Fans Are Concerned About Phil Collins After He Made An Upsetting Health Confession

Collins particularly concerned Twitter when he showed up on British morning TV show BBC Breakfast. One user commented, “Gosh Phil Collins isn’t looking too good (sorry), bless him, I hope they aren’t just using him for another tour. Not sure if it’s a good idea. Please take care, Phil. Sending my love to you.”

Another breakfast TV viewer simply summed up Collins appearance on Twitter with the emoji of a sad, crying face. The “Easy Lover” singer wasn’t actually being interviewed live on the show’s famous red sofa. But the talk of Genesis’ run of comeback shows proved it was a recent chat.

Alongside Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, Collins was supposed to have hit the road back in October 2020. Of course, world events meant that they had to wait another year to get back in front of a live audience. Before that, the last time the band had performed together was on their 40th anniversary tour in 2007.

Genesis were forced to rearrange The Last Domino? tour a second time in January 2021 as they explained in a statement. It read, “We can’t wait to finally get this show on the road, but we feel the decision to move the tour [to late 2021] is the best one for those planning on attending and for us as a band and crew.”

You might not know that Collins wasn’t a part of Genesis’ original line-up. He was only invited to join the band in 1970 when John Mayhew, their first drummer, decided to abandon ship. Collins told BBC Breakfast in 2021, “I thought I might get £10 a week for a few months until they saw through me, and then I’d be back out on the street again.”

Instead, Collins turned out to be Genesis’ secret weapon. After frontman Peter Gabriel announced his shock departure in 1974, the group went through an extensive audition process to find his replacement. But it turned out that the man most worthy of stepping into Gabriel’s shoes had been there all along.

So after turning down hundreds of aspiring prog-rock vocalists, Banks and Rutherford chose to move their sticksman from the back to the front of the stage. The decision proved to be a masterstroke. Thanks to Collins’ natural charisma and expressive vocals, Genesis went from cult concern to one of the biggest bands in the world!

Collins not only spearheaded Genesis’ remarkable reinvention, but he also found the time to launch a hugely successful solo career. His debut LP, Face Value, became the sound of 1981 largely thanks to its haunting single “In the Air Tonight.” And Collins continued to flit between the group that made his name and his own material throughout the rest of the decade.

Yet in 1995 Collins decided he’d had enough of pulling double duty, and he quit Genesis for good. The classic line-up did reunite 12 years later for a tour to celebrate the group’s 40th anniversary. But this looked to be a one-off until the trio announced another comeback trek in 2020. It was also around this time, though, that Collins’ personal life began to implode.

Yes, in 2020 news emerged that Collins had separated from wife Orianne Cevey for the second time. The pair had initially divorced in 2006, seven years after walking down the aisle together. But when Cevey’s second marriage also fell apart in the mid-2010s, she and Collins reunited. It didn’t prove to be a second time lucky, though.

And by 2019 Cevey had said “I do” to another man, an actor named Thomas Bates. But according to Collins, she still refused to leave their marital home in Florida. A bitter court battle ensued, during which Cevey was more than happy to reveal all. In an interview with The Sun, the jewelry designer claimed that she was more of a nurse than a partner.

Cevey said, “I felt like I was trapped in a golden cage. When someone’s depressed, it’s hard to help them out. As much as you love them, why would you keep it up? After years, you get fed up… It is hard. You feel lonely and you feel like you don’t have anybody you can talk to. I was super-sad and super-unhappy.”

Swiss native Cevey also claimed that Collins refused to look after himself, became reclusive, and that they rarely left the house as a couple. She added, “You’re a nurse – you are everything. It is a heavy weight. I felt very lonely. So I lived my life.” But the judge who oversaw the pair’s court battle wasn’t particularly interested in hearing about such woes.

That’s right: in late 2020 Collins and Cevey were advised to stop airing their dirty laundry in public and settle their differences. The warring couple appeared to listen. Within a month Cevey had left the Florida mansion at the center of their dispute. And by this point, Collins had already sold the property to an unknown buyer.

Yet Collins’ property dispute isn’t the only personal battle he’s had to face over the years. In 2010 he opened up to Rolling Stone magazine about his issues with mental health. The chart-topper admitted that he’d thought about suicide. And six years later Collins told The New York Times that he once had a drinking problem that could have killed him. Surely another health confession was just around the corner...

Collins revealed, “You start drinking, and then you start drinking too much. Then it physically hurts you. I came very close to dying at that point. I’m being honest about that.” The “Another Day in Paradise” singer was even more honest at a press conference that same year when he discussed how the demon drink caused a near-fatal health scare.

Collins nearly lost his life after developing acute pancreatitis. While being treated at a Swiss hospital, the musician even heard a medic question his nearest and dearest about the state of his will. Thankfully, he managed to pull through. But this wasn’t the first, or the last, of Collins’ health problems. 

Just a year after revealing his battle with pancreatitis, Collins disclosed that he’d been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The Buster star had been forced to undergo hyperbaric chamber treatment when his foot became infected with a diabetic abscess. And his run of bad luck continued when a bathroom fall left him with a badly damaged eye and put pay to a run of comeback shows.

But the issue that has most affected Collins’ career has been the damage to his nerves. The “You Can’t Hurry Love” singer first started to suffer following his drumming duties on Genesis’ 2007 reunion trek. He was forced to undergo surgery having dislocated upper neck vertebrae whilst behind the kit.

This operation sadly had another knock-on effect. Collins began to lose all sensation in his fingers. Things got so bad that the only way he could play the drums was by taping sticks to his hands. Further surgery on his spine in 2015 failed to make matters any better. And by the time the Genesis reunion tour came around, his drumming abilities were non-existent.

So when asked whether he was able to get behind the drum kit for The Last Domino? tour by BBC Breakfast, Collins answered, “No. No, I would love to but, you know, I mean I can barely hold a stick with this hand, so there are certain physical things that get in the way.”

Plus Collins admitted that he was hugely frustrated by being so physically challenged, as this robbed him of the opportunity to play on stage with a family member. Yes, Phil isn’t the only Collins to have bagged a place on the Genesis reunion tour. Nic, the musician’s son, was invited to stand in for his pop behind the kit.

And Collins couldn’t be prouder that Nic, who normally plays for a group named Better Strangers, has followed in his footsteps. He said, “I’m one of his many influences, being his dad. He plays like me and he kinda has the same attitude as me, so that was a good starter.”

Nic first supported his father live on stage in 2016 at a benefit gala on Miami Beach. He was in his mid-teens then. Just a few months later, the pair once again performed together in front of millions across the world at the opening ceremony of the U.S. Open. Luckily, Nic appeared to take all the pressure in his stride.

In a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, Nic said, “I’ve been really exposed to my father’s music my entire life, so it’s second nature.” The teen even claimed that the iconic drum fill on “In the Air Tonight” was “not that hard to play.” But he did admit to feeling a pang of nerves when it came to performing it at the U.S. Open.

Nic’s predictive abilities don’t appear to be as strong as his drumming, though. When asked about the possibility of joining Genesis for a future tour, the youngster replied, “I would be ecstatic if that happened. That Genesis stuff, drum-wise, is something else; absolutely unbelievable. But to be honest, I don’t think there will be another Genesis reunion tour.”

Luckily for Genesis fans, another reunion tour did happen. And Banks was just as delighted to have Collins Jr. on board as the youngster’s father. The keyboardist told Prog magazine, “Nic is a great drummer, but he is capable of sounding like early Phil. It means you can play some of the songs that you haven’t played with Phil as the drummer for a long time.”

In a 2021 interview shortly before The Last Domino? tour kicked off, Collins told The Guardian newspaper that rehearsals with his son had been going very smoothly. He said, “He started playing with me when he was 16. If I feel that he should concentrate on something to make it better, I’ll mention it and he’ll come back the next day and he will have done it. He doesn’t need constant nudging.”

Collins proudly added, “I used to take him and his younger brother to school in the car, and they’d put on a Genesis live CD, so he’s been around it for a long time. I’d just let him play down in the playroom and I’d hear his progress; I’ve got videos of him from when he was five years old just standing and playing. He pretty much taught himself.”

While his son will happily keep practising at home, Collins admits that he’s a little more lax when preparing for a tour. He told The Guardian, “I don’t do anything at all. I don’t practise singing at home, not at all. Rehearsing is the practice.” The “Against All Odds” vocalist also suggested that his bandmates wish he’d take a leaf out of Nic’s book.

One thing Collins didn’t have to practice was any dance moves, of course. Since his various health struggles, the musician performs the entirety of each show sitting down. Referring to his previous solo tour Collins added, “It didn’t get in the way; the audience were still listening and responding. It’s not the way I would have written it, but it’s the way that it is.”

And Collins isn’t afraid to mention that he’s not as sprightly as he once was when he takes to the stage. While performing “I Can’t Dance” on the reunion tour, the line “a perfect body with a perfect face,” was accompanied by him pointing at himself ironically. And to replace the dazzling drum solos that he became famous for, Collins now uses a tambourine to tap his forehead and elbow.

Critics certainly didn’t seem to hold Collins’ frailty against him while reviewing the show. In a piece for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote, “The atmosphere doesn’t feel affecting so much as celebratory. Collins is drily funny between songs, and whatever else has happened to him, his voice still sounds strong.”

Collins appears to have confirmed that the reunion tour would be his last as a member of Genesis. He told BBC Breakfast, “We’re all men of our age, and I think to some extent, I think it probably is putting it to bed. I think yeah, I think just generally for me, I don’t know if I want to go out on the road any more.”

Plus Collins was even more adamant when he spoke to British music magazine Mojo about the impending series of shows. When asked about the question mark in the tour’s title, the ex-drummer insisted that it was all Banks’ doing. He added, “This English and American tour, that will be enough for me.”

Perhaps Collins’ comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, though. In 2011 the “I Wish It Would Rain Down” singer claimed that he was retiring from the music industry. But just six years later he staged a comeback tour with the self-deprecating title of “Not Dead Yet.”

And Banks still seems hesitant to officially call time on Genesis as a live act, too. Referring to any future plans, the keyboardist told Mojo, “I think it depends a little bit how it goes. How Phil stands up to it all. How the audience receives it, and how we all feel about it, really.”

So what made Collins decide to commit to this apparently final ever tour? Well, in a PBS documentary about the shows, he said, “When it’s good, it’s great fun. The audience always seem to come away having enjoyed it. So really it’s a question of going out there and doing what you do with your life. I’m 70… and I’ve been in this band since I was 19.”

In the same documentary, Nic acknowledged the positive effect playing live can have. He said, “Whenever my dad, you know, was feeling a bit down and we’d go and play a show, I would see his mood light up. Because when you have 20,000 people in an arena who are all there because they absolutely love you, it’s a feeling that I think is so important for musicians.”

Sadly, with age comes deteriorating health — and perhaps more so when you've been living a rockstar life. Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne is the ultimate rocker. And so it's no surprise that his health has taken a downturn in recent years. After months of rumors, Osbourne decided to go public with a serious diagnosis that he'd received.

Stories about Ozzy's health started circulating around during October 2019. That year, Ozzy underwent surgery after a bad fall, and also had to cancel concerts due to pneumonia. Come October, the celebrity gossip website Radar Online claimed that the famous rocker was “living on borrowed time.”

According to a “pal of the former Black Sabbath frontman” who allegedly spoke to the website, “He’s had a whole host of health woes, and it looks like the ‘Crazy Train’ may have reached the end of the line.” However, Ozzy’s wife Sharon quickly came out to angrily deny the story was true.

While on The Talk Sharon declared “How cold and callous are those headlines? Where’s people’s empathy? It’s not [true] by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve been open with everyone and so has Ozzy.” She went on, “He had a terrible, terrible bout of bad luck with his health, one thing after another. And then after his fall that he had, it’s been awful for him. But he’s getting better.”

Ozzy has indeed had a lot of bad luck with his health as an older man. In addition to the pneumonia and the surgery after the fall in 2019, he got a staph infection in October 2018. He contracted the disease simply after getting a small cut on his hand. Which turned into a major and even life-threatening problem.

Later that month, Ozzy told Rolling Stone magazine he “was cracking jokes” about the staph infection at first, but soon was told by the doctor he had a serious health condition. The rocker said, “I judge it based on the expression and the body language of the doctor. If he comes in with a really solemn face, I go, ‘Oh, okay. My time to go is up.’”

One of the reasons for the interest in the Prince of Darkness’s current state of health is his drug-heavy past. Ozzy’s antics, both onstage and off, are legendary. Back in 1981, he bit the head off a bird while meeting with record label executives. Apparently, he was too intoxicated to know what he was doing.

And that bizarre incident was far from the end of it. In February 1982 Ozzy fired all the other members of his band. Then, wearing a dress that belonged to Sharon, he urinated all over an Alamo memorial while drunk. The rocker was, unsurprisingly, arrested and ended up banished from San Antonio for ten years.

Then, in August 1989, Ozzy was arrested for trying to strangle Sharon in a drug-fueled delirium, right after he’d come back from the Music Peace Festival in Russia. It was an astounding incident that could very well have ended in tragedy. But Sharon didn’t press charges and even stayed married to him.

Sharon spoke about the incident to British newspaper The Guardian in May 2001. She said, “I called the police, and they locked him up. I didn’t press charges but he went into rehab for three months. He was totally insane from all the drink and drugs he was doing, and well, these things happen.”

Fortunately, Ozzy managed to improve his condition at the beginning of the Nineties and gradually moved away from substance abuse. He admitted to still taking pills on occasion, but considered 1991’s No More Tears his first sober record. And, come 1997, the singer even reunited with the other members of Black Sabbath.

Unfortunately, the rock star suffered another life-threatening problem in 2003. This one, though, was the result of an accident rather than substance abuse. In early December he was riding a quad bike around his Buckinghamshire estate when it suddenly hit an obstacle, flipping the vehicle right on top of him.

Things looked bad. Ozzy broke eight ribs, a vertebra in his neck and his collarbone, which ended up resting on one of his main arteries after the crash. In fact, the rocker stopped breathing in the immediate aftermath of the accident. As a result, he had to be given emergency resuscitation by Sam Ruston, his bodyguard. Then he was hurried to hospital for surgery.

In February 2004, the Osbourne family spoke about the incident to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. “Absolutely no drugs, absolutely no alcohol. It was just a terrible, a terrible accident,” Ozzy explained. “The last thing I remember, what I do remember is I got on the bike and, something in my mind went, ‘Bad move. There’s something really bad gonna happen.’” But the rocker also then admitted he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

Ozzy and Sharon’s daughter Kelly also spoke about the accident during the interview. She said, “I didn’t realize how bad it was. Because he was fully talking to me… And all he kept saying is, ‘I love you. I’m going to be okay.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, my dad’s gonna die. And I’m by myself.’ And it was the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The rock star got over the accident, but questions about his health still persisted. For years, Ozzy had suffered painful tremors in his body, and assumed it was a result of his earlier drug use. But instead he was told in by doctors in 2005 that it was actually a genetic condition called Parkin Syndrome.

At the time, Ozzy spoke to the World Entertainment News Network. He said, “I’d always assumed [the tremors were from] the booze and stuff. Now I’ve found it all stems from the family. It’s called Parkin [Syndrome] but it’s not Parkinson’s. Anything to do with the central nervous system has the word Parkin in it.” Rumors of the rocker having Parkinson’s had spread before, and he’d denied them.

In 2010 Ozzy looked back on his lifetime of substance abuse, and it made for difficult reading. He told Guitar World magazine, “I used to be under the illusion that alcohol and drugs help you create melodies. I used to think, ‘How the **** can I write music without smoking a joint or taking a line of coke?’ I made the decision that if I can’t do it sober, then I’m finished.”

When the interviewer asked Ozzy how he managed to stop, the rocker answered “The first thing I quit was tobacco. I couldn’t do anything without a cigarette, but I’m a singer so that had to go. Then the illegal drugs went, but I was also addicted to prescription drugs for 25 years.”

Ozzy’s prognosis sounded promising, but in 2013 the rocker announced he had suffered a setback. In April of that year, after living apart from Sharon for almost a month, the Black Sabbath frontman released a revealing statement. It read, “For the last year-and-a-half I have been drinking and taking drugs.” He had been, he added, “in a very dark place.”

But Ozzy also declared in his statement that he was “44 days sober.” He went on, “Just to set the record straight, Sharon and I are not divorcing. I’m just trying to be a better person. I would like to apologize to Sharon, my family, my friends and my band mates for my insane behavior during this period… And my fans.”

Such was the curiosity about Ozzy, his drug-taking and his health that in 2010 a group of scientists at a company called Knome Inc. began investigating his genome. They discovered that the reason he had survived so much substance abuse wasn’t necessarily luck. It was, in fact, more likely something to do with his genes.

In Bill Sullivan’s 2019 book Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs and the Curious Forces that Make Us Who We Are, the Indiana University professor described the British rocker as “indeed a genetic mutant.” And he also noted that addiction had “more to do with our DNA than our moral fiber.”

But after all that, in 2020, Ozzy made a new revelation about his health. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. This condition affects the brain, causes tremors in the body and a difficulty with movement, among other things. Balance problems and memory issues are also symptoms of Parkinson’s.

In January 2020, the Osbournes went on Good Morning America and talked to Robin Roberts about what the diagnosis meant for them. Ozzy said, “It’s been terribly challenging for us all. I did my last show New Year’s Eve at The Forum. Then I had a bad fall. I had to have surgery on my neck, which screwed all my nerves.”

Sharon explained what exactly her husband had, saying “It’s PRKN 2. There’s so many different types of Parkinson’s. It’s not a death sentence by any stretch of the imagination, but it does affect certain nerves in your body. And it’s like, you have a good day, a good day, and then a really bad day.”

Ozzy himself then explained the rest, referencing his disastrous fall. He said, “I got a numbness down this arm [from] the surgery, my legs keep going cold. I don’t know if that’s the Parkinson’s or what, you know, but that’s – see, that’s the problem. Because [the surgeons] cut nerves when they did the surgery. I’d never heard of nerve pain, and it’s a weird feeling.”

The rocker explained that he was taking medication and nerve pills for the condition, but had grown tired of remaining quiet about it. As he told Good Morning America, “I’m no good with secrets. I cannot walk around with it anymore ‘cause it’s like I’m running out of excuses, you know?”

Kelly Osbourne was also present for the interview. She told Good Morning America, “The hardest thing is watching somebody that you love suffer. It’s kind of become a bit of – I think a role reversal for us, where we have to be like, ‘Snap out of it… We have to all admit what’s happening here, so that we can get over this.’ And it took a while for everyone to be on the same page.”

Regarding Ozzy’s family, the rocker admitted, “When I see my wife going to work, my kids going to work, everybody’s doing – trying to be helpful to me, that gets me down because I can’t contribute to my family. But you know, put it this way, I’m a lot better now than I was last February. I was in a shocking state.”

Sharon also said in the interview that she and Ozzy planned to go abroad to seek further treatment, something they luckily had the wealth to do. She explained, “We’ve kind of reached a point in [America] where we can’t go any further because we’ve got all the answers we can get here. So in April we’re going to a professional in Switzerland.”

At the end of the interview Ozzy said, in true rockstar fashion, “I just can’t wait to get well enough to go on the road, that is what is killing me. I need it, that is my drug today. I’ve done all of the other ****, left that by the wayside, survived that. I ain’t done yet and I ain’t going to go anywhere yet.”

And it seems that Good Morning America interview met with a hugely positive response. Parkinson’s U.K. chief executive Steve Ford released a statement praising the rocker’s courage. It read, “Ozzy Osbourne bravely speaking about his Parkinson’s diagnosis and his journey to ‘owning it’ will do so much to raise awareness of this much misunderstood condition.”

The statement went on, “Ozzy is now part of a community of 145,000 people in the U.K. who live with Parkinson’s and urgently need a breakthrough treatment, which we are getting closer to every day. We would encourage people who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s to speak to their GP or specialist to explore the best options for treatment and managing their Parkinson’s.”

In the wake of the news, Professor David Dexter, Parkinson’s U.K. Tissue Bank’s scientific director spoke to The Telegraph newspaper about the condition. He explained to readers that the condition Ozzy had been diagnosed with was hereditary. Which meant that it was embedded in his DNA long before any symptoms started to pose a problem.

The professor went on, “About 92 per cent of cases of Parkinson’s disease are sporadic – we don’t know the cause. The remaining number are due to genetic mutations, although symptoms and treatment are currently the same. Osbourne’s milder symptoms might have been confused with life-style related concerns; heavy drinking can cause tremors, for example.”

A few days after the rocker made the announcement about his health, he posted a message on his Facebook account expressing his gratitude for all the support he’d received. He wrote, “Thank you all so much for your well wishes. It means the world to me. All my love, Ozzy.” And Sharon had something to say as well.

While presenting The View, Sharon said “Just to have all this outpouring of positive reaction from everyone that watches the show, and our friends, it’s heartwarming… People have been amazing with their outpouring of love for my husband, and I thank you. Friends that we haven’t spoken to in years have come out and supported Ozzy, and it makes me feel good.”

But no matter what, Ozzy has often made it clear how grateful he is to have had such a long life. And that’s even more incredible given he could have died so many times in the past. In fact, in 2019 the rocker told Metal Hammer magazine, “If you’d said to me years ago, ‘How long do you think you’ll last?’ I would’ve said, ‘I’ll be dead by 40!’”