philbio

As well as being in Def Leppard, he's also in the solo-project Cybernauts with Joe Elliott.

Currently he resides in California with his...forgive my sketchiness on this point...fiansce/wife Anita. (If any Phil fans could possibly let me know which she is at this point it would be much appreciated.) Either way, my recollection of her is that she's a stunner with a particularly nice smile.

He also has a son called Rory by his ex-wife Jackie. (He cited this marriage as 'the biggest mistake of his life', but fortunately he seems to have got up the courage to try matrimony again now!)

Phil has a pretty wicked sense of humour, that incorporates such wit as what I like to refer to as his "onstage heckling" during VH-1's Storytellers performance.
Perhaps there had been a small contratemp between him and Joe before the concert - maybe it was a sort of routine the pair had worked out - or maybe Phil just felt like livening things up a little...but whatever it was he was certainly funny.

For any of you people who haven't seen it yet, (or for those of you that have but still don't have a clue what I'm yakking on about,) I'm referring to some of the countercomments he made to Joe's stage banter.
For example, when Joe went to the back of the stage to bring Rick into things a little more and, if I remember aright, do the introduction to Rock Of Ages, he said something along the lines of "Now, Rick doesn't get much of a look in usually, because I've got such a big mouth - " to which Phil rightly added "Yeah, and he doesn't have a microphone..."

Then a little later on, after that unprecedented happening when Joe forgot the lyrics to a song, Phil made a comment to the effect that "we don't really need you at all - the audience were doing just fine on their own!" Joe then suggested that he might as well f ck off...

All was purely said in jest though, and I hope we get to hear more of this onstage heckling from him on the upcoming tour - it adds zest!

Phil co-wrote all the Hysteria hits (commenting that 'Love Bites' was the only Lepp song that ever made his mother cry,) and has since been developing more individual song-writing talent on Slang, Euphoria, and hopefully X.

Incidentally, I think that his sterling solo guitar piece on Euphoria, 'Disintegrate', should be made the theme to a sci-fi programme as soon as possible.

As with the other Leppography pages on here, I'd really like a Phil fan of particular calibre to write me a little something about The Man for this page, as Connie has done for me on the Sav page. If you think that could be you, or you can clear that Anita thing up for me, or you just want to comment on how great my page is (ha ha ;) then feel free to drop me a line using the link below. Thanks for visiting!

Phil was born Philip Kenneth Collen (no laughing at the back there,) December 8th in 1957, somewhere in London...

He joined the Lepps just pre-Pyromania, in time to play on the already-written tracks, and get his face on all the cool promotional pictures. Previously he had been the star attraction of such classically named bands as 'Dumb Blondes', and 'Girl', (who, if you don't know, have some sort of Greatest Hits out now that Phil may well be on - check it out!)

He was an instant hit with all the (sensible) fans - especially after his very groovy solo as featured in the video for Photograph. He also gelled particularly well with his fellow guitarist Steve - so well, in fact, that through their assorted adventures they became known as The Terror Twins.