Phil Collins appeared on ‘Telling Stories’ (which appears to be similar to VH1 Story Tellers), and there are a few clips on YouTube of that episode.

First, is possibly his most universally recognized song - ‘In the Air Tonight’. In this clip he describes how the song has gained a urban legend status, and calls off all of the rumors of the storied drowning once and for all:

Another clip has him talking about the writing process of ‘Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)’, and I thought the funniest moment from this was his comments about his apparent inability to play this song reliably; apparently he’s not a confident piano player.

Here is the clip from the Live Aid in Wembley, and you can see his ‘flub up’ at around 1:10.

It’s a minor hiccup really, but as you can see from the first video, at least 20 years later he’s still dealing with the embarrassment of that small mistake; I guess even the best of us are self-conscious.

Lastly, someone hollers out ‘Home By The Sea’ which is one of my personal favorite Phil-Collins-era-Genesis songs, and he has a funny moment of not knowing the song as well as the supporting band for the show.

One of the things I always found refreshing about Phil Collins is how frank he is about the seemingly arbitrary lyric-writing process he follows. While so many of his songs (both those from Genesis and his solo career) carry such meaning for the listeners, the lyric-imagining process is seemingly simple and last-minute as he describes it. It’s also funny to see how much of his writing process starts with a drum beat; probably not a coincidence given his background.