Phil Collins was a crucial part of Genesis, first as a drummer and later as the band’s frontman, helping to give them a commercially successful and enduring career. While Progressive Rock purists often favor the Peter Gabriel years, many fans appreciate both phases of the band.

Collins, whose musical tastes have always been wide-ranging, has similarly expressed mixed opinions about certain bands, including Yes, saying good and bad things about them over the years.

What is Phil Collins’ opinion on Yes

“I was a big early Yes fan, less so, even though I like the guys in the band, I didn’t relate to a lot of their music, after the first two or three albums. I mean, the ‘Yes’ (1969) album was great but I didn’t really after that go for too much of it. Jethro Tull, ELP, not for me musically. Floyd, I was never a big Floyd fan. I probably became a Floyd fan in later years than I was at the time, even though I saw them at the Marquee with ‘Arnold Layne’ (song), you know.”

“(So) I was aware of what they were doing but I never really was a fan. I was in a band that was always kind of being put in the same box as that lot. But I never felt that we actually were in the same box, but we probably were,” Phil Collins said in an interview with John Edginton in 2014 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). He especially liked the first era of Yes with guitarist Peter Banks and brought that influence to Genesis when he joined them. “I was very into the first line-up of Yes, the one with Peter Banks.”

He continued:

“I remember listening to them and loving the way they took other people’s songs, ‘Something’s Coming’, ‘Every Little Thing’ and did something different with them. (So) I thought, ‘That’s something I could do,’ so I brought that influence into Genesis,” he told Prog in 2016.

Collins used to go a lot to the legendary Marquee club in London where most of the greatest musicians from the United Kingdom played in the 1960s. He had the chance to see the Progressive Rock band fronted by Jon Anderson as he recalled in his autobiography “Not Dead Yet”, saying that he saw them when they were “still good”.

“Being a serious regular, and a serious fan, I am often in the right place at the right time. By following Bonham’s progress, at the Marquee I see the first London show by The New Yardbirds, soon to be renamed Led Zeppelin. I witnessed some floor-shaking, maximum R&B Who shows. I experienced Yes in their earliest days, around 1968, when they were good,” the musician said.

Phil Collins almost became Yes’ drummer twice

So many influential and successful bands came out of the United Kingdom in the 1960s that it is hard to realize that many of them were actually living in the same area and going to the same clubs. Collins first had the chance to meet Yes when they played for an audience of no more than 50 people. He heard they were looking for a drummer and spoke to Jon Anderson that night. But ultimately decided not to call them or audition.

“When Yes played at the Marquee in front of fifty hardy souls, I go backstage during the intermission because I’ve heard Bill Bruford is about to go back to Leeds University. Frontman Jon Anderson gives me his number, but I never bother to call. I don’t know why, but I often wonder: how would my life have been if I’d said yes to the Yes audition?” he said in his autobiography. A few years later, in 1972, Collins offered to become Yes’ drummer while he was already a member of Genesis. They ended up choosing Alan White, whom Phil felt was not the right choice for the band. “I didn’t like Alan White. When Bruford left, I rang up Jon Anderson and said: ‘Let’s do it!’”

He continued:

“I’m always on these people’s short list, I’m always like 3rd on the list. He said: ‘Great man, there was Mike Giles, Ian Weiss or you. (…) I could really grow into the gig. But they had already sussed Mike out before the press had announced that Bruford had left. And I don’t see Anderson that much to know what’s going on unless I read about it. In principle, I had thought Alan White was wrong for the band. He’s a sharp drummer, not a flat drummer,” Phil Collins said in an interview with Ken CK in 1974.

Playing the drums in a Progressive Rock band wasn’t an easy task and Collins’ had to adapt his style. The tempo changes in the song were something difficult but he liked that kind of music, since he was a Buddy Rich and Yes fan. “(What Genesis was doing when I joined) it was definitely out of the box of regular songs. They didn’t seem to hold a tempo for very long. It went from section to section, which it was all interesting (but) a little strange to me. Because it was not the world I was kind of used to living in.”

“Although some of my favorite pieces of music which was the Buddy Rich ‘West Side Story’ medley, the big band. I mean, they went from tempo changes to tempo changes. Yes, I was a big fan of the early Yes and they were doing all kinds of arrangements like that. But it wasn’t something (I was used to playing),” he told John Edginton in 2014.

How former Yes drummer Bill Bruford ended up playing with Genesis

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MyteedDgscc

After Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, the remaining members tested a few singers. But they ultimately decided that Phil Collins was the right choice to become the new frontman. However, to make that possible and avoid having him sing while playing drums for the entire show, they needed to find a new drummer, who turned out to be former Yes member Bill Bruford. “I started to look out for a drummer. (…) Bill Bruford from Yes and I were great friends at that point. He was playing percussion with Brand X (My other band). It was kind of one of those things that people came and went.”

“He said: ‘What happenned with the Genesis thing?’ I said: ‘Oh, looks like I’m gonna be the singer. But I’ve gotta find a drummer’. He said: ‘Why don’t you ask me? I’m not doing anything.’ I said: ‘I didn’t think you would want to do it, having been in Yes. This was before he went into King Crimson, Asia and all that. Genesis and Yes had some kind of crossover fans, because we were both Progressive Rock, if you like,” he told John Edginton in 2014 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Bruford was in the band for a short period, only in 1976. He ended up appearing in the albums “In Concert” (1977), in one track of “Seconds Out” (1977) and also in one song of “Three Sides Live” (1982).