T WAS only when he opened his eyes that he realised that the screaming had stopped. In fact there was no sound at all: no music, no applause - only the sound of his own heart thumping much too rapidly.

"Look this way, Phil," coaxed the gentle voice of Jill Furmanovsky. As he looked up from where he was crouched. he felt the roughness of a packing-case against his arm. Fuzzily. the picture came back into focus. The strain of playing four nights at Hammersmith Odeon - being responsible for its success or failure - was now compounded by the fact that he was due to fly out for an American tour the next day. His neat, even dapper. appearance (slacks, cricket jersey, smart blazer. maybe two days' beard growth) belied the tiredness he felt inside. Oh why had he agreed to this interview and photo session during his only day off? After all, he could have spent it with his kids!

Summoning up his old vigour. he briskly prepared himself mentally for what he imagined, almost hoped, would be a rigorous. aggressive interview from Johnny Waller, the man who champions Sex Gang Children, March Violets and Simple Minds. Phil, being an avid reader of the music press, had deliberately chosen not to speak to his old friend and adversary Hugh Fielder, simply because he'd like to gain a fresh perspective on how he was viewed by the press and public. He was looking forward to a cut-and-thrust battle of wits - he'd even have spoken to Garry Bushell. but it's unfair to fight a man only half-armed!

He expected no favours from Waller. who immediately tried to put him on the defensive by asking him to justify discarding the faithful Fielder like a worn-out drum-stick'.

"Well. I know Hugh likes most of what I do and most of what Genesis does, and he's sympathetic to me," parried Phil charmingly. "So I figured it would be better to have a discussion with someone I've never met before - who probably doesn't like what I do - just to try and convince them that maybe they're barking up the wrong tree in terms of thinking I'm what I'm not! I've just done interviews with other music papers. and I had two choices really - one, I could do nothing, because it doesn't affect my album sales or the amount of people who come to my concerts. because it is now known by music fans in general that if an album gets a bad review in any of the poposs. it isn't necessarily on its merit. but perhaps because that particular person doesn't Iike that artist so I stood to gain nothing by being interviewed or by having space in the paper. But I was keen to meet some of the people who have slagged me off - not yourself, but people like Paul Morley at NME and Paul Colbert at Melody Maker just to show them that I'm not actually what they think I am And I've made very careful mental notes as to how these interviews have gone, and I know I've hit it off with people, so if they knife me in the back in print, 1 wont ever bother to do it again."

"So did you choose individual journalists who had particularly slogged you off, or just people you haven't reached yet - hoping, through them, to reach all the music fans who would normally never touch a Phil Collins record, let alone a Genesis one?" asked Waller. apparently without any hint of malice.

"Well It goes right across the board," smiled Phil, "because apart from Hugh, I can't think of any journalist who actually likes Genesis, although. as Paul Colbert pointed out. I think we're entering an age of closet Genesis fans, But I just thought I'd have a conversation with someone who asks a few questions that allow me to clear up some things."

ALLER WAS quick to suggest that Genesis and Phil Collins fans would probably prefer a chummy chat where good of Phil explains track-by-track what the new album is all about. without a hint of criticism.

"Well, maybe . . . maybe they would ... or ..."'

"Are you bored with that degree of self important analysis?' Waller pounced with the question like a buzzard.

"Oh. I'm not bored with that at all," replied Phil hastily - and sincerely. "Not at all - to go back to the original question of why I wanted to talk to someone other than Hugh, it's the same reason he wrote in his review of the album, where someone from Record Minor remarked 'There goes Fielder crawling up Phil Collins arse again' - and if that attitude is there, I don't want to have any part of it, because it devalues the whole thing. People might tend to think 'Oh, there goes another Hugh Fielder interview with Phil Collins - of course he likes him!', so it's a question of meeting someone new. because over the years - and I know I have this feeling about other groups - you put them in corners. I hate doing it ... and I hate it happening to us. you put Genesis over there in a corner with yes, ELP. Moody Blues and the Floyd. because that's the period we happened to come up in."

"Personally," admitted Phil. "I don't like any of those groups - so it angers me and frustrates me when we got compared to them. because I don't think . . . well. we've got a lot more substance and a lot more balls. and we're constantly questioning ourselves much more than any of them. And we've tried - and succeeded - to develop over the years, we've changed our music, because we keep our ears to the ground more than, say. the Moody Blues."

While delighted to get such 'old fart' bashing quotes from Collins, Waller was still quick to seize the opportunity to demand which bands he listens to at the moment - Gentle Giant and Caravan maybe?

"Well, occasionally I listen to the radio and, for instance. today I heard the Culture Club single for the second time and I like it - but 1 don't actually go around and put records on when I'm at home, or if I do, it'll be a Beatles album, or an Earth Wind And Fire album or Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits ... I prefer that kind of music, black music in general. My musical tastes do go right across the board though and certainly not - and I don't want to kick our fans in the teeth here - but I'm guessing they don't like Genesis for the same reasons that I like it! They like it maybe for the musical area that I like least about Genesis. I don't think Genesis is a perfect group, but we're still trying to get it rlght."

"I've been asked lots of times why I don't leave the band. but I'll stay until we get it right, until I'm happy with . . . until you go 'yeaghhhl' - and every time we do an album, we think it's the best. We're tarred with a brush we don't deserve... like Grateful Dead - now, I've never even heard a Grateful Dead album, but they're there in that corner, the same as we are to people who have never heard us! Maybe If I listened, I might like them. But it's frustrating," continued Phil. "when we started, we used to got compared with Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Yes and the Floyd, because we used mellotrons and synthesisers, and were quite theatrical, but no-one's put me in the same area as the Human League because they use drum machines"

ICKING UP the reference to two other Virgin acts (Culture Club and Human League) and having done his homework (he'd re-read the interview where Collins had said he'd wanted to escape the cosy, comfy Charisma fold to stand alone), Waller wondered aloud If he'd deliberately chosen Virgin because they had so many new, bright bands.

"No. no . . . the fact that I've mentioned those bonds doesn't mean I particularly wanted to be associated with that - but I deliberately went out of my way to change everything I could, and the reason I went to Virgin was because I got a good feeling from the people I met, they're nice people. I could have signed for a lot more money to CBS, but I didn't want to be part of that."

"Did you have to reject anything from your solo albums simply because it sounded too similar to Genesis?" probed Wallet, admitting that Ice didn't really know what Genesis sound like anyway! Was it a conscious decision to pull in a totally different direction?"

Patiently, Phil formulated his reply. "No, well you see, my writing career starting two years ago - with Genesis, although I've been in the band twelve years, I've only ever submitted bits of songs. When I was married, my time was spent between being married and having a family, Genesis and Brand X - and so writing was something I did it I could. So it wasn't until my marriage broke up that I actually found the time, or had the time rather, and the emotional inclination to sit down at the piano and pour my heart out, which is what I did with what then became 'Face Value' - but it was only at that point that I had finished songs that I could show the band."

"Tony and Mike have been the most prolific writers in the band in recent years, and I'd just put little bits in. So when it came round to doing 'Duke' we all had little bits of music, and I played Genesis 'In The Air Tonight', 'If Leaving Is Easy' as well as 'Misunderstanding' and 'Please Don't Ask', which were intended for 'Face Value' and they liked them but I think they sussed... because I like hanging on two chords, y'know, if a song's got a groove to it. I'll hang on two chords because I'm coming from the black area, unlike them"

"Oh yeah - you live in Guildford, don't you?" teased Waller. "A very black area... Phil took the jibe in good humour and awaited another genuine question. "Is it easier to write when you're depressed then?"

"Yes, I find it Is - I think human beings generally love wallowing in misery! Steve Bishop, who writes great songs, told me he was really miserable then he met his lady and he fell in love and now he can't write any more miserable songs, which is a shame - cos I love his miserable songs! And I think its curious that if you're unhappy, you don't put on a happy record to lift you up, you put on a sad record to make yourself even more miserable!"

Probingly, Walter got personal. "Did you wallow in the break-up of your marriage?" Admirably. Phil stayed honest, maybe painfully so.

"I did yeah. I wallowed in it, even though I wasn't enjoying it. At the same time, it was a very stimulating year to go through. there were some moments on that first album, and also on the new album relating to that period and I think they're very strong conversational love songs, rather than maybe Charles Aznavour or Barry Manilow-type love songs. I don't think there's anything wrong or embarrassing talking about love - I was criticised for having my kids on the album cover, some people think that's twee ... and while I still get embarrassed talking about this here, but I look at it that I loved my dad and suddenly my son wouldn't have a dad because my wife decided to leave me, so I got very depressed. So I feel good about putting their picture on the cover!"

HEY BOTH smiled, and for a moment they shared a memory an emotion. Whether by design. good luck or personal magnetism, it seemed that Phil was succeeding in reaching Johnny, making him reassess his (admittedly biased) opinions. Phil wasn't hoping for conversion, but appreciation would be acceptable. The conversation flowed easily, Johnny content to let Phil reveal as much or as little as he wished, interrupting only to pursue a new topic or to clarify ambiguous answers. But when he remarked, almost in passing, that he was 'no longer interested in putting any of my songs into Genesis', Johnny felt compelled to ask if there was ever criticism that he was just keeping the best stuff for himself.

"Well, I don't think it's like that," explained Phil. "I tend to submit little bits and pieces that the band can expand upon. And I have a strong vision of how my songs should be - I like to play keyboards on my stuff, and obviously if you're in a band and you've got a keyboard player, he plays the keyboards. So... I don't really want to put my thing into the group and tell them how to play my songs! The most stimulating stuff for us in Genesis has been when we've just sparked off ideas, when someone's brought a little bit of music in which they can't develop on their own, then someone else has picked it up and made something out of it - and suddenly it's a group thing. And that means it's something we can't do individually, so it's actually very easy to differentiate between group stuff and my solo songs."

Talk turned to production. Phil relating that he'd produced his own albums because If you are a painter, you don't say to someone 'I want a bit of red there and a bit of blue here', you do it yourself.

"So I like doing everything myself, because basically I don't trust anyone else to do it well enough - though if I'd thought of George Martin at the time I might have asked him, because I really admire what he did with the Beatles, he's one of my biggest heroes."

"So how did you come to produce Frida's album?"

"Well, she - or rather, big Stig - phoned to say she wanted me to do it and I thought 'Abba - great pop records, classic reproduction and here's one of them wants me to produce her album!", so it had to be worth looking into. I'd never met her before, so she came over and we had lunch together. I asked her what kind of thing she wanted to do and she said, 'Well, I don't really know', so I asked if she wrote music and she said, 'No' - and it became apparent that we'd have to choose the songs and I found out that the reason she wanted to work with me was that she'd been through her own situation and so I guess I'm getting a tag for being a producer who only works with people who - leave just been divorced! Anyway, she'd listened to my album a lot, and I'd like to think she thought I'd been quite sympathetic if, being a lady, she didn't want to come in after a particularly hard night emotionally. She liked the sound on my album, so we chose the songs for her and..."

".. But the songs are so dreadful!" blurted Johnny with annoyance, quoting the existence of really good song-writers like Costello, Yazoo, ABC and Squeeze who he reckoned should have been commissioned instead of the more, obvious people like- Stephen Bishop, Gerry Rafferty and Rod Argent.

"To be quite honest, we had tapes coming out of our ears - there was no shortage of songs! But there really weren't that many good ones, and we had Squeeze submitting songs and Costello submitting songs - I only heard two of the three he sent, but I didn't think they were very good! Now, I like Elvis, some of the songs he writes, I think are fantastic, especially his earlier stuff, because I haven't heard much of his recent work . . ."

"Get 'Imperial Bedroom', Phil," advised Johnny, "it's brilliant!"

"Well, he's a guy who I believe what he's doing is good, because he's not an idiot,, he's a very astute bloke, but the songs I heard, I didn't think they were any good, and I didn't think they were good for Frida. And the Squeeze song was just too British - I mean, you can't have Frida singing about life in Clapham!"

"But," continued Johnny on the attack, "it seemed such a conservative album - certainly not a 1982 album to rank alongside Simple Minds and ABC, nor even the brighter moments of Kim Wilde, especially after the early promise shown by the big-beat excitement of the single 'I Know There's Something Going On'."

"I can see that . . " admitted Phil with perhaps a hint of resignation.

"But what about that hideous duet the pair of you do at the end of the album!" jeered Johnny, closing in on his hapless victim.

"Oh that," mumbled an embarrassed Phil. "That was a complete lapse of taste on my part - l think it's hideous too, this is the one thing I'm not going to try to get out of. When we chose the song I was singing it to her to try and get her to loosen up, because it's different if you're foreign to sing English lyrics, and I didn't think Frida sounded convincing on that track. So she said 'Maybe you could sing this with me' and at the time I didn't think of it as a duet, as we were both going to sing all of it but because of the different key registers, it ended up sounding like Rita 'n' Kris or Elton 'n' Kiki - but I was committed to it by then. But you're right, it is hideous! And they tried to put it out as a single, and l said no way am I going to be associated with this as a single and we used the record company excuse to stop it, by saying that Virgin, Charisma and Atlantic would cause a fuss. But, er ... never again!"

PART FROM that one aberration, Phil insisted that both he and Frida thoroughly enjoyed working together, Frida being especially delighted to be much more involved with every aspect of the recording than with Abba, where she is literally called to the studio and told exactly what to sing, then sent home again until required for the photographs to go on the sleeve!

Among the telling anecdotes that Phil revealed to Johnny one concerned Abba's phenomenal wealth. On a day off, Phil and engineer Hugh Padgham decided to take in one of Stockholm's' famous saunas, and asked Frida to recommend one. When Phil then mentioned there might be a problem as they weren't members: she replied "Don't worry - I own it!".

"So will you be working with her again?" asked Johnny.

"l' m supposed to be doing another album with her in the autumn - I've said I'll do it, but if I don't, it'll be purely because I've' already done that and l want to do something else."

"Like what?''

"Well, Daryl Hall and l have talked about - doing something - I went to see Hall And Oates at Hammersmith recently, and when I first saw him on stage, I didn't like him, because he seemed very arrogant and very smarmy, for want of a better word, but I was pleased when I met him, because he's not like that at all. So there's this, collaboration thing planned - it's not like me producing him or anything, it's a question of us sitting down and talking about ideas ... it's a, long-term thing - it's not going to happen next week! And I'm a huge fan of John Martyn - and the main reason l produced his 'Glorious Fool' album was so that no-one else could f*** it up - I thought, 'At least if I do it, I know no-one else can ruin it!'. And I'd love to work with Stephen Bishop - you see, I just like working with people that I like . . . I'd like to do an album with Clapton actually!"

Johnny, with no respect whatsoever for tossers like Clapton who are far too content to rest on their laurels, asked if Phil thought Eric needed shaking up a bit, to revitalise him.

"Not shaking up, no ... but, well a little bit yeah, he's one of those people who I think that maybe there's another side to him. He's been coasting a bit recently because he's surrounded himself with friends, which is obviously a lovely thing to do, but ... you know."

A shrug of the shoulders and he was off talking of other production offers. "I was asked to do the Nolans, Air Supply - who I didn't really want to know about - and the EWF horn section are doing an album which I'll be working on, but apart from that, there's not enough time after Genesis, my solo stuff' and staying, sane!"

ART OF staying sane for Phil comes from humour, which had delighted Johnny when he'd seen Phil's smooth, dramatic, funny show at Hammersmith. Most musicians wouldn't know a joke if you hit them over the head with a Goon Show script, but there was Phil incorporating one-liners and parody routines into the standard rock performance. When introducing the EWF horn section, he became a cross between a night club compere and Nicholas Parsons, announcing each player as "The fabulous, fabulous musician, a most fabulous fabulous person - give him a fabulous reception please . . etc".

"I forgot why I started doing that," admitted Phil when asked, "I did it first with Genesis, introducing Chester and Daryl like that - and it's really a comic interlude, because I like being humorous - and it is a fantastic vibe when you say something and someone laughs. And I'm a big fan of Steve Martin (currently starring in Dead Men Don't (Near Plaid), because he takes the complete piss out of things and you'll be laughing at something that you'd otherwise take really seriously - and if people don't like it, well... for instance, in The Guardian, Robin Denselow said it was 'end of pier humour' - but you'll never get me to stop that, cos that's the only way I can introduce all these excellent musicians so that people actually know who they are, while still maintaining a flippancy, about the whole situation."

"'So I've had this theory ever since I started doing the singing with Genesis, that if you make people laugh, they relax - and if they relax, they absorb more, and people tend to take us far too seriously... there's a lot of the Genesis humour that goes over their heads. "When we released the 'Three By Three' EP, we did a Beatles parody, with a nice glossy cover photograph of us all jumping off a Wall and if you put the 'Twist And Shout' EP next to it, there's no difference apart from our faces - and we got Tony Barrow to write the sleeve-notes and he wrote it in the same way he used to for the Beatles, 'these cheeky chappies from Guildford ... treasure these three audio-visual representations...' but the NME reviewed it and the guy wasn't alive when the Beatles were going, so he reviewed it totally straight, as though we were serious. And so l think people who don't like us would appreciate us much more at a gig than on record, because that's when the humour becomes more apparent. I try to deflate any sort of overblown pomposity or pomp that we appear to have..."

'But you seem fated to be regarded in hindsight as the archetypal pomp-rock dinosaurs, doesn't that worry you?" Johnny sympathised.

"I don't think there's anything we can do about it now - I keep going on about how misunderstood we are ... I mean, there are elements of Genesis that I don't like and our hit singles, which as you say should have broadened our appeal, merely turned our hard-core fans against us, saying we'd sold out! They don't really understand the group either, because we've never really stood for anything, we've just written songs!"

ALK TURNED to other bands and Phil's sense of humour surfaced again as the name Marillion popped up. Having admitted that he hadn't yet heard any of their music, he remarked, "I wouldn't wish it upon anybody to try and be successful in this day and age being a parody of a band nobody likes anyway."

Returning to the series of concerts that Phil had just completed; Johnny suddenly offered an unexpected compliment, saying how powerful the twin-drum barrage had been on 'In The Air Tonight', creating an awesomely dramatic climax.

"Did the idea of two drummers come from the Ants ... or maybe the Glitter Band?"

"Well, I think the Glitter Band just used it in case one of them got drunk and didn't turn up! But it's a certain type of: discipline you can't just throw two drummers together. I played with Bill Bruford when he was in Genesis and it was great fun, but it didn't really lock in anywhere close to me and Chester now. I suppose to a lot of people 'in The Air' is what I'm about - I'm not, but that's how most people first heard of me because they might not like Genesis."

"But isn't it physically difficult to sing and drum together?"

"No - I used to do it in my school band which played Motown. I was a big fan of the Action, a sixties group whose album was only released last year, and I'd always wanted it!' Paul Weller did the sleeve notes and said 'Unfortunately I was too young ever to see the Action : . .'and I thought, 'Christ, why didn't they ask me to do it!?' - I mean, I've got scrap-books on them! Anyway, they used to do Motown covers, and they were the only band I ever heard who did them as well as the originals. So that's what my group did as well, so I was playing drums and singing 'Uptight', 'Land Of A Thousand Dances', 'Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever . . ."

Switching from musical heroes - and Phil had continually returned to how great he thinks the Beatles were - Johnny used one of his favourite questions.

"1f you could be anyone at all in history, who would you choose?"

"Romeo."

"Romeo? Why?"

"Because I like Olivia Hussey" (She's the actress who played Juliet when Phil was at stage school and nearly landed the role of Romeo opposite her. He still has' a crush on her even now!). "No, that's the way to go - that's how I'd like to die. Or if not Romeo, Davey Crockett ... something romantic!"

LTHOUGH HIS basic opinions hadn't been altered, Johnny had come to see Phil in new light after two hours' conversation. He was still confused as to how someone with such a passion for inspirational black music like Stax and Motown could remain in a pomp-rock outfit for 12 years, though he remembered Phil's phrase "A quest for perfection."

Then Johnny looked back at his own past - a dead-end job in the Civil Service and a suffocatingly disastrous marriage. He smiled again and had to agree With PhiI's own epitaph - Johnny had asked how he would like to be remembered, and had been surprised at the unassuming modesty and good-natured decency of this pop personality.

"As a fair, honest bloke - which I think I am!"