Phil Collins Offers Update About His Health and Drumming

Photo: Bravo/Redferns

You can’t hurry this type of thing; he would know. Phil Collins is still adjusting to a life of being unable to play the drums, telling Drumeo in a new documentary that the toll the instrument has taken on his hands and legs is almost certainly irreversible. (Drumeo noted that the conversation occurred in October 2022 but didn’t provide an explanation for the delay in release.) “If I can’t do what I did as well as I did it, I’d rather relax and not do anything,” Collins explained. “If I wake up one day and I can hold a pair of drumsticks, then I’ll have a crack of it. But I just feel like I’ve used up my air miles.” Nic Collins, his son who filled in behind the kit during Genesis’s final tour, elaborated a bit further: He had a “big surgery on his neck that stemmed from all those years playing drums and bad posture,” which caused him to have drop-foot, a condition where “one of his feet has no sensation” and requires the use of a cane. Phil Collins has also been living with dislocated vertebrae and nerve damage. “It’s still kind of sinking in a bit,” the maestro added about his health. “I’ve spent all my life playing drums. To be suddenly not be able to do that is a shock.”

This update, while not the most recent on a chronological scale, enhances what we learned about Collins this past August. Record producer Simon Napier-Bell posted a photo of Collins on social media after interviewing him for a separate documentary, stating that the drummer recently revamped his home studio and was “in top form, full of wicked stories, and hugely fun.” An aura trifecta that, we assume, he felt when he performed at both Live Aids.

Related