“I’ve been sick, I mean very sick,” Phil Collins said last year in an interview with MOJO magazine. Now, the Grammy winner is offering details about that illness, especially about his battle with alcohol.
Collins has been open about his medical struggles in recent years, previously revealing that he suffers from Type 2 diabetes and complications from a 2007 spinal injury. In January, the former Genesis drummer noted he was under 24-hour care and has also said that he could no longer hold his drum sticks properly without feeling pain, even taping his sticks to his hands to get through later gigs. He also experienced kidney issues and underwent five operations on his knee.
Those kidney issues, it seems, were related to his abuse of alcohol.
In a new interview with the Sunday Times, Collins detailed just how bad it got.
“My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up,” Collins said of being admitted to the hospital in late 2023, about a year after his last tour with Genesis. “People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming. I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”
The Oscar winner had previously said he “spent months in the hospital.”
Now, he has revealed that he almost didn’t make it out.
“There were some decisions to be made about, ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing,” he said. “I was very lucky to have come out of that,” said Collins. “Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since.”
Collins is set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist on Nov. 14 at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater. He was previously inducted as a member of Genesis.
