Genesis fans are a religious group!
— Phil Collins
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.
When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.
That's going to be on my headstone: 'He came. He wrote 'In the Air Tonight.' He... died.'
I'm fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I'm sort of interested in the gory details of life.
I prefer black music in general.
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.
As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.
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.
And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.
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.
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.
I am stopping so I can be a full-time father to my two young sons on a daily basis.
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.'
Many of the articles printed over the last few months have ended up painting a picture of me that is more than a little distorted.
I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.
When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food.
If a musician dares to get out of the box he's been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I've always been known as someone who 'moves around' and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we're put.
The story of the Alamo has touched many more people than one would think. So, I would like to pay my respects to those men on both sides of the walls in those months of February and March 1836.
There's no magic for getting into the groove... just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I joined Genesis when I was 19. I've earned the right to actually do nothing. I don't want to be a shadow of what I was, so I've kind of just quite willingly stood back.
I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.
You know, I've released some great records and I've released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.
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.
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.
'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'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.
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.
I usually hang around the room listening to a bit of last night's show. If there's one available, I go to the steam room every day for my voice. I spend half an hour there and then I eat, because I can't eat later than four o'clock. Then I go for a soundcheck. That's my day.
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.
Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die. That's without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren't quite like that.
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.
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.
The difference between the American version of 'Live Aid' and the British one - in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar.
I don't really listen to music.
It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
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.
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.
My only saving grace is that I actually collect things that nobody else is interested in.
It's actually come as quite a shock to learn just how many people don't like me.
I'm not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I'm a drummer that sings a bit.
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.
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.
No seriously... when there's families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there's always someone who's got something going, like the tour manager.
