3 Key Collaborative Moments from Phil Collins’ Career

If you’re talking about historic collaborations, very few could eclipse this one. While the Beatles never got back together, this moment come pretty close to matching the star power of a Fab Four reunion. During a charity concert in 1987, 60 percent of the musicians who originally appeared on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” — George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton — jumped on stage to reprise the song.

The backing band pushed things over the top. Collins, Elton John, and Jeff Lynne were among those sitting in. That’s a lot of star power — and two Traveling Wilburys, if you’re counting — on a single stage. If you throw in the night’s other performers, such as Bryan Adams, Spandau Ballet, Ben E. King, and Dave Edmunds, an already heavy bill gets even heavier.

If your entry point to Collins was prime prog-era Genesis, this collaboration might seem less shocking. On the other hand, if your primary point of reference for Collins is the artist talking about his poor dance moves or who will be in his heart, then hearing him on an album with one of popular music’s coolest experimentalists might raise an eyebrow.

After doing a track on Brian Eno‘s 1974 album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Collins was asked to contribute in a larger role on 1975’s universally acclaimed Another Green World. Collins was a commodity at the time, but he was far from a star. Alongside a cast of characters including John Cale of the the Velvet Underground and Robert Fripp of King Crimson, Collins was just one of the guys on this minimalist touchstone.

“As I understand it, the publishers of my songs were getting, and had been getting for a long time, requests from many urban R&B singers to cover my songs,” Collins wrote in the liner notes of 2001’s Urban Renewal, a hip-hop and R&B tribute album with tracks from Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Brian McKnight, and Brandy. “It seems that from those requests for permission to change, alter, adapt, or almost rewrite my songs, came an idea to someone somewhere that perhaps — contrary to critical opinion — I may be hipper than previously suspected!”

There’s one track in particular that stands out in the mix — “In The Air Tonite,” a duet between Lil’ Kim and Collins. While neither the single or the album were big hits, the song still stands out in Collins’ catalog as the most far-flung collaboration he’s been involved in.