Phil Collins
When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food.Collection: Travel
I've bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo, and I talk to my friends that I've made over the past 15, 20 years. It's just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.Collection: Learning
In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan - my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents.Collection: Marriage
There's no magic for getting into the groove... just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.Collection: Music
The world is in your hands, now use it.
I'm not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I'm a drummer that sings a bit.
I know it shouldn't make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren't sure what day it was - it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better.
I've spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.
That's the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it'll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.
Genesis fans are a religious group!
Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.
All I set out to do was to earn a living playing drums, you know? And as luck would have it, I've surpassed that.
I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the '50s and '60s, which may have been an influence on me.
That's going to be on my headstone: 'He came. He wrote 'In the Air Tonight.' He... died.'
I'm just trying to do things that are interesting for me.
'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.
I can't play anywhere near like I used to, and I was a hot drummer. It doesn't bother me, because frankly, if you get to that point where you can't hold a drumstick properly, there are many other things in life which are far more important, like cutting a loaf of bread or a piece of cheese.
As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.
I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.
I don't really listen to music.
You know, I've released some great records and I've released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.
I don't own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you're just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.
Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.
To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time.
I just don't think of myself as a star. This is what I do for a living; I'm fortunate that I make ends meet.
I'm not trying necessarily to become a movie star; that wouldn't be bad but that's not the aim. I'm just trying to do interesting things and go into areas where I've not been before.
Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.
To see a lot of the smaller labels disappear or get gobbled up by the bigger labels, that's a shame. It was a bit of a shock at first to see the demise of the record stores.
It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it's finished, is a bit of a disappointment.
I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that. It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.
Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.
I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.
The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.
We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe.
I never said I was at the Alamo. Someone else said I was at the Alamo. Now I'm a nutter. I don't think that's fair.
I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.
I've got one of four known Davy Crocket rifles. It's fantastic just to know it's one of the rifles that he actually used. His cousin had it.
I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.
I can't remember much about the early flights, except that it was ages before we got into First Class.
In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: 'It's OK - we can just do instrumentals.'
When we're touring America or Europe, we use our own plane and a great advantage of that is it cuts out an awful lot of time checking in. You literally drive up to the plane, get on and then drive off at the other end.
I never stopped thinking about the Alamo from that day to this. I'm a huge collector of memorabilia. I've got Davy Crockett's bullet pouch. I've got Colonel Travis's belt.
Everything has added up to a load that I'm getting tired of carrying. It's gotten so complicated. It's the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it's the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting.
Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.
I don't really belong to that world and I don't think anyone's going to miss me. I'm much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely.
On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.
I'm usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.
There were 'big stars' at the Alamo! Bowie, Crockett! It is a huge political event because it, and the events at Goliad and San Jacinto, changed the look of a map of America. America would be a very different place if Texas had remained Mexican.
Often there's a BA crew, because half the time we stay at the same hotels, especially in Australia. I can remember spending quite a lot of time with crews around the pool there. They always make themselves known to us.