The Phil Collins Albums Pt. 3 - No Jacket Required
The third in a chronological wander through Collins’ eight solo albums. This is a revised version of the review first published in Feb 2024.
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. In the eighties, he’d already made an album as a member of Genesis in 1983 (Genesis), with another to follow in 1986 (Invisible Touch). Genesis always toured their albums, as did Collins. 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 It's Christmas?’ For Live Aid, he played Wembley before taking the supersonic jet Concorde to also play Philadelphia, assisted by the time difference, even if Jimmy Page wishes he hadn’t bothered (Page blames Collins for the below-par performance by Led Zeppelin. 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. And about how Page wasn’t exactly ‘match fit’ to play the gig.) What do you think?
When he toured the No Jacket album, I went on some travels of my own. Collins's 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 rock's 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.
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’ being the best 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, over 45 years after it was originally released?
Let’s get the ‘eighties production values’ elephant in the studio out of the way early. At that time, there were many new toys to play with, mostly rooted in early versions of recording software and electronic drums, synthetic keyboards, and layers of ‘sound processing’. New toys, of course, are often played with to excess, so these 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 treatment, starting with the first single, ‘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.
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 live by Collins and The Hot Tub Club.
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, as discussed here. His drum sound enhances every track where it’s used, especially as he knows when to turn it down and let the quietness of the 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, the power of the drums can best be heard on ‘Inside Out’ and ‘Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore’.
The album proper ends with ‘Take Me Home’, an anthem and the best track on the record. It’s a great song, the sort of song Gabriel, guest backing vocalist, might write.
‘We Said Hello Goodbye’ was a bonus track on the CD release. These were the early days of compact discs, and record companies began to include an extra track or two because there was space on the disc and to tempt buyers across from vinyl and cassette. This is a reflective ballad, and it retains the mood after the album as sequenced for vinyl had finished.
No Jacket was remastered in 2016 and reissued 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 cover image (which he did with all his remastered albums) to show his older facial features.
Although audibly an eighties album, No Jacket remains an enjoyable, mostly upbeat listen. His perpetual motion has left a lasting legacy.
HOW TO BUY
Get your own copy of No Jacket Required (2016 remaster): MP3 | CD (paid links)
Tracks: 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 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)
Released February 1985
Further reading (Bookshop.org aff. link)
Phil Collins Not Dead Yet: The Autobiography
Phil Collins in the 1980s Andrew Wild
Previous posts in this series
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Coming up in LP
I’ll take a break from the Phil Collins posts and review Pink Floyd’s Pompeii ΜСΜԼΧХХІІ (paid link). Before then, LP>Play #049 will be out at the very beginning of June.
This might convince me to give Sussudio another chance