Phil Collins has spoken emotionally about the moment his five children rushed to his bedside as he feared he was dying, telling Piers Morgan he felt "lucky" to be alive. The 75-year-old Genesis drummer opened up on Morgan's Uncensored YouTube show about his health battles, including a period when he was hooked up to a dialysis machine after struggling with alcoholism.
"Lucky" to have lived his dream
In a new trailer for the interview, Morgan asks: "When you do look back at it, what do you feel?" Collins replies: "Lucky. All I wanted to do was be a drummer, and earn a living with it, really. Every night I'd look down the pit and there'd be the drummer that did it for six years, and I thought, 'That will be me, so I'd better learn to read [music]'."
Morgan then turns to harder subjects, asking: "You had a lot of physical issues, but the drinking issue became something that nearly killed you. Do you feel lucky just to be alive?"
"Things were just breaking down"
Collins admits: "Yeah. I do. It was not looking good at one point. I was on a dialysis machine, things were just breaking down. The decision was whether I should be kept on a dialysis machine."
He previously said that his manager had called his five children to gather around his bedside. His kids are eldest daughter Joely and son Simon, with first wife Andrea Bertorelli; Lily Collins with second wife Jill Tavelman; and sons Nicholas and Matthew with third wife Orianne Cevey.
"People were coming to say goodbye"
Collins said: "My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye. But I don't remember them coming, I didn't have no idea this was going on."
He added: "They were all worried that they wouldn't see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong."
Collins has been dealing with complications from a spinal injury he suffered in 2007, and was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He retired from music in 2022.
