Phil Collins - Farewell Tour

by Nick Coons
Sep 1, 2004

Phil Collins, one of the best drummers ever to have lived, stepped foot into Phoenix and performed a wonderful show this evening. This was only one stop on his farewell tour, though he has been performing live in Phoenix for over 30 years. Along with myself, I know a lot of people will be sad to see him give up touring on a large scale.

As you can tell, I'm a very big Phil Collins fan -- I have been for a long time. His ability to put various instruments together and have the music completely flow more so than most others is amazing.

The show starts out a little unusual. Most of his concerts begin with an instrumental from his first album called "Hand-In-Hand." But this time, he calmly walked up onto the stage, took a seat at his drum set, and simply began playing a drum solo. Next, the spotlight shines on Chester Thompson and he begins his solo. Within a minute or two, this has turned into a drum duet. The first part of this duet was a replay of the drum duet in Genesis' "The Way We Walk" tour from 1992. Shortly after that, the drumming changed to the percussion used in the "Trip Into The Light" tour of 1997. It continued on into new material, and then finally broke out into "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven."

His performance continued with various songs and a few monologues in between. This was until "In The Air Tonight." There is one thing that he does at each and every concert during this song that makes it very suspenseful. He puts on a headset to perform the song and slowly walks around the stage singing. Near the end of the song, the drums come in very loud and thunderous. Usually, just prior to this part of the song, he's walking towards his drum set, but it doesn't appear that he'll make it in time to play this very important percussion section of the song. That's where the suspense comes in. This time, his drum set was located on the bottom from right of the two-level stage, and he was in the center of the upper level, and we all knew there was no way he was going to make it. Just as this portion of the song began to approach, another drum set appears out of the ground right where he's standing.

The rest of the concert was absolutely amazing, with playing such classics as "Sussudio", "Another Day In Paradise", and Philip Bailey's "Easy Lover." After over two hours of solid music, he finally closed with "Take Me Home."

So what does this have to do with Arizona

Arizona	(air-i'-ZON-u')
The State of Arizona comprises the extreme south-western portion of the United States. It is bounded on the north by Utah, on the east by New Mexico, on the south by Mexico, and on the west by California and Nevada.

, you may be asking yourself? Well, Phil Collins decided to make Phoenix one of his final destinations. And for this hardcore Phil Collins fan, that's enough of a connection to be able to post it on the site.