Phil Collins - His Part In My Downfall

Some are damned and some are unconditionally elected - and those happily of the latter can do anything they want and get away with it ... steep themselves in sin, walk among the afflicted, sink as low as they wish and come out the other end smelling of roses. When one is in a state of Grace, the book is already written.
University, circa 1994 ... I had only been going out with the missus-to-be a month or two when one of those relationship-defining moments arose - while browsing through the vinyl in a charity shop, I saw a 7" sleeve graced with a picture of Tony Hancock, the lad himself. I picked it up and found, to my horror, it was a Phil Collins single, 'Something Happened On The Way To Heaven'. On reflection, I remembered I had heard the song on the radio a number of times over the years and had actually liked it ... what to do? It was 5p, if memory serves ... who could quibble?
Subsequently, I would become an object of ridicule - amongst my limited social set, which was bad enough, but worse, to my girlfriend, too. Being in possession of a Phil Collins record was a social liability somewhere beyond galloping halitosis ... people have asked me to leave their house for less.

I offered then a variety of defences, which I shall rehearse here ... not the least important being the fact that, as her beau, it was the girlfriend's duty to offer support to anything I did; loyalty is a cardinal virtue and, no matter how stupid, objectionable or downright ludicrous my actions, even in, especially in, public, it was her duty to regard my every word as Holy Writ and maintain that I could walk on water.
I appealed to no less an authority than James Joyce ... as he has Stephen Dedalus say: a man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Furthermore, Phil Collins, for all his manifest drawbacks, had, at least, graced the records of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, officially 'The Brainiest Men In Pop Music', and therefore never wrong. Look here, if it's good enough for Bob and Bri, it's good enough for me.
Further furthermore, this was not part of that spectrum of behaviour now deemed "guilty pleasures" ... despite despising Mr Collins, I genuinely liked this particular song ... something about the tune seemed quietly moving, something about the lyrics (How can something so right go so wrong? ... I'm not leaving unless you come with me) I found rather poignant. Indeed, not to buy the record (only 5p!) out of some misplaced and inverse snobbery would be hypocritical. The song itself, no matter written by a Thatcher-loving, Tory-supporting dwarf with a face like a potato, had something about it I liked. As I appealed to the jury, as a wise old man once said (it was Duke Ellington to Miles Davis, actually): "if it sounds good, it is good."
In parenthesis, the promo video for the single is a kitsch classic in its own right ... good old Phil sings, conducts the band, tickles the ivories and indulges in some 'comic' play with a lovable mutt - including sequences shot from the pooch's eye view, thus joining a small, select genre populated by the likes of The Hills Have Eyes II ... Collins goes one better than Craven by including a canine fantasy sequence and gets some low comic mileage out of someone stepping in dog shit ... how excellent is that?
But most importantly, I had impeccable avant garde credentials, right across the aesthetic board ... not just unassailable taste in literature and film, but music? I wrote the goddamned book, mate ... I had a room bursting with Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman records, I had been listening to the Velvets since I was ten years old, I listened to Metal Machine Music for pleasure, I knew my way around Krautrock, I liked Steve Reich and Terry Riley, I used to listen to Coltrane's Ascension while eating breakfast (oh no, wait a minute ... that was Lester Bangs) ... anyway, you get the picture. I knew what was what, musically speaking ... if I say it sounds good, by Jove, it must be good. I had form, credibility, great taste ... a man to be trusted, in short. And they were mocking me? Ingrates, one and all.

But we overcome, we move on ... I rested, secure in the knowledge that I knew my musical onions, and time, tide and the Rolling Stone Book Of Rock would prove me right ... and eventually the opprobrium attached to my name faded away, to be replaced by a new and hard-won respect.
Wish I still had that single, actually ...