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Rolling Stone: Phil Collins admits suicidal thoughts

By Andy Greene, RollingStone.com
Phil Collins says he has little desire to create more music beyond his new disc of Motown covers, Going Back.
Phil Collins says he has little desire to create more music beyond his new disc of Motown covers, Going Back.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Singer Phil Collins says he believes that he may have lived past lives
  • His time is now spent working on his gigantic collection of artifacts from the Alamo
  • Neck injury has left him unable to hold drum sticks, sign his signature
  • "I wouldn't blow my head off," Collins says. "I'd overdose or do something"
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(Rolling Stone) -- In the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands in the digital archives this Friday, Phil Collins says he believes that he may have lived past lives -- and that he's contemplated suicide.

The reclusive singer -- who hasn't released an album of new material in nearly ten years -- took writer Erik Hedegaard into his surprisingly modest home in Switzerland and explained that most of his time is now spent working on his gigantic collection of artifacts from the Alamo and raising his two young sons from his last marriage.

Photos: Thirty Years of Genesis

Decades of criticism have taken their toll, and Collins says he has little desire to create more music beyond his new disc of Motown covers, Going Back.

Rolling Stone: Collins' Motown road show brings soul classics

"I sometimes think I'm going to write this Phil Collins character out of the story," the singer says. "Phil Collins will just disappear or be murdered in some hotel bedroom, and people will say, 'What happened to Phil?' And the answer will be, 'He got murdered, but, yeah, anyway, let's carry on.' That kind of thing."

Other highlights from the article:

• Collins has noticed glowing, semitransparent light orbs in a series of photos he took at the Alamo.

"It's paranormal energy," he explains, noting that a psychic recently told him he fought at the fort in a previous lifetime. "I don't want to sound like a weirdo. I'm not Shirley MacLaine, but I'm prepared to believe. You've seen the pictures. You can't deny them, so therefore it's possible that I was there in another life."

Rolling Stone: Collins on overcoming nerve damage

• A neck injury has left him unable to hold drum sticks, sign his signature or even (at times) wipe himself in the bathroom.

"I was going to stop drumming anyway," he says. "I had stopped. I don't miss it."

• Collins admits that he's had suicidal thoughts in recent years.

"I wouldn't blow my head off," he says. "I'd overdose or do something that didn't hurt. But I wouldn't do that to the children. A comedian who committed suicide in the sixties left a note saying,'Too many things went wrong too often.' I often think about that."

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