Phil Collins - Not Dead Yet: The Memoir

I cant hear a thing.

Much as I try to shake free the blockage, my right ear is unyielding. I attempt a little rummage with a cotton swab. I know this is never advisedthe eardrum is sensitive, especially if its been subjected to a lifetime of drumming.

But Im desperate. My right ear is kaput. And its my good ear, my left having been dicky for a decade. Is this it? Has music, at last, done me in? Am I finally deaf?

Picture the scene (and readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now): Im in the shower. Its March 2016 and Im at home in Miami. This is the morning of a very special gigmy first time onstage in years and, more importantly still, my first proper public performance with one of my sons, fourteen-year-old Nicholas.

The kid will be drumming, the old man will be singing. Thats the plan anyway.

To rewind a little: 2014 saw the launch of Little Dreams USA, the American wing of the charity that my ex-wife Orianne and I founded in Switzerland in 2000. Little Dreams helps children with tuition, coaching and guidance in the fields of music, the arts and sport.

To get things rolling in the U.S., and to raise some cash, we had long planned a gala concert for December 2014. But in the interim Id endured a pile-up of health issues. Come the day of the show, I wasnt physically up to singing.

I had to call Orianne, mother of Nic and his brother Mathew, whod just turned ten, and tell her that my voice was gone and that I couldnt perform. I didnt tell her that my confidence was gone, too: theres only so much bad news you can put in one phone call to your ex-wife. Particularly, maybe, when shes your third ex-wife.

Sixteen months later, I have some making up to do. But 2016 feels like not only a new year but a new meIm ready for this gig. Im not ready to play a full show, though, so we need a cast of supporting artists.

But even with that musical help, I realize that this show is mostly going to be down tome. This is a scenario familiar from forty years of back-to-back touring and three decades of one-after-the-other Genesis and solo albums: Im being written back into a script thats not entirely of my own making. But I cant bail again. Not if I want to live to see my sixty-sixth birthday.

Some long-standing musician compadres join me for rehearsals in Miami, as does Nic. He knows were going to do In the Air Tonight, but once its clear just how good a drummer hes become, I throw some more songs into the mix: Take Me Home, Easy Lover and Against All Odds.

The rehearsals are great; Nic has really done his homework. More than thathes better than I was at his age. As with all my children, Im bursting with paternal pride.

Reassuringly for me, too, this time my voice feels and sounds strong. At one point guitarist Daryl Stuermer, a wingman of many years standing, says, Can I have some vocals in the monitor? Thats a good signnobody wants the singer in the monitor when hes sounding crap.

The following morning, the day of the gala concert, Im in the shower. Thats when the ear goes. And if I cant hear, I certainly cant sing.

I call the secretary of one of the many Miami medical experts that I by now have on speed-dial. An hour later Im at a surgery, a hearing specialist applying his mining-grade suction apparatus to both ears. Instant relief. Not deaf yet.

Onstage that night at the Jackie Gleason Theater we play Another Day in Paradise, Against All Odds, In the Air Tonight, Easy Lover and Take Me Home. Nic, whose appearance onstage after the opening number gets a big whoop from the crowd, handles all of this brilliantly.

Its a wild success, way betterand way more funthan I thought it would be. Post-show, I end up alone in the dressing room. I sit there, soaking it all in, remembering the applause, thinking, Ive missed that. And, Yeah, Nic is really good. Really, really good.

The feeling of a gig well done is not a sensation I ever expected to have again. When I retired from solo touring in 2005, from Genesis in 2007 and from my recording career in 2010, I was convinced that was it. By then Id been at itplaying, writing, performing, entertainingfor half a century. Music had brought me more than I could ever have imagined, but it had also taken more from me than I could ever have feared. I was done.

And yet, here in Miami in March 2016, I find it doing the opposite of what its done for years. Instead of separating me from my kids, from Simon, Nic and Matt and their sisters Joely and Lily, music is connecting me with them.

If ever anything is going to blow off the cobwebs, its playing with your children. A billion-dollar-payday offer to re-form Genesis wouldnt get me back on the road. A chance to perform with my boy might.