Phil Collins

Phil Collins was born in Chiswick, West London, in 1951, and for most of the 1970s he was the drummer, the man at the back keeping time while someone else stood at the front. Face Value, in 1981, was the moment he walked to the microphone and stayed there. It is his solo debut, and it does not sound like a drummer’s record made polite. It sounds like a record made by someone with a lot he had not said.

A first marriage had just ended. That collapse is the engine of the album, the anger and the hurt of it worked out in public, song by song. He is precise about this; he does not dress it up. The man who emerges across these tracks is a writer who would rather tell you the small true thing than the grand one.

He is also, never forget, a drummer first. The way these songs are built, the patience, the held tension, the sudden release, comes from someone who thinks in terms of when to hit and when to wait. Collins did not arrive as a frontman by accident. He arrived as a rhythm player who finally had something to say, and a voice low enough to say it quietly.