JAKARTA - The essence of every good Phil Collins song revolves around the drums. Although Collins made a living outside of Genesis as one of the most saccharine songwriters of the 1980s, the amount of detail he put into every percussion was unmatched by anyone in his field, including God's grace on the song In the Air Tonight. Although Collins has worked hard to earn respect among his fellow drummers, there is only one artist he considers better than anyone else.
Hailing from the world of progressive rock, Collins had far more eclectic musical tastes than most of his contemporaries. Given their ability to incorporate complex polyrhythms into the equation, Genesis' influences on music tend to come from genres as wide as classical and jazz.
Even before Collins tried to master the basic paradiddle, Buddy Rich was already making waves as the strongest drummer who ever lived. Although he wanted nothing to do with rock and roll, the signature swing that Rich brought to his jazz band was one of the turning points in the history of drumming, possessing an animalistic sense of power while keeping things in the pocket throughout every song.
According to Tim Coffman of Far Out Magazine, when Collins first heard Rich's style, he was blown away, and recalled, “I thought he was the greatest drummer of all time. I met him once, and first of all, with The Beatles and The Who, and all the pop stars, I also listened to big-band jazz, so Count Basie was someone in his band and Buddy Rich, and I discovered West Side Story's Medley Buddy Rich in 1965 and is still an incredible piece of work. If you haven't heard it, you should. He is at his best all the time.”
While there are more than a few licks Collins has taken from artists like John Bonham and Ginger Baker behind the kit, Buddy Rich is perhaps one of the most obvious influences on his style. While Baker and Bonham wanted a sound that was somewhere between a drummer and a wild animal, Collins' approach was almost clinically precise, creating songs that had power without sacrificing harshness for the sake of the composition.
Even when moving in front of the microphone on Genesis, the drums still play an important role. When looking at Collins' first album as a singer, A Trick of the Tail, that rich sense of talent is still intact on the first song Dance on a Volcano, playing off the different time signatures of Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, climaxing in a massive drum roll that won't feel out of place like the crescendo at the end of a big band song.
After all, Rich never played for the sake of being flashy, and his most enduring classics involve him providing subtle rhythms for the rest of the song to breathe. This sense of precision in performing simple drum lines is also prevalent whenever Collins works on percussion, making the basic drum fills in In the Air Tonight sound like the most astonishing feat in the history of drumming based on how much effort is put into them.
The similarities between progressive rock and the swing era may seem like night and day, but there's a good chance Rich could teach Collins a thing or two about how to play the drums properly.
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