A Glimpse of No Jacket Required by Phil Collins
The Phil Collins perpetual motion machine hits top gear.
My scant understanding of the laws of physics leads me to believe perpetual motion is impossible. In the 1980s, though, there must have been a temporary suspension of the laws as they applied to Phil Collins. He was everywhere at once, or so it seemed.
Click the cover and listen to No Jacket Required by Phil Collins on the streaming service of your choice.
No Jacket Required was released on 18th February 1985 (according to Wiki, or 25 January according to Collins)1. In the eighties, he’d already made an album - Genesis - and toured with the band. He produced records by Eric Clapton and Philip Bailey. Then he squeezed in the making of No Jacket and set off on his own world tour. All this was a prelude to his involvement with Band Aid and Live Aid, replacing the planned use of a drum machine on Do They Know Its Christmas? For Live Aid, he played Wembley, before taking the supersonic jet Concorde to also play Phillidelphia, assisted by the time difference (even if Jimmy Page wishes he hadn’t bothered).
When he toured the No Jacket album, I went on some travels of my own. Collins tour for this album was called No Ticket Required, First, I saw his gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London, before travelling by coach to Germany to see the same set with worse sound. Still, it was an adventure.
For some people, the continual presence of Phil Collins was too much. He became rocks answer to Marmite - you either lapped up everything, even when his music was far removed from the early Genesis albums that had drawn him to our attention, or you couldn’t understand why anybody liked him at all.
So when No Jacket was released and received a glowing review in the sarcastically trendy weekly inky New Musical Express, it was a surprise.2
Collins's first two solo albums worked through emotional trauma after the break-up of his marriage. The songs were strong and the production broke new ground in places - In the Air Tonight, for example. For No Jacket, though, he decided it was time to break the mould and make a more uptempo, dancy record.
How does No Jacket sound today, 45 years (how can that be?) after it was originally released?
As you’ll be aware if you read these Glimpses regularly, I’m not usually writing as an objective reviewer. I choose to write about most of the LPs I select because I like them, and want to share my enjoyment. My subjective approach applies even more in the case of No Jacket, having listened to - or, at least, heard - the record many times.
Except <attempts to make his hat of objectivity fit> except … there’s an issue with rock music termed “eighties production values”. At that time, many new toys were beginning to make themselves felt in studios, mostly rooted in early recording software and electronic drums, synthetic keyboards, and layers of ‘sound processing’. New toys, of course, are played with to excess, so these crude early attempts at modernising music were used everywhere, including No Jacket.
Collins was relatively restrained. The quietly reflective Long Long Way to Go doesn’t need much use of the studio as an instrument, although the vocals have a bit of echo to give a stadium sound. Not surprisingly, it’s the dance tracks that get the most - er - uplift, starting with the first single from the album, Sussudio.
People who don’t like Phil Collins really don’t like Sussudio. Fair enough, the lyric is nonsense. Sussudio is a made-up place filler of a word, to be sung until the proper lyric had been written. In the end, the word was pressed into service as a woman’s name, the girl that had been on his mind. Other than that, it’s a good enough song and uses the horns that feature throughout the album. I’ll return to the horns.
The eighties effect is more to the fore on Who Said I Would and I Don’t Wanna Know. I’ve never liked these two much - too many odd synth parts in support of slight songs - although they were much better when played by Collins and The Hot Tub Club, live.
Of course, the mighty Collins/Hugh Padgham drum sound is all over this album. For me, that’s a good thing. I’ve always liked records where you can hear the drums properly, and where the drummer is doing more than keeping a beat. Collins was an amazing drummer - was because, sadly, his drumming days are over (along with his entire career, now, after his enforced retirement caused by ill health).
His drum sound enhances every track where it’s used, especially as he knows when to turn it down and let the quietness of a song speak. Because of the nature of the songs, his subtlety as a drummer was more evident on his first solo album, Face Value and the second, Hello I Must Be Going. Here, listen to the power of the drums on Inside Out or Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore.
Back to the horns. Despite their reputations as prog rockers, both Collins and Peter Gabriel grew up listening to, and loving, soul music, especially Tamla Motown. When Collins linked up with Earth, Wind and Fire, he began to use their horn section and the power of those instruments gives No Jacket a distinctive feel. Perhaps that’s a reason for it not being liked in some quarters though - sometimes the record can sound as if Collins is trying too hard to show off his soul and dance credentials.
The album proper ends with Take Me Home, an anthem and the best track on the record. The guests offer an alternative sonic tone to that heard in the preceding tracks. It’s just a great song; the sort of song Gabriel, one of the guest vocalists, might write, so it’s not surprising he’s part of the chorus.
I wrote ‘the album proper’ because on the CD there was a bonus track, We Said Hello Goodbye. Another good song, a ballad, it retains the mood after the album as sequenced for vinyl had finished. This incentive to buy the CD version was restrained by today’s standards, when albums are released in multiple versions and it’s almost impossible to be a completest, without winning the lottery.
No Jacket was remastered in 2016 and re-issued with a bonus disc called Extra Large Jacket Required, which included live versions plus demos of One More Night and Take Me Home. Collins also changed the image on the cover (which he did with all his remastered albums) to show his older facial features. Collins frequently uses humour and doesn’t take himself too seriously (even if the album following No Jacket was called … But Seriously).
Given his health struggles, only Collins would call his autobiography Not Dead Yet. His perpetual motion has left a lasting legacy.
What do you think? Join the discussion.
HOW TO BUY (Amazon aff. link)
Further reading (Bookshop.org aff. link)
Phil Collins Not Dead Yet: The Autobiography
Phil Collins in the 1980s Andrew Wild
RECORDING DETAILS
Side one
1 Sussudio / 2 Only You Know And I Know / 3 Long Long Way to Go / 4 I Don’t Wanna Know / 5 One More Night
Side two
6 Don’t Lose My Number / 7 Who Said I Would / 8 Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore / 9 Inside Out / 10 Take Me Home / 11 We Said Hello Goodbye (CD bonus track)
Musicians
Phil Collins – vocals, backing vocals, Roland TR-909 (1, 10), keyboards (2, 3, 5–11), bass (2), drums (2, 4, 6-11), LinnDrum (2, 6, 8), Roland TR-808 (3, 5), Simmons electronic drums (credited on 2016 release as 'Simmonds') (3, 7), vocoder (7), kalimba (7)
David Frank – keyboards (1, 7), additional keyboards (6), Minimoog bass (1, 7), Oberheim DMX (1)
Nick Glennie-Smith – keyboards (11)
Daryl Stuermer – guitars (1–10), keyboards (4)
Leland Sklar – bass guitar (3–6, 8–11), piccolo bass (3, 10)
The Phenix Horns, arranged by Tom Tom 84 – horns (1, 2, 7)
Don Myrick – saxophones, sax solo (5, 9)
Louis Satterfield – trombone
Michael Harris – trumpet
Rahmlee Michael Davis – trumpet
Gary Barnacle – sax solo (4, 7)
Arif Mardin – string arrangements (5), orchestral introduction (11)
Sting – backing vocals (3, 10)
Peter Gabriel – backing vocals (10)
Helen Terry – backing vocals (10)
Production
Phil Collins – producer, mixing, album design
Hugh Padgham – producer, engineer, mixing
Steve Chase – assistant engineer
Jon Jacobs – string recording at Air Studios (London)
Peter Ashworth – cover photography
Technical
Dan Loggins – production supervisor
Alan Harris, Bill Price, John Leckie – engineer
Roslav Szaybo – art direction, design
Coming up … more reviews, Gems #23, and next week’s Glimpse is (continuing the Led Zeppelin sub-plot) IV / Four Symbols.
Enjoy the music,
Ian
Bonus for reading to the end. Sussudio in the Phil Collins Big Band jazz version.
Collins, Phil, Not Dead Yet: The Autobiography, Century, 2016 p.221
Page blames Collins for what he sees as the below-par performance by Led Zeppelin in Philly. Collins has plenty to say about how sitting in with Robert Plant for a couple of songs became a full-blown Led Zep reunion, without Collins knowledge. Also, about how Page wasn’t exactly ‘match fit’ to play the gig.
Thanks for this, Brian. I also miss the days of going into a record shop without knowing what was being released. With tech, it’s some you win, some you lose.
Easy Lover was the first single I ever bought. I was 15. I still really like it.