Pop music icon Phil Collins sadly admitted Thursday he could no longer play the drums.
“I’d love to but I mean, I can barely hold a stick with this hand,” the frail-looking rocker told BBC Breakfast ahead of his Genesis band’s reunion tour. “There are certain physical things which get in the way.” (See the clip below.)
Collins will sing with Genesis as he reunites with fellow members Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks for the first time since 2007. But he’ll leave the drumming to his son, Nic.
“I’m physically challenged a bit, which is very frustrating because I’d love to be playing up there with my son,” he said.
“He plays a bit like me when he wants to,” Collins commented, per NME.
Collins, 70, has undergone multiple back surgeries ― one of them after falling in his bathroom in 2017. He has been spotted using a cane and wheelchair. He also has diabetes.
Collins won over a new generation of fans last year when two young men from Indiana went viral for gushing over his drum solo in the 1981 hit “In the Air Tonight.”
But Collins sounded like the Genesis tour would be his last on the road as a performer in any capacity.
“We’re all men of our age, and I think to some extent, I think it probably is putting it to bed,” he said in the BBC Breakfast interview. “I think yeah, I think just generally for me, I don’t know if I want to go out on the road anymore.”
After a previous back surgery, Collins told Billboard in 2016 that he didn’t know if he could drum on tour again because of nerve damage to his left arm.
Now it appears he is certain of that.