Phil Collins has discussed his ongoing health struggles in a new interview for BBC Radio 2's podcast Eras.
Speaking with host Zoe Ball, the singer-songwriter took the opportunity to update fans on his health, following rumours that circulated online last year speculating that his health was so poor he was placed under hospice care. His representatives were forced to debunk the claim, and announce that he had been hospitalized for knee surgery.
Collins, however, did confirm to Ball that he does require daily care, saying, “You know, I have a 24-hour live-in nurse to make sure I take my medication as I should do. I’ve had challenges with my knee… I had everything that could go wrong with me, did go wrong with me.”
His knee has long affected his ability to not only walk, but also perform. Collins' final concert was back in March 2022 with Genesis, where he was forced to perform seated.
“I had five operations on my knee now — I’ve got a knee that works and I can walk, albeit with assistance, you know, crutches or whatever," he explained.
Collins admitted that alcohol also contributed to his health woes, including his knee trouble, saying, "I’d probably been drinking too much, and so my kidneys were messed up, you know. I enjoyed coming off tour, coming off the road, but I thought, right, I’m gonna do all those things that I couldn’t do. I wasn’t one of those guys that sort of stayed up all night drinking, I’d drink during the day, but I guess I had too much of it. I was never drunk, although I fell over a couple of times. But, it is just one of those things that happened and it all caught up with me and I spent months in hospital.”
He added that contracting COVID-19 also compounded the issue. "I got COVID in hospital — my kidneys started to back up, you know, everything that started that could, all seemed to converge at the same time.”
Despite everything, Collins said he still hopes he can get back to making music in the not-so-distant future.
“The things that are ahead for me would be, apart from just being back to being totally mobile and healthy, is go in there and have a fiddle about and see if there’s more music ’cause you know, you tend to sort of feel, ‘That’s it, I’ve done that,’" he said. "But you’ve gotta start doing it to see if you can do it. Otherwise you don’t do it. So that is something on my horizon. I’ve got some things that are half formed or were never finished, and a couple of things that were finished, which I like, so you know, maybe life in the old dog.”
The interview will be a part of a TV special celebrating his 75th birthday. Phil Collins Eras: In Conversation will air on BBC Two in the UK on January 31. The first episode of the five-part Eras podcast can be streamed here.