The rock scene is filled with different collaborations all around, some being major commercial successes while others never got the chance to be released. If we’re to talk about one of those successful collaborations, one might mention the Wilburys, a George Harrison-led supergroup that brought numerous rock icons together and ultimately revived Bob Dylan’s fading career.
A less successful team-up came after Guns N’ Roses and Queen’s Brian May collaborated, and maybe, it never should’ve taken place… Since GN’R never released May’s version. After some editing sessions by Axl Rose, the band decided to leave Brian’s guitar riffs out of the track, which made our British gentleman bitter and annoyed.
While some collaborations are meant to succeed, some are not to see the light of day, and a few are never meant to take place. So, prepare yourself to hear how Adele invited a very enthusiastic Phil Collins for a collaboration, only to ghost the Genesis icon for quite some time and make Collins wonder, ‘Am I that terrible to work with?’
The obvious answer to that question is no. After all, Adele wanted Phil to have a go at one of her tracks while recording her major commercial success, ’25.’ However, the Genesis icon didn’t know that the singer was never easy to reach, and she often dissipated into thin air, making most struggle while trying to call her or send a friendly email.
So, after Adele sent Collins a piece of music she wished the pair would collaborate on, the rock icon readily accepted the offer and started working on the material. However, things got odd after the singer didn’t send any other emails to Phil, which got him wondering, and he decided to send a mail to Adele, questioning whether she was waiting for him or if he would wait for her to record the song.
The reply never came back, but the British rocker realized much later that it wasn’t anything personal since Phil Collins didn’t know at the time that the singer had just given birth and was going through some personal difficulties. However, even when Adele had no personal struggles, that didn’t change the fact that she was still tough to get a hold of, as One Republic vocalist Ryan Tedder told Collins.
Well, after not getting any replies from Adele and possibly being left at seen, though luckily mailing apps do not have that feature, Phil started wondering whether he was that horrible to work with and what made the younger singer back away from a team-up with him. He later learned why Adele ghosted him from one of her chats with the press.
Collins recalled to Billboard in 2016 that he read how the singer felt too young and inexperienced at the time to collaborate with a legend in the likeness of Phil, so the collaboration never took place. That surely made the Genesis rocker feel better, though Adele simply could’ve had the courtesy to write that down in an email… Still, who knows what she had been going through at the time.
Phil’s words on recalling how Adele ghosted him:
“She sent me a piece of music that I began working on, but then she was tough to find. She had a kid — all this [personal] stuff was happening to her, unbeknownst to me. I sent her an email asking, ‘Am I waiting for you, or are you waiting for me?’ I found out she’s a bit of a ghost — Ryan Tedder told me that.
You may not hear from her for a while. So nothing came of it. I was very pleased to hear [it] because she’s being asked about this with the release of her new album, that she said, ‘It was too early, and I was too scared.’ That’s better than ‘He was terrible.’ I was very grateful for her gentle way of looking at it…”
So, that’s how Adele sent an email to Collins before she disappeared from the face of Earth… or at least hidden from Phil for a while. It was, perhaps, the way it needed to go down since the singer felt too inexperienced to work with him at the time, though still, it didn’t help Collins’ worries that he somehow had done something wrong.
