Phil Collins has let go of his decades-old grudge against Paul McCartney.
During an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Friday, the famed musician detailed an encounter (one he’s told before) he had with the Beatle back in 2002 during the Queen’s Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace. During rehearsals the day before the show, Collins recalled, “I had a first edition Hunter Davis book [on The Beatles], which was a very, quite rare, first edition. I’d been given it by Jill, Lily’s mum.” He added, “And I took it to the rehearsal so Paul could sign it.”
While sitting on the side of the stage, Collins said that he asked McCartney to sign the book and he obliged. However, Collins added, that’s when McCartney said to his then-wife Heather Mills, and remarked, “He’s a big Beatles fan, is our little Phil?’”
Collins said, “I thought, ‘You arsehole’. I couldn’t help it. That’s just what I thought. I probably made more of it than he meant, I did make more of it. But when I was writing the book, and I wanted to write how I felt about certain things.”
When promoting his memoir in 2016, Collins revealed his story to The Sunday Times. After McCartney emailed Collins to sort things out, the Genesis musician didn’t reply.
Jump forward to earlier this year (and a few tabloids later), when McCartney called the Genesis drummer up after hearing that Collins was asking fellow musicians if they had any memorabilia they’d be offering to dontate to the Kings Trust charity auction he was organizing.
While chatting on the phone, McCartney brought up their ongoing tiff. Collins shared: “And he said, ‘While we’re on the phone,’ and I thought, oh, here we go. So he said, ‘What is all this about?’ I said, ‘I wish I’d never said it, Paul, I wish I’d never said it’. He said, ‘I thought we were good, you know.’”
And just like that, the over 20 year spat was squashed. “So we kissed and made up,” Collins concluded. “I said I was sorry… Obviously this had been bugging him because he likes to be liked, as we all do, you know, and maybe him more than some other people. But we all like to be liked. And I understand that. And we kissed and made up.”
In August, Collins revealed in an interview with the Sunday Times that he nearly died in 2024 amid his battle with alcoholic addiction. The singer said that he was first admitted to a Swiss hospital in connection with his alcohol use in November 2023. While he was initially discharged before Christmas that year, he was readmitted a few weeks later and placed into intensive care, where he lay unconscious.
The artist ultimately spent seven months in the hospital recovering from his near-death ordeal. “I was very lucky to have come out of that,” Phil told the Sunday Times. “Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since.”
