Phil Collins remains steadfast in his journey towards recovery. In fact, the former Genesis frontman—who retired from music in 2022—shared a rare update on his health, revealing how his past alcohol addiction had caused kidney damage.
"I'd been drinking too much, and my kidneys were really messed up," Phil explained in the January 19th episode of BBC's Eras podcast series, as reported by The Daily Mail. "I wasn't a night-owl drinker. I drank during the day, but I guess I had too much of it."
The 74-year-old continued, "I wasn't even drunk, although I did fall a couple of times. It was just one of those things that happened. It all caught up with me, and I spent months in the hospital."
But that wasn't the end of his health complications. Phil—who shares children Nic Collins, 24, and Matthew Collins, 18, with his wife Orianne Cevey, and Lily Collins, 36, with his ex-wife Jill Tavelman—also started experiencing joint pain in his knees, a condition that sparked rumors that he was receiving hospice care last July.
However, his team quickly denied these speculations and noted that he was in the hospital recovering from knee surgery.
"Everything that could go wrong with me, went wrong with me," he explained in the podcast episode. "I've had five operations on my knee now. My knee works, and I can walk, albeit with the help of crutches."
Though his knees are in better shape now, the "Another Day In Paradise" singer—who is also a father to Joely Collins, 52, and Simon Collins, 48, from his previous relationship with Andrea Bertorelli—still suffers from significant nerve damage in his hands. This started when he suffered a spinal injury during his band's farewell tour in 2007.
"We used to do a drum duet on each tour. One night, I was losing power and grip in my left hand," he recalled. "I thought it would get better, but it didn't."
This neuropathy ultimately led him to stop drumming during his live shows, but he persevered through the pain to reunite with Genesis for their Last Domino? tour in 2021. To keep the group's love for drum patterns in the setlist, Phil's son Nic played the drums on his behalf.
While the musician is still learning to accept his decision to step back from performing, he's grateful that he entered retirement on his own terms.
"If I can't do what I did as well as I did it before, I'd rather relax and not do anything," he noted in his December 2024 documentary Phil Collins: Drummer First. "If I wake up one day and can hold a pair of drumsticks, then I'll give it a try. But I just feel like I've used up my air miles."
