What a couple of weeks it’s been since I took a short break from B&V. We sadly lost Tina Turner and John Mellencamp released two great protest songs… but then I’ve always loved Protest Songs. Here at B&V the wife has gone on the lamb with her daughter for a “girls weekend.” Or as I like to refer to it, Thelma & Louise Ride Again. In the old days, when the Rock Chick left me all alone, she would typically return to find me buried under empty bourbon bottles, my face smeared with peanut butter, watching old concert videos and quite possibly weeping. This trip, she left me a list of things I had to do in her stead while she was gone. Who knew plants needed watering? The cat needs to be fed… can’t he forage? Truthfully, I never realized how busy the Rock Chick was around here…perhaps she’s due a raise? Instead of partying like I just got out of jail this weekend, I’m just busy filling in for her. I will say, she at least left some food in the house this time… Anyway, I may sneak off to the Used Record store tomorrow… fingers crossed.
As I was standing in my front yard watering plants in my bathrobe the other morning, I had my trusty ear buds in and was shuffling through a vast variety of tunes. I heard the classic 80s track by Phil Collins, “In The Air Tonight.” It’s got perhaps the greatest entry of the drums on a song this side of “Stairway To Heaven.” I have to say it stirred up quite a few memories for me. I can remember back in the old days, when I was a working stiff mowing lawns as my summer job and riding around in my cohort Brewster’s car cranking that tune. He had a powder blue Grand Prix (I think, the Rock Chick is the “car guy” in this family) with a white leather(?) roof. Brewster had commandeered the car from his parents and as he was a very enterprising young man, he earned the bread to install one of the best car stereos I’ve ever heard… Of course that memory may be fueled by beer and Mickey’s Big Mouths. I can remember driving from house to house on the lawn mowing gig, windows down and hearing those drums kick in… it was like being resuscitated with a defibrillator. We all loved “In The Air Tonight.” It wasn’t until years later when I was perhaps in college that I began to hear the story that there was some sinister shit behind that song…
Perhaps some context is in order. Phil Collins joined Genesis in the late 60s as the drummer. Genesis was famously fronted by costume-wearing lead singer Peter Gabriel. Now in those days, from the late 60s to the mid 70s, Genesis was a prog band. Worse yet they were an art rock band. Hence, Gabriel’s reverse Mohawk hair cut – bald in the middle, hair on the sides. At one point he performed concerts dressed as…a flower. They beat you up for that now in Florida… I think they were popular in the U.K., but not so much in America. I mean, I never heard anybody humming “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in the halls of my junior high. Despite this lack of commercial success, when Gabriel split everyone predicted dire things for the rest of the guys in Genesis. Many of the rock intelligentsia believed Collins, Steve Hackett (guitar), Mike Rutherford (bass) and Tony Banks (keyboards) would end up like the guys in the Police, not named Sting.
Genesis searched for a lead singer but realized they had the guy they needed sitting behind them on the drums. Phil Collins became the drummer-slash-lead singer (drummer/lead singer). After two really solid LPs, guitarist Steve Hackett departed for a solo career. Later he formed a band with Yes guitarist Steve Howe named subtly, GTR. At that point, Genesis, reduced to just Collins/Rutherford/Banks recorded the album …And Then There Were Three, a perfect title. They even had a hit in “Follow You Follow Me.” They’d been working their ass off for years and it started to pay off. They were determined to head out on the road and chase the success that had eluded them. At that very point Collins’ wife decides he’s been gone too much and splits to Canada. Actually she gave him a choice – Genesis or your family. He went on tour.
Stunned and depressed by his divorce Collins began to write very personal, intimate songs. Some were used by the band, like “Misunderstanding,” but some didn’t make the Genesis cut. As a form of, I don’t know, therapy, he began recording the songs himself. He had the music for “In The Air Tonight” but didn’t have lyrics so he did what so many great rock songwriters do, he improvised and just sang the first things that popped into his head. He was hurt and depressed and angry… so the lyrics sort of reflect that vibe. I never gave it much thought, I just liked the song.
A few years after that summer of mowing lawns and cranking “In The Air Tonight,” I began to hear those aforementioned sinister stories. Collins sings, among other things, “if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand.” He also sings, “I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes. So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been, It’s all been a pack of lies…” The story began to circulate – nay, the urban legend began to circulate that Collins had witnessed a murder. Apparently some person out there had drowned a person, or had failed to help a person who was drowning. Collins, too far away to help the victim, watched helplessly from afar. But, apparently Collins knew the negligent person and sent him concert tickets. And the guy came to the show and Collins was supposed to have confronted him from the stage and then launched into the song. Very dramatic stuff, indeed. It sounds like an episode of Law and Order, torn from the headlines! I certainly hope the authorities were notified and were standing by… sigh.
On it’s face this story is preposterous. Collins has completely denied all of this, publicly. Why wouldn’t Collins have called the cops when it happened? Why send the guy concert tickets, that seems like a bit of a reward? I mean, Collins was big, so was Genesis. What would the point be? And yet, the rumor persists…
Now, if you lived in Kansas City, the story was slightly different. I had the original vinyl album of Face Value. I think I sold it at the Used Record Store when the Collins backlash hit in the 90s. If you’re as big as Phil was, backlash is bound to happen. Anyway, on the original vinyl album, amongst the liner notes was the instruction: Send all fan mail to… an address in Overland Park, Kansas which is a suburb of K.C. The urban legend about “In The Air Tonight” morphed in KC, there was a local twist. Collins didn’t confront the guy at a concert. No, no, Phil was just allegedly sending all his fan mail to the guy who drowned someone, like you do when you’ve witnessed a murder. The culprit supposedly knew Phil witnessed the murder and sending his fan mail to his address, now in KC, was Phil’s way of letting him know he knew? I guess?
Utterly preposterous, right? Perhaps, in the cold light of day, I could see how that would all be crazy. However, that didn’t stop me and one of my friends, Steve – half the people I knew in high school were named Steve, which may be proof I grew up in the suburbs – from getting in the car to go find the culprit’s house. This was before GPS and Google maps. We just had to figure it out using street numbers and addresses. We grabbed some beer and set off to… I don’t know, find the killer?
After meandering around the southern part of our neighborhood… if we’d gone any farther south we’d have been in farmland… the city really has grown a lot since then… we realized that the address was in an office park known as Corporate Woods. We had the temerity to enter the building and on the register of businesses, we realized it was a PR firm. How an Overland Park, Kansas based PR firm was hooked up with British drummer/lead singer Phil Collins is an almost more sinister mystery than the drowning stuff… but I digress. I couldn’t have felt stupider at the time… and truth be told, I feel kind of stupid even now.
So take it from me folks, there is no killer hiding in Corporate Woods being hectored by Phil Collins. I know this from my own arch investigative efforts… this case… is closed. Keith Morrison has nothing on me…
Cheers to all of you internet sleuths out there!