This 1980s Rock Icon Says His Family Was Prepared for Him to Die After Alcohol Relapse: ‘People Were Coming to Say Goodbye’
· Vice
Over the last few years, Phil Collins has been through the wringer with his health. Nerve damage and various surgeries for his knees and spine made him unable to play the drums. Alcoholism had been a massive problem for decades. Back in 2012, he had acute pancreatitis that forced him to get sober. But by April 2024, he had relapsed and was hospitalized in Switzerland. It reached a point where his family was preparing themselves to say goodbye to the “In The Air Tonight” legend.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Phil Collins candidly talked about his health woes while in the hospital. His manager of 50 years had to call in his five kids to make future plans in the event that the Genesis frontman didn’t make it. At that point, his body was shutting down, and it looked dire for him.
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“Because there were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing. My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up,” Collins told the publication. “People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming, I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”
Phil Collins Recalls The Devastating Conversations His Family Had About Him Potentially Dying
Admittedly, Collins can’t even remember when he started drinking again. The only thing he knows is that the medication Antabuse kept him off the bottle for a while. Once that stopped, he started drinking wine in the mornings like everything was normal.
“But I’d have wine when I woke up. That was what I’d want for breakfast, a glass of wine. But I didn’t drink into the night, you know. So I wasn’t really aware of having a problem, to be honest,” Phil Collins said.
Now, the singer and drummer is being honored at the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Other inductees include Oasis, Mariah Carey, Wu-Tang Clan, and more. Collins speculates that people on the board already assumed he was already inducted for his solo work, not just as Genesis in 2010.
But had he never received his flowers from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he said it wouldn’t have bothered him. As Phil Collins put it, “I’d have just put it down to being English and just being invisible.”
Photo by Gina Wetzler/Redferns
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