Phil Collins' debut album is undoubtably a classic. We will always come back to what really happened then and why Face Value is so special. Read here for one attempt to answer these questions
When Phil Collins released his first solo album in 1981 he had been a member of Genesis for ten years and their singer for five years. Still he managed to create an extraordinary album with a touch of the "first time".
Reviews are frequently sober analyses that tend to work through the album as if through a list. There are, however, records that are far more stimulating to the brain than that, and Face Value is one of them. Christian Gerhardts tries to explain why this album probably left a deeper mark on the Genesis family than any other.
Double-album with new versions of Genesis classics and guest musicians such as Steve Wilson, Nik Kershaw, John Wetton, Steve Rothery or Simon Collins