who is better: paul mccartney or phil collins?

i LOVE BOTH OF MY CHILDREN EQUALLY

Hi intertonic here, I’ve just joined and WLTM stimulating intermittent discussion that is uncompromising and forceful, but civil. I want to give the whole world a hug and am looking forward to the future. xxx

Here goes. I think both Macca and Collins are great. I own almost all that they have recorded solo and much of what they recorded in groups. There need not be mud slinging between the two, they have performed together and I am sure that they have a mutual respect for each others songwriting craft; after all they did record together on Paul McCartney/Press to Play (1986). (He also drummed on George Harrisons All things Must PAss Sessions). Furthermore, they are both accomplished multi-instrumentalists, although I will concede that Maccas all rounding skills are superior. They have both done collaborations with, supported and employed black musicians, which in a white executive-down industry contributes small but practical and real change for black musicians signed and unsigned. I think it is far more important to note this over the regrettable rhetoric uttered by Mssr Collins. FYI Collins is a major donor and patron of the very worthy NGO Medical Foundation For the Victims of Torture http://www.torturecare.org.uk
Remember human beings are full of contradictions and are multifaceted.

On the issue of ownership over the gate/snares/no cymbals sound, my recollection is that this was devised in tandem when Collins was drafted in on Peter Gabriel/Peter Gabriel 3 (1980) to work pro bono on the album while Gabriel was in financial straits having ploughed much of his wealth into the then ill-fated WOMAD project. I think that if you listen to Collins and Gabriel before and after you can see that this sound would most probably have organically grown from their familiarity with each others styles and music, and persistent use and experimentation with drum and more generally studio sounds.

On Prince, I think I would be write in saying that Sign of the Times was the last record breaking multi-million selling album at what was then an unusually high retail price. The fact that it is in the top ten of top selling double albums and I think only one of two by a solo artist (all written, performed recorded by the purple one man himself) is phenomenal, I also believe it is brilliant track for track. With all respect I do wonder whether some of those commenting have heard it in its entirety or rely on friends cherry picking tracks on a late night in.

To avoid replication here are some of my not-so-obvious favorites:

Macca: Big Barn Bed, Magneto and Titanium Man, Put it There, This One, My Love, Arrow through me, We all stand together, Temporary Secretary, Let Me Roll It, My Brave Face, Waterfalls, Girlfriend, Wanderlust, Silly love Songs (new version off GMRB), Rock Show, Helen Wheels, The Man

Prince: Scandalous, Nothing Compares to You, Pop Life; Never take the place of your Man; I Wanna be your Lover, Uptown, Dolphin, Darling Nikki, Dance On, Mountains, Endorphinmachine, Let's Pretend We're Married, The Beautiful Ones, Strollin

Phil Collins:
Vocals: Like China, Don’t let him steal Your Heart Away, You'll Be In My Heart, Don’t you lose my number, Doesn't Anybody Stay Together Anymore, Find A Way To My Heart, Doesn’t Matter to Me, Hand in Hand, Droned, And he totally Collins’s the Beatle’s Tomorrow Never Knows!

Drums: Woman in Chains (Tears for Fears), Feed the World (Band Aid), Bad Love (Eric Clapton), Burn Down the Mission (Elton John-Two Rooms), Easy Lover (Philip Bailey), and Brand X. If interested in as-live low studio tinkered production drumming I would suggest listening to the three consecutive post Gabriel albums - Trick of a Tail, Wind and Wuthering, and Then there Were Three. and any Brand X.

Be well.
intertoni
 
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Chef Napalm

Lost in the Supermarket
Yeah, I soulseeked... soulsought... that Kelis version of "I Don't Care Anymore" last night. Haven't heard it yet, but I am looking forward to it.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Bah, when I was getting excited I didn't consider it was verse-on-Mariah-Carey-tune era rather than Shimmy-Ya era ODB.
 

Vietgrove

Godbluff
Wow what a thread.

It's really hard for me to pick Phil Collins out from Genesis. Their music is some of my favourite music ever, and I think they were probably one of the 3 best rock bands to come out of the UK. For years, I used to think of Phil Collins in the most snotty way - as an old-style Genesis fan, naturally I saw him as being responsible for "ruining" Genesis (actually a lot of the pop-Genesis stuff sounds OK to me now, plus looking back at it all in retrospect, Tony Banks must surely have been the "guilty" party there) Plus, a lot of those solo singles were and I think still are awfully cheesy. Plus, he dumped his wife via fax. That's pretty repellent.

On the plus side, his first solo album is pretty good in places. "In The Air Tonight" is good, as mentioned above. The gated reverb snares and toms were a cliche of eighties record production, and got really annoying at the time, but now they're just one kind of production gimmick among many, I think they've gone beyond being dated. They sound really good on this record.

His drumming, I think, cannot be praised enough. He was, in his time, an outstanding drummer, as good as anybody out there. He was/is able to push forward and pull back the "feel" of his drumming on a piece of music in an incredible way. He kind of plays around the beat, rather than on the beat. He can make a piece sound like it's speeding up or slowing down w/o actually altering the tempo. His fills are awesome. even at his worst, when for some reason he decided to try an morph into a kind of bonham-lite in the late-seventies, he never plodded, the feel of his drumming remained snappy. blah blah, you get the picture, maybe.

Brand X were kind of fusiony going-on Canterbury music style. I think they were what you'd call a musician's band, perhaps?

In recent years I've stopped thinking of Collins as this icon of '80's vileness, and if I think about him these days, I just think of him as being this great drummer, you know?

I don't much like anything McCartney has done except for one of his early solo albums, I forget which - McCartney 2 perhaps? bits of the Beatles, bits of Wings I like. I can't think of anything I'd really want to buy, but at the same time, I can't think of anything I'd rush to turn off if it came on the radio. OK, "Temporary Secretary" maybe. That's horrible.

Also to be taken into consideration, perhaps. Collins seems to have dropped off the map. the last thing I remember reading about him, he'd played a guest spot on this Canadian Gabriel-era Genesis tribute bands' gig in Switzerland. He put up a fairly humble post on his website, saying that he was amazed at how shit he was now, compared with the way he played in the '70's. He's not in your face like he used to be, you hardly ever read about him.

On the other hand, McCartney was all over the radio like a rash recently. He was really annoying in some kind of hard-to-define way. I kept wanting the radio presenters to say "look, shut the fuck up, we've heard this all befor e a thousand times."

Phil Collins = easy victory. He's either great or horrible. McCartney is boring.
 
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massrock

Well-known member
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This thread is well worth bumping I think...
 

craner

Beast of Burden
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Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Wow, up until this thread had been bumped I was not aware of Paul McCartney's Frog Chorus. It is incredible that somehow Rupert Bear comes away looking better in that video. Can't stand either Collins or McCartney. Utter shite.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Paul has a great Xmas song. Even Lennon couldn't pull that off (Actually, Lennon could, but he was too busy being the 'Libra Working Class Hero' to write a good song, and instead, made some dumb anti-war protest with screeching kids. Fuck you sir, Xmas is about bliss, ignorance, and joy. I'm pretty sure "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" led to "Do They Know It's Christmas".)

I'm just saying, did Phil Collins make a good Xmas song? No. Technically though, this puts George Micheal over both of them.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
You star! You mentioned this because of me, I'm sure. I love this video. I went on about it in another Macca thread. Here we are, the party's on, the feeling's here:

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Ding Dong!
 
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