Phil Collins’ biggest heartbreak didn’t happen onstage.
The music icon revealed the emotional goodbye he shared with his children in 2024 while facing life-threatening health struggles and alcoholism, unsure if he would make it home. Collins’ manager called up the singer’s five children — Lily, Joely, Simon, Nicolas and Matthew — while he lay unconscious in a Swiss hospital.
“Because there were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing,” he told The Sunday Times.
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“My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up,” Collins explained. “People were coming to say goodbye.”
While Collins has little memory of those harrowing days, his children carried the weight of believing they could be saying their final goodbyes.
“But I don’t remember them coming,” he admitted. “I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”
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Surviving the ordeal prompted Collins to make a life-changing decision about his drinking.
“I was very lucky to have come out of that,” Collins told the publication, adding, “Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since.”
Months later, Collins spent time reconnecting with his kids after surviving the frightening brush with death. Lily “was sitting beside me in tears, saying, ‘I never thought I’d get these moments,'” he recalled.
“We had an incredible time,” he added. “I can’t overemphasize how fantastic it was.”
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His health issues didn’t disappear. Collins revealed it’s an “ongoing thing” during an appearance on the BBC podcast “Eras” earlier this year.
“I have a 24-hour, live-in nurse to make sure I take my medication as I should do,” he explained. “I’ve had challenges with my knee. I had everything that could go wrong with me, did go wrong with me.”
Collins has long been candid about the personal battles that accompanied his declining health, including his yearslong struggle with alcoholism.
He built a Hall of Fame career as both the drummer and later lead singer of Genesis before becoming a global solo superstar in the 1980s.
As a solo artist, he sold more than 100 million records worldwide with hits including “In the Air Tonight,” “Against All Odds,” “Sussudio,” “One More Night” and “Another Day in Paradise.”
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Collins wrote about his struggle with alcoholism in his 2016 autobiography, “Not Dead Yet.”
“Night after night I find myself lying on the bed, staring out of a skylight at grey Swiss skies, rueing my life,” he wrote, according to People. “I’m all alone, save for my good friends Johnnie Walker and Grey Goose. ‘You’ve got everything,’ I think, ‘but you’ve really got f–k all.'”
Collins didn’t shy away from describing how quickly his life unraveled after retirement.
“It took me until the age of 55 to become an alcoholic,” he wrote. “I got through the heady Sixties, the trippy Seventies, the imperial Eighties, the busy Nineties. I was retired, content – then I fell. Because suddenly, I had too much time on my hands.”
“The huge hole, the void, I had to fill somehow,” Collins added. “I filled it with booze. And it nearly killed me.”
