PHIL COLLINS ORIGINAL RECORDING OF 'IN THE AIR TONIGHT'.
Q: When do the toms come in on the iconic 3-chord song?

If you'd asked me that, I would have said, "Oh, right after the words, 'It's no stranger to you and me' bah-bah bah-bah bah-bah bah-bah BAH! BAH!'"

Everyone with me on that, right? (A few of ya?)

Yeah, well about that - I'm listening to the original on YT and go figure: the toms are playing nearly all the way from the beginning (particularly accents on beats 2 and 4) and get progressively more present/busy right up until that big, famous break (which you can emulate with Toontrack's Hitmaker SDX expansion kit if you really needed to).

But seriously? (you see what I did there, right? Gosh, I'm old!)

Did anyone else get Mandela'd in their heads re 'In The Air Tonight' and the toms entry?

Share your Mandela effects song memory below - the moment you found out a lyric or something in the music was not what you'd always believed it to be.

Happy New Year to y'all!

 

Apparently there are several versions, you were thinking of this one -

No Mandela involved.

 

WOW! I'm NOT LOSING MY FREAKIN' MIND! How did you know about that and WHAT do you know about this? Is THIS the version that made radio airplay for the most part or was it the other (toms-enhanced) version that everyone was hearing back in the day?

You are the bomb sir!
Thank you for clearing this up!

 

Asked and answered, re the above: Wikipedia

"The original single version of "In the Air Tonight" features extra drums that play underneath the song until the signature drum crash (referred to by fans as the "magic break") appears. These were added at the suggestion of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun. In 2007, Collins wrote:

Ahmet came down to the final mix in the cutting room in New York ... The drums don't come in until the end but Ahmet didn't know that at this point, because on the demo the drums hadn't come in at all; it was only drum machine all the way. And he was saying, "Where's the down beat, where's the backbeat?" I said, "The drums come in in a minute." "Yeah, you know that and I know that, but the kids don't know that; you've got to put the drums on earlier." So we added some drums to the mix and put it out as a single."

So, chances are, if you were listening to 'AM radio' in the 80's, you heard the added toms layer. But, you see, growing up in Toronto, Q107 FM was the big rock station for quality listening and I think they concentrated on the album version for the playlists. If anyone can confirm this, that'd be smashing!

Thanks to Poiuy for revealing the Album version was the one I'd heard 'all my life'. (you see what I did there again? Man I'm a laugh a minute today!)

 

The Face Value album is a special place for me.
I was in AIT schooling in the US Army and had bought the tape ...
I bought it due to having heard during the break between basic training and AIT...
I had some idea that "In the Air Tonight" was popular or I never would have heard it during that time in my life, but I felt like I was the only one who knew how good the rest of the album was - LOL
Anyone who hasn't heard the other songs....ought to

 

Thanks for the input! Yeah, I never got into much of P.C.'s stuff, but just for fun, checked out the songs on this album. Some interesting stuff - interesting cover of Tomorrow Never Knows. In Toronto, the PC stuff was really over-played, so I started to hate 'the hits' after a few too many passes, but when he jumped in with Genesis again and came out with "I can't Dance" and "Land of Confusion" I just loved that! Best hit for me was Against All Odds - most emotionally powerful song next to I.T.A.T. he ever did.
Later,
Cardamom

 

I own the original 7'' single and I confirm that there is an additional drums layer before the "no stranger to you and me" smash.
Actually, I was a bit disappointed when I got the album (version), -I asked myself: where are the drums here?-
I felt it a bit lacking in energy, but it's just IMO.

 

Yes i remember when this happened it was confusing, i think it was about 1988 that another version came out with toms at the start.

 

No the album version is the only version..

 

It was 1981, and THERE was a single version:

Discogs:
Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight

And this is mine:

An this is a snippet from the digital rip I did many years ago:
7'' single version
Edit:
Basically is the same as the original videoclip:

 

Last edited: Jan 17, 2023

I'm hard pushed to find a better video than the Cadbury one

 

Everything that was recorded at Phil's home studio is on the album version. The parts that were added after are. The acoustic drums, Bass and electric guitar, The last and most overlooked part is the vocoder background vocals. Phil played drums and keys on In The Air Tonight. The Roland CR-78 was the drum machine. The synthesizer used in the recording was the legendary Sequential Circuits Prophet-5. John Robinson did the vocoder parts live from 1982-1986. Current live keyboardist Brad Cole has been playing keyboards and the vocoder live since 1990. There is the version that is on the album with no acoustic drums until the famous drum fill. The other version has tribal drum beat during the song before the famous drum fill. I like the album version better. To me the tribal beats are to distracting and are not needed. The tribal beats actually ruin the atmosphere of the song. The version that is most often played at sporting events is the album version

 

That's wacky. Never heard that single version even back in the day that I can remember!

 

Well, I was there in 1981 when I saw the clip of the single ranking up to 10 tops, and that's the version with additional drums.
And the original clip with the additional drums is from the Phil Collins official channel.

Whether you like it or not does not make any difference, to stay in topic, this is not a Mandela effect.

 

In case you forget, the Mandela Effect is when you swear something you remember one way turns out to be close to reality, but not exactly right. It's often something reported by others who share the same wrong memory as you despite the evidence of reality (proving once and for all, it's a glitch in the fabric of the universe!). Phew - now that that's explained.

All In The Family's Theme song. Anybody else remember it this way?
As a kid (1st year Gen-X boy here) I COULD HAVE SWORN that Edith's chords on the piano were more ragtime influenced than what I now find out they are (simply played major chords, mostly). I also remember Archie's last line, "Those ... were ... the ... days" as being a descending line from the the 5th to the 3rd in the scale. Nope! It's just him riffing on the 5th the whole time!!

What's a 'musical Mandela effect' you and your buds have experienced?

 

I've had more than my fair share of musical mandala experiences...

 

In fact when I sing it to myself you're right!!!!

He sings it differently in the two places... that's where our feeling comes from...

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 4, 2023

15 Music Mandela Effects

 

Last edited: Aug 13, 2023

I knew my memory was screwed. I've always sang "Sweet dreams are made of these". oh well...

When you think about it, or rather when you just sing it, it starts to make more sense as "this" turns into kind of "these" by your own vocal cords.

 

Last edited: Aug 13, 2023