Rock's 'Mr. Nice Guy'

Today in Music History: December 23, 1989

The glitz, the glamor, the lights, the speakers blasting, the fans, the screaming—all part of the action! It comes. It goes. On stage and off stage. The flashiness and high powered special effects captivate audiences from beginning to end while performers try to outperform anyone before and after. The beat goes on and then, the weariness sets in. The die is cast 'til time to move on.

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 Phil Collins Pictures & Photos

Phil Collins: one of the most successful musicians in the world during the 1980s, releasing thirteen U.S. Top Ten hits between 1984 and 1990

Phil Collins is one of only three recording artists (along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) to have sold over 100 million albums globally both as part of a band and solo. From an early age, he showed a preference for the stage and music. Collins was given a toy drum kit for Christmas when he was five. Later, his uncle Mark Wade made him a makeshift one that he used regularly. As Collins grew older these were followed by more complete sets bought by his parents. He practiced by playing alongside the television and radio, and never learned to read and write conventional musical notation; instead, he uses a system he devised himself. Collins' professional career began as a drummer, first with obscure rock group Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis. Phil Collins became one of the most loved and then most unfairly and inexplicably vilified men in rock & roll. Read the story HERE...

Collins really is 'Mr. Nice Guy', and his recollections of his younger years as a rock star reflect that. He was never a big drinker, never a big dope smoker, has never taken LSD. The closest he came to destroying a hotel room was with his jazz-fusion side band Brand X, when some of the guys Super-Glued the phone handset to the receiver. "I didn't do it, but I felt terrible about it. The maid was going to get blamed. I always felt sorry for the maids." OK, but has he ever slept with a groupie? "No." Ever had a three-way? "Nope, I was never offered that piece of cake," he says. "It is an ambition of mine, though. I've got a few ambitions left, and that might be one of them." He smiles. "I wouldn't mind." [Source: Rolling Stone]

1989 Phil Collins started a four week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Another Day In Paradise', his 7th US solo No.1 Taken from his No.1 album ...But Seriously 'Another Day in Paradise' was written to bring attention to the problem of homelessness.

And the music goes on beating to the rhythm of the changing times...