Phil Collins Calls Himself a Well Man at Rock Hall

Phil Collins reached the stage on two canes at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 14, 2026, and opened his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech with a correction. “I'm really not as bad as it looks. I'm much better,” the 75-year-old singer said. He was being inducted as a solo artist, his second entry into the Hall after Genesis went in in 2010, and Travis Barker presented the honor.

Collins called himself “a well man now” and credited his longtime assistant, Lindsay Evans, with forcing the change. “I'm not joking when I say without her I wouldn't be here. I'd be in a box, six feet under,” he said. He didn't perform at the ceremony, and Cynthia Erivo delivered the musical tribute instead.

The health record behind the canes is long. A 2007 spinal injury left Collins with nerve damage, and he's had five surgeries on his left knee. In August he told The Sunday Times that an April 2024 hospitalization tied to his drinking ended with his kidneys failing and his five children called to his bedside. He retired from drumming in 2022, when he could no longer hold a stick reliably.

Backstage, he drew the line where it now sits. “In terms of playing live, I think my drumming days are probably done,” he said. Singing and writing are a different question. Collins keeps a recording studio at his home in Switzerland and a band of longtime players, and he said a recent conversation with his children got everyone, including him, excited about the possibility of doing some shows.

He was careful not to turn that into an announcement. There's no tour, no dates and no album title attached to any of it. What he promised on stage was smaller and firmer: “You haven't heard the last of me. I promise you that.”

Collins joined an 18-member class of 2026 that included Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division and New Order, Oasis, Sade, the late Luther Vandross and Wu-Tang Clan, with producer Rick Rubin among the Musical Excellence honorees. Oasis, Iron Maiden and Sade didn't attend, which made Collins's slow walk to the microphone the night's clearest statement about showing up.

An edited three-hour special of the ceremony airs December 8 on ABC and streams December 9 on Disney+ and Hulu. By then, the question Collins left open will still be the only one that matters: whether the studio work he's describing turns into songs anyone outside his house gets to hear.

The induction is Collins's second because the Hall counts the band and the solo career separately. Genesis entered in 2010, at the height of a solo run that had already made him one of the best-selling artists in the world, and the 16 years between the two ceremonies cover almost the whole arc of his decline as a live performer, from the drum stool to the seated singer to Saturday's two canes.

Barker's role as presenter underlined the generational handoff in the room: a drummer introducing a drummer who can no longer play. Collins took the moment at his own pace, reached the podium slowly, and then held the room with the plainest version of his story he's given in public, no comeback language and no retirement language either.