Phil Collins considering a return to music?

Phil Collins has revealed that he is "thinking about" making a return to music. Four years after announcing that he had been forced to give up drumming, the musician says that in addition to considering his own comeback he is mulling a reunion of Genesis.

"I have started thinking about doing new stuff," Collins recently told German media. He made these comments at the Stuttgart premiere of Tarzan, a stage musical based on Disney's Collins-soundtracked cartoon. "[Maybe playing] some shows again, even with Genesis," he admitted to Bild am Sonntag. "Everything is possible. We could tour in Australia and South America. We haven't been there yet".

Collins, 62, hasn't played live since 2010, and not with Genesis since 2007. According to earlier interviews, he abandoned the drums after sustaining major damage to his spine. "I was going to stop drumming anyway," he told Rolling Stone in 2010. "I don't miss it." He also confessed to having suicidal thoughts, exacerbated by his third divorce.

Now, Collins' children have inspired him to return to the stage. Matthew, 8, and Nicholas, 12, apparently want to see him play, and while the artist has ignored the pleas of his manager, he has said he is motivated by his sons. Even the musician's older children are enthusiastic: "[My father is] doing really well," Simon Collins, frontman for the prog-rock band Sound of Contact, told Smashing Interviews. "He's starting to write again actually and spending more time with family, myself included."

Apart from a covers LP released in 2010, Collins' last full-length was the 2002 record Testify. It was the only album of Collins' solo career not to reach the top five.