A kaleidoscope

Hardly a member of a famous band was so successful as a solo artist and, at least from a certain date, such controversial and downright hateful like Phil Collins. When he in a difficult phase of life (separation from his wife) published in 1981 his very first album, which was not yet in sight.

FACE VALUE (to German: 'Apparent value') contained today's evergreen "In the Air Tonight", a piece that would not receive his colleagues of Genesis for some reason, because it 'too flat' appeared to them. Those were the days! Later they were smarter and had with similarly structured numbers like "Mama" or "No Son of Mine" big hits.

But that was not all, because never after an album by Phil Collins revealed such many different styles and musical influences from. A kaleidoscope.

There was the successful Beatles cover "Tomorrow Never Knows" (psychedelic), beautiful, deeply sad "The Roof Is Leaking" (a kind of acoustic blues folk), the proggige "Behind the Lines" (already known from the Genesis album DUKE), the enigmatic and / or playful instrumentals "Droned" and "Hand in Hand", the soul-pop hit "I Missed Again" and so on and so forth. Even then light approaches the revered Sweet Soul Music of the early Sixties and the radio could be heard, but remained still in the strong limits.

Although his later panels partly contained very beautiful pieces, FACE VALUE is still to this day my favorite Collins album. And so it goes with me as Phil Collins with his former bandmates Peter Gabriel, be the first solo album from 1977 for my taste has remained by far the most exciting.