"I'm not quite sure what the song is about, but there's a lot of anger, a lot of despair and a lot of frustration." The story behind the global Phil Collins hit that Genesis wish they'd recorded

On March 28, 1978, Genesis kicked off their And Then They Were Three world tour at the The Broome Country Arena in Binghamton, New York. The tour would take in three American legs, and two runs through Europe, before climaxing with six Japanese shows, finally closing on December 3, '78 at the Kosei Nenkin Hall in Tokyo. The success of the tour proved that the band's popularity was not hampered by the departure, announced in October '77, of guitarist Steve Hackett, but it would prove to have devastating personal consequences for one of the band members.

In 1975, Phil Collins married aspiring Canadian actress Andrea Bertorelli. The pair had first met at drama school in London when they were just 11-years-old, and had dated as teenagers until Bertorelli had to return to her homeland for personal reasons: their relationship was later rekindled when Collins visited Canada with Genesis. When they married, Collins legally adopted his new wife's young daughter, Joely, and the couple had a child of their own - a son, Simon - in 1976, but Genesis' constant touring meant they were apart for long stretches of time. By 1978, Andrea was tiring of this situation.

"Genesis had done a tour that was far too long," Collins recalled in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone. "She said to me, 'We won’t be together if you do the next tour.' I said, I’m a musician. I have to go away and play. Just hold your breath when I’m over there. Then Genesis toured Japan. When I got back, she said she was leaving and taking the kids."

Home alone, Collins poured his emotions into his music. He set up a studio in his bedroom, moved in his drum kit, a Fender Rhodes electric piano, a Prophet 5 synth, and a new Roland CR-78 drum machine, and began writing music for what was to be Genesis' tenth studio album.

"One day I was working on a piece in D-minor," he told Rolling Stone. "I just wrote a sequence, and it sounded nice. I wrote the lyrics spontaneously. I’m not quite sure what the song is about, but there’s a lot of anger, a lot of despair and a lot of frustration."

Collins titled his new composition In The Air Tonight. What happened next, when Collins, Tanks Banks and Mike Rutherford regrouped at Collins' house in Guildford to pool their ideas for what would become Duke, remains a matter of dispute.

"It's down in history now that Tony Banks claims that I didn't play him In The Air Tonight," Collins told film-maker John Edginton. "But I did. I'm glad we didn't use it, because obviously I was left to my own devices."

"He didn't play In The Air Tonight," Banks insisted in the same documentary. "It doesn't matter whatever he told you. The first time I ever heard that, was when we were mixing Duke at Maison Rouge studio in London, and he just put it on, it was just the drumbox and the organ chords."

"I don't remember the moment when I played In The Air Tonight, I just was very proud of it, so I don't understand why I would not have done," Collins maintained. "Because at that point I had't made my [solo] record, so I didn't know how good or bad it was going to be. If anything, at least this song would have a home if it was on Duke. So I can't see the logic in saying I wouldn't have played them everything, or at least what I thought they'd like.... I don't remember holding anything back."

"That's not true," Banks told Vulture in 2023, responding to a query about which Phil Collins song he wishes the band's former frontman had given to Genesis "We always knew we wanted Misunderstanding and Please Don't Ask, so he took those for us."

Whichever version of the truth you choose to believe, history states that Collins ended up releasing In The Air Tonight on his debut solo album, Face Value, in 1981. The song went to number one in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, peaked at number two in the UK, and reached number 19 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It has since been certified for half a million physical sales in both the UK and US (plus three million digital sales in America, and 1.8 million digital sales in Britain), and remains Collins best-known song globally.

"I think there's such a great atmosphere about In the Air Tonight," Tony Banks admitted to Vulture. "But if Genesis had done it, I'd have probably screwed it up. I bet I would've added another chord or tried to do something with it and taken it somewhere else. I bet I would've said, Phil, what are you doing, you can't use just three chords in song. In a very simplified form, it has an essence of something that Genesis did well, which was a strong and moody atmosphere. That's my favorite of his songs and always has been. It's a great piece of music with the greatest drum riff of all time."

"Nobody knows what the song is about, and I kind of like the mystery," Collins told Rolling Stone. "And now NFL players use it to work out. I saw a video recently of Steph Curry singing it in his car, and it was just in an ad for milk chocolate. Where will it end? But I’m not complaining. It paid for this house we're in right now!"