Everybody’s Rockin’

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Phil Collins - “Sussudio”

Do you like Phil Collins? I’m serious. It’s a serious question.

I happen to like Phil Collins. Now, I should specify, I think Phil with Genesis is preferable, and I have a further preference for the 80s material. I’ve heard the early Genesis, yes, with and without Peter Gabriel. I have the box set, somewhere in the infinity of storage lockers. But, for all the prog bands that found chart success as pop acts in the 1980s - a surprisingly large list! Genesis always seemed the least grudging. They seemed to rather like writing songs for the radio, when they got around to it. 

     

In hindsight a natural progression. In the beginning they were certainly prog. And not just any prog, but among the very best, the utmost arch, with ambitions more pertaining to art school than Tolkien. Early Genesis had the advantage of being the incubator for Peter Gabriel. Despite both Peter Gabriel and Genesis enjoying extensive chart success in the decade after they broke up, their music together was the least outwardly commercial of their respective careers. And yet, after splitting, both parties gradually began to incorporate pop hooks and concision into their repertoire. “Solsbury Hill” hit the airwaves in 1977, Genesis’ “Follow You Follow Me” in 1978. A rare example of lead singer departing a band and both parties going in a poppier direction, just separately. In both cases their gradual blossoming as short form songwriters seemed freeing, in a way it rarely seems for established artists. You can argue the results, perhaps, but there’s no getting around the fact that Invisible Touch and So were released about a month apart in 1986. Both monumentally successful in an era defined by monumental successes, and proven as enduring as anything else from that era. And let’s not forget, Mike + the Mechanics also got in a few good licks in those very profitable years. They charted with a really spooky number, “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground).” Genuinely eerie. It feels very contemporary, if a little on the nose for the present moment.

     

In any event - what a remarkable group left turn for the arty bunch who did The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway!

     

Now, I liked Genesis the moment I heard them - this would have been the mid-80s, around Invisible Touch. Is that the first example of my tastes veering significantly from my parents? They didn’t hate Genesis, I just think they wondered why I did. They hadn’t cared one whit for prog, neither of them, and raised me listening to the music they did, simply by virtue of them being adults and having access to the car stereo. On reflection I don’t think my mother found Phil Collins’ voice a pleasant sensation. She quite liked Peter Gabriel, and so did I for that matter. But she didn’t care for Genesis. 

     

And if she didn’t care for Genesis you can just imagine what she thought of Phil Collins solo. Truth be told, I hadn’t given the solo material much airing myself. It doesn’t have the best reputation, in hindsight. Or at least, it didn’t - I realize I’m speaking in present tense by way of decades’-old critical consensus that may have itself evolved in the years since last I looked. It’s probable that the poptimists already rehabilitated our boy. 

    

“Sussudio” came out in 1985. Collins wouldn’t release another solo album until 1989, three years from Invisible Touch. Not that any lag time should have mattered. No Jacket Required sold twelve million copies, just in the United States. . . . But Seriously “only” sold four.

     

So - first of all, it’s not why we’re here necessarily, but “Take Me Home”? That’s a jam, right there. That’s what I got stuck in my head, prior to making the conscious choice to go listening to Collins’ hits. In hindsight, very contemporary of its era. In terms of the kind of club music being played in the clubs, or even college radio at that time, it’s not incompetent. It’s actually really good. Even if you hate the guy, you have to acknowledge: hand to the Bible, “Take Me Home” is a jam. How the hell did a guy like that figure it out?

     

How, indeed! And you’d not be wrong for thinking him about the most unlikely candidate to provide serious competition for the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna, during both of their commercial heydays. To say nothing of Prince, to whom Collins surely owed very much, as “Sussudio” demonstrates. In hindsight it seems like it must have been some kind of fluke of nature. At a certain moment in time a chemical reaction occurred in the brain of Phil Collins, mild mannered British musician, whereat he figured out precisely how to make a song he knew was going to get played on the radio and sell a lot of records. There’s a pleasantly workmanlike quality to those eighties records, perhaps also mistaken for insincere. Honestly, I think there has to be more than a little bit of awareness on his part as to that fact. Anyone that good at making a product that other people would find ingratiating enough to bring into their lives must also on some level cherish a small degree of contempt for that same audience. I learned that from Stan Lee. 

     

Solo Phil doesn’t care about producing something you’re going to want, or that you think you want. He figured out the trick to jumping straight to making something people like. Just that eagerness to please, leaping over preference to reflex, is disconcerting for many, I believe. Not everyone likes the sound of Phil Collins voice, so the fact that he proved uniquely gifted at writing very memorable songs is the source of no small enmity.

     

To be fair, I partially inherited this bias from a comic book. “Sussudio” is a punchline in Ambush Bug, specifically Son of Ambush Bug #1, where the song proves foul enough to flush the title character out of a bar. It’s a memorable gag. They’re right, of course. If you don’t like Phil Collins, it is a terrible song. Getting an annoying song stuck in your head is considered by many a fate worse than death. I’m pretty sure that’s why my mom never cared for him.

     

Now, me, I like Phil Collins. But even I had to peel back my ears to give this one a fresh airing. Did you know who did the horns for that song? If you already know, this isn’t for you, but I’m willing to bet at least a few of you don’t. They’re not programmed. They might sound programmed because they were both precise and very powerful, compressed to sound percussive coming out of cheap speakers. But that’s not a synthesizer, that’s the motherfucking Fenix Horns. You know, from motherfucking Earth, Wind, and Fire. Collins was working with a guy named David Frank, who would go on to have a discography as long as your arm in the world of R&B. Played synthesizers and keyboards. An extraordinarily talented support crew. 

     

But that 909 is credited to Collins. He knew how to drum and he also very clearly knew how to program a drum, which isn’t something you see very often. He knew what a beat should sound like. 

     

The song itself is about as much of a trifle as you could ever expect to see - there’s a girl that’s been on this guy’s mind, you see. He thinks about her all the time. Etc. You know the score. Her name is “Sussudio.” Of course, that’s probably not her real name. Probably just a cutesy nickname he has for someone who he knows very well, but who, we are told, doesn’t even know his name. 

     

All very unexceptional, as these things go. The stuff of rock & roll - no, the stuff of popular music since the dawn of time. I love a girl, she doesn’t love me, oldest story in the book.

What’s maybe not so expected is the willingness to play the schmuck. Sadly not an active participant in his own desires. A familiar and common, if under-discussed area of humiliation. Straight men aren’t supposed to know about yearning fruitlessly. That’s a secret. For lesbians.

     

Another treatment of a similar sensation - “Anything She Does,” from Invisible Touch. One of a handful of pop songs to touch on man’s relationship to their favorite pin-up model, a topic of no small pathos for many reasons profound and pathetic. A good song, a rocker on an album stuffed to the brim with good songs.

     

And that’s where we’re left with Mr. Collins. A guy who put out albums stuffed to the brim with good songs at a fair clip for many years. Just knew how to do it, just like you or I might know how to trim a hedge or bake a chicken. Someone who played drums for a prog band in the early 70s. Genesis wasn’t his first band. He wasn’t even the first drummer Genesis had. He had to audition for the gig. Can you imagine such a thing! Such is history, to pivot on such formalities.