Phil Collins has left the door open on Phil Collins new music, telling Prog magazine that recording again is ‘not beyond the realms of possibility’, words that carry genuine weight given that he came close to dying in 2024 after a relapse into alcohol addiction brought his organs close to failure.
‘Um, I’m never gonna say no now,’ Collins tells the magazine. ‘I’ve got my little studio still, and I’d like to get down there and just mess about and see what happens. There are some things I could finish. And other things which are finished. So, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.’
His last album was 2010’s covers set Going Back. Fifteen years on, the prospect of Phil Collins new music feels both remote and (hearing him talk about it) oddly plausible.
From The Last Domino? to life support
When Genesis wound up their The Last Domino? reunion tour in March 2022, it brought down the curtain on Collins as a live performer. Health problems had accumulated over years: severe nerve damage, a foot condition that left him unable to walk unaided, and a deepening struggle with alcohol that would eventually become life-threatening.
The full picture of that 2024 crisis is bleak. According to Consequence, Collins was hospitalised in April 2024 when organ failure left his family confronting the possibility that doctors might take him off life support altogether. His manager, Tony, called his children to Switzerland to discuss his future. ‘Because at one point it was kind of life support,’ Collins says. ‘Kidneys and liver were waving the white flag. I was close to dying, and I hadn’t realised. I just thought I was sick.’
Rolling Stone has reported that Collins was first admitted to a Swiss hospital in connection with his alcohol use in November 2023. He was initially discharged before Christmas that year, but was readmitted a few weeks later and placed into intensive care, where he lay unconscious. The April 2024 hospitalisation, when organ failure brought the life-support question into sharp focus, followed that readmission.
‘I went through some pretty dark times,’ he tells Prog. ‘I was never “falling over” drunk. That wasn’t it. It was just drinking “normally”, as one would drink water. I’d wake up, have a glass of wine. Watch TV, read a book, have a glass of wine. And suddenly… Some people’s insides can’t take it. Mine broke down.’
Phil Collins new music hopes as he rebuilds his health
The physical toll extends beyond the alcohol crisis. Collins tells Prog he has had five operations on his knee, and drop foot (a condition affecting his ability to lift the front part of his foot) is why he relies on crutches. ‘I don’t want to fall over,’ he says, with characteristic directness.
The longer-term medical picture is equally demanding. According to Consequence, diabetes and kidney problems mean Collins requires a live-in nurse available around the clock. The infrastructure of his daily life has been substantially reorganised around his health.
And yet he is clear that things have improved. ‘Physically, now, I reckon I’m A1, 100%,’ he tells the magazine. ‘I’ve worked at it. Haven’t drunk for three years. I do physio three times a week, to bring me up to speed. All is good!’
The possibility of Phil Collins new music sits within that context: a man who has been rebuilding himself, physically and in terms of daily routine, and who still has a studio and, apparently, unfinished tracks waiting for him there. Whether those tracks ever reach an audience remains to be seen, but for someone who a year or so ago was lying unconscious in intensive care, ‘not beyond the realms of possibility’ reads as a considered statement rather than a throwaway one.
In the meantime, Collins’s debut solo album Face Value is reissued on 8 September as an expanded 4-LP 45th anniversary edition. The full interview appears in the current issue of Prog, on sale now.
