Q?si=iS4R_D3cfve7oumM

[skinni]

He is truly legendary!

I am halfway through the video and it is exceptional.

Thank you very much for sharing the link.

[NeonKnite]

[The Prez]

Really great documentary..could've easily been twice as long...sad to see him in this condition, though. He sure paid the price for being as driven and hard working as he was.
Apparently, he even contemplated suicide after his foot injury and divorce.

[ParaDime77]

Drumeo is pushing out some damn good content.

Finished watching this show and it was outstanding. Definitely made for the fan that enjoys the intro details of a massive star’s career.

Yes, it’s rather jarring seeing someone who was so vibrant and talented like Phil in a a very compromised position. Truly he looks miserable with the damage to his body.

Was watching his Berlin 1990 show the other night. It’s absolute perfection as far as a live show goes.

[Nate S Axel]

Was watching his Berlin 1990 show the other night. It’s absolute perfection as far as a live show goes.

Ditto, what a great one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNtprycno14

[skinni]

Was watching his Berlin 1990 show the other night. It’s absolute perfection as far as a live show goes.

Ditto, what a great one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNtprycno14

Yes, what an AMAZING show!

All I've been listening to since that documentary is Genesis and Phil. It's inspiring to witness the profound influence he's had on a generation of incredible drummers.

[LovePowerFromTheMamaHead]

I thought it was interesting when he was talking about Down and Out. I had tried to find live versions of it before and very few exist. The ones that do are not very good. They just couldn't do the song right live so they gave it up pretty quickly. One of my favorite Genesis songs, mainly due to the odd time and phil pounding away like a mad man
https://youtu.be/EjLEOBHANkM?feature=shared

[LovePowerFromTheMamaHead]

I thought it was interesting when he was talking about Down and Out. I had tried to find live versions of it before and very few exist. The ones that do are not very good. They just couldn't do the song right live so they gave it up pretty quickly. One of my favorite Genesis songs, mainly due to the odd time and phil pounding away like a mad man
https://youtu.be/EjLEOBHANkM?feature=shared

[The Prez]

Probably the only quality video of the band Brand X with Collins...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy9U3D0tmb8

[Wiseacre]

Way back in the mid ‘90s I was working for Goodwill. I sat on one of those trailers where people would drop their shit off and I always loved looking through old vinyl people brought in. One time I got this trippy gatefold sci-fi space themed album called Ark 2. Being a KISS fan it got my attention because the band was called Flaming Youth. Upon closer inspection I noticed one of the members was Phil Collins. I wasn’t a big Genesis fan, but had a couple close friends who were prog nuts and I had heard of this before then.

Phil Collins is a rare example of a musician who is super famous, yet tons of people have no idea he even played drums, let alone that he was among the best in his genre.

The other weird thing is that I always thought Phil had a really unique sounding voice, but then when I dug into old Genesis found that he actually sounds a LOT like Peter Gabriel, who he replaced. Not a coincidence, I’m sure since Peter has a very distinctive voice. Either way, they are both great singers even if Phil did end up releasing some completely annoying radio shit later on.

Another side note is that Phil basically (accidentally) invented the gated reverb effect that was all over albums for a couple decades.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Actually engineer Hugh Padgham came up with it. It was on Peter Gabriel's "Intruder". Gabriel insisted that Phil play only drums, no cymbals. Padgham had the studio overhead mic on while he was playing and came up with the effect.

[The Prez]

Actually engineer Hugh Padgham came up with it. It was on Peter Gabriel's "Intruder". Gabriel insisted that Phil play only drums, no cymbals. Padgham had the studio overhead mic on while he was playing and came up with the effect.

Indeed. This was the at The Townhouse studios in London built by Richard Branson where tons of great albums were recorded including Ozzy's Utimate Sin. The same building is now a luxury apartment complex. Shame.

[Turner Coates]

Actually engineer Hugh Padgham came up with it. It was on Peter Gabriel's "Intruder". Gabriel insisted that Phil play only drums, no cymbals. Padgham had the studio overhead mic on while he was playing and came up with the effect.

Then Yamaha came out with the REV-7 and zillions of bar bands suddenly had a gated 'verb drum sound.

[the_man_incognito]

The only complaint I had with the documentary is not including the actual music they're talking about and having to listen to 5 drummers verbalize the parts that are being referred to.
I get that Genesis/PC sold their catalog, but when you're doing a documentary about a band/artist, their music is vital to telling the story and it shouldn't be an issue using the music since the music in the documentary isn't there for financial gain.

[Wiseacre]

Actually engineer Hugh Padgham came up with it. It was on Peter Gabriel's "Intruder". Gabriel insisted that Phil play only drums, no cymbals. Padgham had the studio overhead mic on while he was playing and came up with the effect.

The version of the gated snare story I heard was that they were recording drums and it was not the overhead mics, but the talkback in the control booth which would gate itself when no one was talking and it was opening and closing with the drum hits (out in the room) and that’s what made the tight gated snare sound. The overheads make zero sense. I don’t remember where I saw that story though. It was years and years ago. I guess they could have had the overheads gated, but that makes absolutely no sense.

Edited to say I found this…

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503 ... 980s-music

the discovery was made in 1979 during the studio recording of Gabriel’s self-titled third solo album (often called Melt because of its cover art). Collins, Gabriel’s Genesis bandmate, was playing the drums as usual when his beats were accidentally picked up by the microphone used by audio engineers to talk to the band. That microphone wasn’t meant to record music—its heavy compressors were designed to turn down loud sounds while amplifying quiet ones. The equipment also utilized a noise gate, which meant the recorded sounds were cut off shortly after they started. The result was a bright, fleeting percussive sound unlike anything heard in popular music ever before.

Gabriel loved the effect and made it the signature sound on the opening track of his album. A year later, Collins featured it in his hit single “In the Air Tonight,” which is perhaps the most famous example of gated reverb to date. (Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill“ is another notable example of the technique.)

The sound would come to define music of the 1980s and many contemporary artists continue to use it today

[Bono Nettencourt]

The whole thing came through the famous "listen mic" on the SSL console. The SSL had put this massive compressor on it because the whole idea was to hang one mic in the middle of the studio and hear somebody talking on the other side. And it just so happened that we turned it on one day when Phil [Collins] was playing his drums. And then I had the idea of feeding that back into the console and putting the noise gate on, so when he stopped playing it sucked the big sound of the room into nothing.

So it was the talkback system, but in the studio, not the control room. That's why I didn't say "talkback" in my original post, to avoid confusion.

[Wiseacre]

The whole thing came through the famous "listen mic" on the SSL console. The SSL had put this massive compressor on it because the whole idea was to hang one mic in the middle of the studio and hear somebody talking on the other side. And it just so happened that we turned it on one day when Phil [Collins] was playing his drums. And then I had the idea of feeding that back into the console and putting the noise gate on, so when he stopped playing it sucked the big sound of the room into nothing.

So it was the talkback system, but in the studio, not the control room. That's why I didn't say "talkback" in my original post, to avoid confusion.

The video explains it that way, but the article and what I heard years ago was that they heard it IN THE CONTROL room and that "Peter liked it" like in the text I posted. I guess maybe Phil heard his drums through the speakers in the control room which were coming through the gated talk-back mic either as he played or they talked to him while playing them back to him. Since the story I heard said Phil was playing it didn't make sense that he heard it that way since I'm sure his drums were being fed through the headphones as well. It's been a looong time since I've recorded in a studio with an SLL board with the talk-back, but maybe when you press the talk button it mutes the send on the mics and any other headphone mix. I don't remember it being that way when I did vocals, but I can't really remember. Seems like I could still hear my mic AND the engineer. It's just weird that Peter heard it and not Phil. How could Peter hear it in the control room if it was a result of the talk-back compressing and gating the drums in the headphones Phil was wearing (unless they were wearing headphones in the control room too?) Seems to me only Phil or other musicians not in the control room and wearing heaphones could hear it the talk-back effect.

oh well, it doesn't really matter. I was just originally pointing out that Phil was basically "responsible" for that drum sound which everyone copied.

[DevastatinDave]

The only complaint I had with the documentary is not including the actual music they're talking about and having to listen to 5 drummers verbalize the parts that are being referred to.
I get that Genesis/PC sold their catalog, but when you're doing a documentary about a band/artist, their music is vital to telling the story and it shouldn't be an issue using the music since the music in the documentary isn't there for financial gain.

Agree. I’d think it would help catalogue sales by including.