Quote Of The Day By Phil Collins: 'I Learned To Read Drum Music ...'

Passionate about playing drums since childhood, London-born Phil Collins gave up a potential career as an actor to work as a musician, gigging with a succession of bands before answering a want ad to audition for Genesis' in 1970. He got the job as their drummer, but six years later, Collins stepped on stage as the band's lead singer, achieving huge worldwide success, eventually leaving in 1996 to embark on a glittering solo career.

Fêted by his peers as well as subsequent generations of musicians from diverse genres, Collins also has won countless awards, including Grammys and an Academy Award, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. He was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 with Genesis, and again in 2026 as a musician in his own right.

Despite the success and fame, Collins is no stranger to darker times. He experienced a sometimes turbulent private life, was at the sharp end of a fickle public's changing musical tastes, and dealt with serious health issues, including alcoholism and type 2 diabetes. Yet throughout his life, Collins has always stuck to his guns and charted his own course. That's why he is our quote of the day.

"I learned to read drum music, but I found that my capacity for reading was not anywhere near as good as actually playing by instinct."

Collins' quote came during a 1983 chat with Interview magazine, republished online in 2017, and was in response to a question about the sort of music he liked as a child. Collins explained how, as a 14 year old he had dreams of being in a rock band, but figured it wouldn't last, so he asked a tutor to teach him how to read drum music, saying, "I figured when this rock 'n' roll thing finished I would have to make a living playing in a dance band or in an orchestra pit."

Instead, Collins realized his innate talent for playing by ear would serve him better than doing things the traditional way. "I decided to abandon that area of learning and ever since I've lived off my wits musically," he said.

Speaking in 2021 to John Edginton (via YouTube), Collins revisited the subject, revealing that because he couldn't read music, he had to come up with his own language, describing it as "like phonetics." Necessity is the mother of invention, as far as Collins was concerned, and he didn't let this one thing hold him back.

In any big industry, doing things a particular way — or not — can be a double-edged sword. Phil Collins' inability to read music didn't prevent him from becoming a creative force in the business. However, overexposure in the 1980s (including his flying from London to Philadelphia on Concorde as part of the 1985 Live Aid charity concerts) and the public breakdown of his marriages saw audiences and some of his peers turn against him. And yet none of it stopped him. 

Alongside music, Collins carved out a successful side hustle as an actor, playing one of the Great Train Robbers in the 1988 film "Buster," and reforming Genesis in 2020, last performing two years later. He doesn't look like the lead singer of a rock band. He doesn't look like a Hollywood leading man. But he has been both of those things and more.

Collins is a brilliant example of someone who doesn't fit any mold, proving that by doing things his way, and doing them well, nothing's impossible. You don't have to be like everyone else to achieve success. Ignore the naysayers, carve your own path, and your success will taste all the sweeter. 

• "I felt exposed. I'd lived all my life behind the security blanket of a drum kit, and suddenly there was nothing except a microphone stand. And the band sounds different from out front. You hear a different kind of balance out front, and it isn't comfortable. And I didn't want the job, frankly."

• "My daughter told me it was dangerous to stop working — "It's part of what you are, you're a writer" — and I realized it was important."

• "I wanted to be written out of my own script. There were too many things stuck to me that I couldn't get rid of."

• "Sometimes on a Genesis tour we'd play some old instrumentals, but basically it was like putting on someone else's suit."

• "You can have a lousy band but with a good drummer and it sounds pretty okay. You can have a great band with a lousy drummer and it's not happening."