Talking Tarzan with Phil Collins
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Friday May 12 will certainly go down as one of the most surreal days in the life of this writer. The morning began with a picturesque drive into Westchester County, NY to visit with an eight time Oscar winner (who has also received ten Grammys and seven Golden Globes) and concluded with a white knuckle race back into the City to the Peninsula to meet with a “drummer who can sing a bit�? (in his own humble words) who has sold over 100 million records worldwide (and also happens to have eight Grammys and an Oscar).
There is an old London adage that you wait ages for a bus and then two come along at once. Over the past two years of writing for Tales I have not had an opportunity to interview an Oscar winner and therefore jumped at the chance to hear Alan Menken’s new music and interview the Disney Legend in his rural studio. I scheduled the interview for Friday morning at the end of what I knew was to be a very long week covering the new Tarzan musical in New York City.
On arrival in the city at the start of the week I was amazed that Phil Collins wanted to meet as he had enjoyed the Tom Schumacher interview in the spring issue of Tales. The discussion was initially scheduled for Thursday afternoon but was later bumped to Friday. My heart sank when this news was passed to me as thoughts began to race in my head as to whether I could get back to Midtown in time. To cut a long story short I was on schedule as I attempted to travel cross-town. Big mistake. A block every five minutes was going to make me late and I couldn’t risk that. Just ahead I saw an empty parking space perfectly bathed in bright sunlight like a beacon. Instinctively I pulled into the slot, grabbed some change, pumped the meter and ran five blocks to the hotel. By hook and by crook I had made it with literally seconds to spare. I tried to catch my breath as I ascended to the Presidential suite where Phil was wrapping up a television documentary interview in his spacious home-from-home.
Phil’s association with Disney pre-dates Tarzan by several years. “Chris Montan [Walt Disney Records boss] called me in about ’92 to ask if I would record a version of If I Can’t Love Her which was a new Beauty and the Beast song for the Broadway musical,�? Phil reveals. “I agreed and Chris sent me a rough demo and the music. I listened to the music but there were so many chord changes and as I don’t read music I took the ones that I understood to help record a skeleton demo. I recorded the song as a moody In the Air Tonight sample and was pretty happy with it but when Chris heard it he called and said “You’ve cut all the good material out!�? I told him that I couldn’t read that stuff! Ultimately the project never happened as my record company intervened for the first time in my career because they sensed Disney would be a soft move for me. It really annoyed me.�?
Just two years later Chris Montan called again with a more substantial offer. Phil had grown up with Disney in his house due to his two siblings. “My sister was an ice skater in Wembley on Ice shows like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,�? Phil recalls. “In fact we even had Kenny Baker [R2D2 in the Star Wars movies] staying with us for a while as he was playing Dopey in the same show. Also my older brother was a cartoonist and his idols were the legendary Disney animators like Marc Davis, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. I remember having posters of the classic Disney movies up in our bedrooms. However it felt strange to be asked to become a member of a club that you would never have thought possible as you know the importance of the music in Disney animated movies.�?
At that time Phil had just come off of touring his Both Sides Now album for fourteen months, a marriage break-up and the move to Switzerland. The creative team of Tom Schumacher, Bonnie Arnold, Kevin Lima, Chris Buck and Chris Montan flew to Geneva to convince Phil to accept the Tarzan project. “My concern was that I couldn’t be Alan Menken or Howard Ashman. I didn’t think I had it in me to write comedy stuff,�? Phil admits. “I also didn’t feel I was orchestral enough for Disney. However they told me that they didn’t want that otherwise they would have approached their usual musicians and lyricists. Tom said ‘We want you to be you’. I still wasn’t convinced that I could pull it off so Tom suggested this young new writer called David Zippel [Hercules] who could help me.�?