Phil Collins Gives Rare Health Update After Losing Ability to Play Drums

Legendary musician Phil Collins has opened up about the emotional impact of being unable to play drums, revealing the physical toll that decades of performing has taken on his body. In a new documentary, Phil Collins: Drummer First, released Dec. 18, the Oscar-winning artist reflected on his forced retirement from drumming in 2022. “It’s still kind of sinking in a bit,” Collins shared in the film (via Good Morning America), which was shot in October 2022. “I’m 71, I’ve spent all my life playing drums. To suddenly not be able to do that is a shock.”

“The drumming has taken a toll on my hands, legs,” Collins explained before adding, “If I can’t do what I did as well as I did it, I’d rather relax and not do anything. If I wake up one day and I can hold a pair of drumsticks, then I’ll have a crack at it. But I just feel like I’ve used up my air miles.”

His son Nic Collins, who took over drumming duties during Genesis’s final “Last Domino?” tour, provided insight into his father’s health challenges. “I think it all stems down to playing drums and the issues that he’s had with his back,” Nic explained. “He had back problems throughout the years and that goes hand in hand with just getting older. But I think he had a big surgery on his neck that stemmed from all those years playing drums and just bad posture and stuff, which caused him to have drop foot.”

The younger Collins revealed that his father developed foot drop syndrome following neck surgery, a condition that the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke describes as the “inability to raise the front part of the foot due to weakness or paralysis of the muscles that lift the foot.” As a result, those affected “may scuff their toes along the ground or bend their knees to lift their foot higher than usual to avoid the scuffing.”

The condition has significantly impacted Collins’s mobility, requiring him to use a cane. Nic noted that his father “doesn’t have that control that he used to anymore” and “wishes he could sit behind a kit and play the way he could.”

Learning from his father’s experience, Nic has taken precautions with his own drumming setup. “He was great at playing drums and that worked [for him], and that setup was great and he could everything he could do, and I don’t think he was necessarily thinking about, ‘Oh, this is going to take a toll on my back in the long run,’” he reflected.

Despite the challenges, Collins found joy in performing alongside his son during Genesis’s farewell tour. “Sometimes things feel very different when you’re playing it as opposed to when you’re singing with it or when you’re listening to it so I’m so pleased that we did it,” Collins shared. “There were never any rough moments. There was never any doubts — it just went ridiculously smoothly. It was something that I wouldn’t have altered for the world.”

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The band’s final London concert was attended by Collins’s daughter, Emily in Paris star Lily Collins, who paid tribute to her father and brother on Instagram: “To have witnessed this last show was truly the memory of a lifetime and an event I shall hold in my heart forever. Endlessly grateful doesn’t begin to do it justice.” She added, “Thank you dad for being such an inspiration, and thank you @nic_collins for making me the proudest sister there is.”