It really don't matter much where you run, 'cause home is in your heart.
April 12, 2020 1:15 PM   Subscribe

1985 was a ridiculously strong year for music releases, and we're far behind with celebrating releases. Jan 25th 35 years ago was the release of Phil Collins' third solo album No Jacket Required. It's hard to provide commentary on an album this mammoth. So many hits, so many units sold, so many awards... Truly a legendary album [full album, 46m]. Side A: Sussudio [video], Only You Know And I Know, Long Long Way To Go, I Don't Wanna Know, One More Night [video] posted by hippybear (46 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Junior high for me, I listened to "Long long way to go" and "take me home" over and over and overnovernovernovernover.
posted by hearthpig at 1:18 PM on April 12, 2020 [12 favorites]


This time-warps me back to age fifteen like nothing else....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:19 PM on April 12, 2020 [4 favorites]


There’s a girl that’s been on my mind
all the time.

Sususudio.

I was in High School.
posted by SoberHighland at 1:21 PM on April 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


The remixes for Don't Lose My Number and Take Me Home are totally Peak 80s Remix for entirely different reasons. Don't Lose My Number because it's really inventive while being built entirely out of original track parts, and Take Me Home for being nearly house music in its hypnotic persistence and changing patterns.

I was surprised at how well this album held up over time. the non-hit tracks are really strong, especially Inside Out. The whole thing really works. It's sort of Phil wanking about divorce yet again, but it's a great set of songs all around.
posted by hippybear at 1:22 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


also have very fond memories of the video for "don't lose my number", it's fairly inextricably linked with the song in my brain. So when I hear the song it's like there's a channel missing because there's no visual.
posted by hearthpig at 1:25 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Phil was a super sexy lad back in his early days.
posted by SoberHighland at 1:36 PM on April 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Recorded in his stu-stu-studio
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 1:45 PM on April 12, 2020 [14 favorites]


memories of the video for "don't lose my number"

Great! Great sandwich!
posted by vrakatar at 1:50 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Regarding Susudio and No Jacket Required, Collins said:

Why do you have to bring me down by asking about this one? It’s from one of my least-favorite records, No Jacket Required. I wanted to work with different people at the time, people that could do things I wasn’t capable of doing. So I got ahold of Dave Frank [from the New York synth-pop duo the System], and I said, “Do you fancy having a go at this?” And he programmed the whole song. There’s a killer horn section.

At the time, I wasn’t being me. I’ve grown up a bit now and much prefer to play songs that are me. I only play a bit part in that one.



Link
posted by SoberHighland at 1:58 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


I couldn't find the list, but if you combine his songs as a solo artist, as well as his songs with Genesis, he ranks just below Michael Jackson in total number one hits. Staggering. If anyone can conform, I'd appreciate it, but - yeah - from late 70s to early 90s, his fifteen peak was as dominate as any artist ever.
posted by Beholder at 2:01 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


I pretty much wore out the cassette tape, and Don’t Lose My Number was the song of the album for me. That, and Take Me Home. I haven’t listened to the album in years, but in my mind, if someone wants to hear “big cheesy 80s drums” Phil Collins is the man to talk to.

It feels weird to see him disliking the only album of his I ever owned, though.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:03 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


I would stay up and watch Carson on Friday nights as a young lad, and I remember Collins being on to promote this album.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:11 PM on April 12, 2020


Phil Collins’ solo efforts seem to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a narrower way, especially No Jacket Required and songs like “In the Air Tonight” and “Against All Odds” (though that song was overshadowed by the masterful movie from which it came) and “Take Me Home” and “Sussudio” (great, great song; a personal favorite) and his remake of “You Can’t Hurry Love,” which I’m not alone in thinking is better than the Supremes’ original. But I also think that Phil Collins works better within the confines of the group than as a solo artist—and I stress the word artist. In fact it applies to all three of the guys, because Genesis is still the best, most exciting band to come out of England in the 1980s. --Patrick Bateman
posted by chavenet at 2:13 PM on April 12, 2020 [6 favorites]


Bassist Leland Sklar, for his quarantine effort, has been uploading playalongs of his parts from Collins' "Not Dead Yet" tour. He doesn't seem to have made a playlist for them, but here is the first one.

(Check out the "RESIST" Dingwall!. Looks like Facebook blocked him).
posted by thelonius at 2:27 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Man, this takes me back and I haven't listened to it in years. It sat in my high-school car cassette box right next to "Reach the Beach".
posted by maxwelton at 2:30 PM on April 12, 2020


Phil Collins is one of three primary musical influences that ingrained the 80s sound permanently on my psyche. I'm sure it's a phenomenon that is unavoidable, in that we tend to gravitate towards our original musical experiences. But if you were to take all of mine and run them through a mental filter for "best of class," Phil Collins would be at the top with a whole bunch of his songs from the era. Man, I'm listening to this album now, and it takes me right back to our local outdoor swimming pool with the hot cement and the boom box blaring, anticipating the pizza across the street when we're done swimming in a deeply air conditioned restaurant, Frogger in the little arcade area, and the drug store next door to get Laughy Taffy for the walk home. And the clarity of these memories surfaces unbidden just by listening to this particular music. So interesting how the texture of our inner life works and is connected to things like music.
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:33 PM on April 12, 2020 [10 favorites]


he ranks just below Michael Jackson in total number one hits. Staggering.

Except that he also played on Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" and John Cale's "Helen of Troy", as well as a jaw-dropping number and variety of albums at the same time he was reliably cranking out MOR hits. An off-the-cuff take on Phil Collins is actually a pretty good barometer of how deep into the weeds a person's musical knowledge goes.

Which, of course, can be both good and bad, depending on your specific conversational requirements.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:38 PM on April 12, 2020 [6 favorites]


These three things happened in this order:

1. I saw him on the tour for this album in June of 1985. At the end of the show, after "Take Me Home", the cameras for the big screens to either side of the stage were pointed at the waxing and nearly full moon. The show was pretty good but that date was a big emotional landmark for me because I acted like a twit that day and managed to pretty much destroy a deeply-felt friendship with someone I attended with.

2. Around 2000, I read Calendar by David Ewing Duncan, about the history of human attempts to make a decent calendar; it has long been frustrated by the fact that a lunar cycle and a solar cycle do not mesh well (i.e. there are twelve and a bit lunar cycles in a year). Some calendars seize onto the metonic cycle: there are almost precisely 235 lunar months in a span of 19 years.

3. In June 2004 I was living on the Atlantic shore. On my way home from work one evening during a clear and pleasant night, I looked up and noticed the waxing and nearly full moon. I was almost certainly the only person in Halifax who saw it and thought, "Huh. Metonic cycle. I know where I was 235 months ago."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:55 PM on April 12, 2020 [13 favorites]


Except that he also played on Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy"

Also Another Green World and Before and After Science, at least. But Eno kind of gathered up a supergroup of 70s prog rock guys for those albums, since they also have Robert Fripp, and Phil Manzanera whom he'd worked with in Roxy Music.
posted by LionIndex at 2:56 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh jeez, hearing "Long Long Way to Go" just sent me back to my parents' garage, vacuuming out their station wagon...
posted by notsnot at 3:05 PM on April 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is the soundtrack to grade school, floating around the huge velour backseat of my parents’ Oldsmobile.

And hey thelonius: I apotted Lee Sklar in the Sussudio video, still looking like Bass Gandalf.
posted by gnutron at 3:20 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


'85 was quite the hype for me as in February I got accepted into a decent big-city school w/ enough scholarships to not have to worry so much about $$$ (tuition was "only" $3000/yr in today's money but room & board was ~30 hrs/week of work @ $5/hr!).

My life had such a pleasant arc that year I'd be sorely tempted to spend forever in it a la "San Junipero" . . . every song of that year was bound up with the new experiences I was having as a newly-minted independent individual!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:21 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


I was also going to post about Sklar as I recently viewed this on YT, and while my musical knowledge ends at the difference between a third and a fifth interval, I can tell Lee knows how to lay down a line!

My interest in Sklar started earlier this year seeing him on a yt Toto binge and wondering what his story was : )
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:27 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


when the 1980s began, Phil Collins had yet to release a solo album and I still had cautiously high hopes for the band known as Genesis.

by 1985, I was way more into the likes of The Minutemen, Prince, The Pogues, Husker Du and the Butthole Surfers. Shit happens. People change.
posted by philip-random at 3:39 PM on April 12, 2020 [4 favorites]


hippybear: "1985 was a ridiculously strong year for music releases, and we're far behind with celebrating releases. "

Being stuck at home has left me with a lot of extra time to kill. Just made a birthday mix for a friend who was born in 1985, and decided to use only some of my favorites from that year. This seems like a good place to share the playlist. No Phil Collins, however.

01 Alanis Obomsawin - Of The Earth And Of The Sea
02 Felt - Textile Ranch
03 Giant Sand - Down On Town (Love's No Answer)
04 Butthole Surfers - Concubine
05 Camper Van Beethoven - 9 Of Disks
06 Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On
07 Lime Spiders - Save My Soul
08 Coil - Neither His Nor Yours
09 Robyn Hitchcock - My Wife & My Dead Wife
10 Hüsker Dü - Powerline
11 Thin White Rope - Dead Grammas On A Train
12 Lè Travo - Amarcord
13 The Fall - My New House
14 Love & Rockets - The Dog-End Of A Day Gone By
15 Frank Zappa - I Don't Even Care
16 Meat Puppets - Maiden's Milk
17 Chris Isaak - Western Stars
18 Cocteau Twins - Rococo
19 Plan 9 - I'm Gone
20 Tom Waits - Jockey Full Of Bourbon
21 Crispy Ambulance - Four Minutes From The Frontline
22 Peter Gabriel - Slow Marimbas
23 Plasticland - No Shine For The Shoes
24 Echo & The Bunnymen - Never Stop
25 Nico - Camera Obscura
26 Yeah Yeah Noh - Stealing In The Name Of The Lord
27 The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
28 Kate Bush - Waking The Witch
29 The Jesus & Mary Chain - Taste The Floor
30 R.E.M. - Driver 8
31 Eno Mœbius Roedelius Plank - Broken Head
32 The Dukes Of Stratosphear - What In The World??...
33 The Nomads - Nitroglycerine Shrieks
posted by talking leaf at 4:04 PM on April 12, 2020 [9 favorites]


Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.
posted by biffa at 4:06 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


I feel like I am being trolled by everyone in this post.
posted by srboisvert at 4:34 PM on April 12, 2020 [12 favorites]


Phil Collins' solo efforts seem to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a narrower way, especially No Jacket Required and songs like "In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds" (though that song was overshadowed by the masterful movie from which it came) and "Take Me Home" and Sussudio" (great, great song; a personal favorite) and his remake of "You Can't Hurry Love," which I'm not alone in thinking is better than the Supreme's original. - Patrick Bateman (from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis)
posted by Lanark at 4:59 PM on April 12, 2020


I always had an indie snob distaste for Phil Collins. Then one day I heard a song on the radio and I realized the sheer number of memorable songs he’d released. I read some stuff about him, and came across an interview where he addressed the backlash by saying something like “I just recorded the songs; I wasn’t the one who played them twenty billion times on the radio”. And... that logic is hard to argue with. I’ve respected him ever since.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:38 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


He has a few songs that just floor me. In The Air Tonight and Take Me Home in particular. They just send me to another place. I don't have words for it. Not a fan otherwise but dang, those songs are something else.
posted by treepour at 5:44 PM on April 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Pretty sure this album and Invisible Touch were two of my 11 Columbia House picks.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2020 [11 favorites]


When "Sussudio" came out as a single and turned into a smash hit, David Letterman would make a joke about the title almost every night in his monologue for what felt like forever. Finally, he had Collins on the show, and one of his first questions was "What about this Su-Su-Sudio song? Where did you get that?" And, without a moment's hesitation, Collins replied "W-w-well, D-d-dave...." It's one of my favorite Letterman moments.
posted by briank at 6:22 PM on April 12, 2020 [3 favorites]




damn how old are y'all
posted by Bwentman at 7:40 PM on April 12, 2020




When "Sussudio" came out as a single and turned into a smash hit, David Letterman would make a joke about the title almost every night in his monologue

I seem to recall an aside to Paul Schaffer to the effect that to record a follow-up, Phil Collins was going back into the stu-stu-studio.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:55 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh wow, this came out when I was in 6th grade. I remember listening to “One More Night” and “We Said Hello Goodbye” while daydreaming about the boys I had crushes on but was too chicken to actually do anything about.
posted by SisterHavana at 12:01 AM on April 13, 2020


A Phil Collins thread and no link to the Easy Lover music video with Philip Bailey? I have fixed that.
posted by gen at 12:46 AM on April 13, 2020 [2 favorites]


Well, it's not a Phil Collins thread. It's a "No Jacket Required" thread, and "Easy Lover" wasn't part of that album.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:56 AM on April 13, 2020 [1 favorite]




I always thought it was cool that Sting sang backup vocals on "Long Long Way to Go"
posted by Clustercuss at 1:36 PM on April 13, 2020


If you're defending Sussudio here, it's guns at ten paces.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 9:20 AM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Maybe it's just okay that people like different things.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:48 AM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


My favorite 80s Letterman joke was Dave telling Paul (at the height of Collins' recording / producing career): "I-I-I don't hear enough Phil Collins on the radio."
posted by Dirjy at 12:15 AM on April 16, 2020


In 1985 I was a sophomore in high school in the jazz band - trumpets reprazent. We played at basketball games mostly and that season we played Sussudio. I always thought of it as cheesy 80s pop but No Jacket Required was on my perpetual playlist junior and senior year.

Watching the video now it's good. I found very few brass players in pop back then and I always appreciated them.
posted by bendy at 1:20 AM on April 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


I think it was during the sessions for Duke with Genesis that Collins really discovered using brass in the music. One of the songs from that session was Paperlate (released on the fourth side of Three Sides Live), and then after his retro album Hello I Must Be Going, he was full in with the horn section.

Interestingly his song with Phillip Bailey (of Earth Wind And Fire, linked above) doesn't really include a horn section.
posted by hippybear at 12:20 PM on April 17, 2020


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