LAKE BUENA VISTA - Pop musician Phil Collins was rehearsing for a benefit concert a few years ago when his pal Sting asked for advice.
At the time Collins was completing work on Disney's animated film Tarzan, including the song You'll Be in My Heart that later won an Academy Award. Sting had recently agreed to compose the score for another Disney production, The Emperor's New Groove. Both artists were making their first forays into full scale Hollywood musicianship, rather than merely contributing a song or two to soundtracks.
In Sting's case, for reasons Collins explained last weekend, The Emperor's New Groove may have been his last Disney assignment.
"He said: "You're working for Disney, right? Are you enjoying it?' " Collins said. "I told him "Yeah, I'm having a great time. You know, sometimes you have to change things, cut songs down, make them shorter.'
"Sting said: "Change things? (Forget) that. I'm not changing anything.' That's a direct quote."
Hint: Sting used a different f-word, making clear his reluctance to compromise his creativity.
"I'm not speaking out of turn here," Collins continued. "Sting's a friend of mine. But he said: "I'm not changing anything.' I said, "O-kayyy, you'll find out.' "
Sting eventually was stung by Disney's decision to change the musical tone of The Emperor's New Groove, deleting much of his musical score.
"He had the worst experience because they did change the film on him," Collins said. "But he didn't go into it with that collaborative spirit. He would have eventually found out that's the way you do it. He would have learned like I had to learn."
As a result, Collins is completing a Broadway adaptation of Tarzan and accepting congratulations for another Disney soundtrack with top 40 success written all over it. Brother Bear, opening Nov. 1, is Collins' first attempt to score an entire film, collaborating with Mark Mancina, who handled the background music chores for Tarzan.
"They're the only ones brave enough to give me these opportunities," Collins joked. "Nobody else has offered me a soundtrack.
"Doing this film, thinking about an entire score and arranging things for an orchestra, has prepared me for doing this thing on Broadway. I was trying to push my envelope and just learn more about what I do."
Brother Bear also reminded Collins that taking one for the team is a more vital part of the filmmaking process than the recording business, where solo acts call the shots.
"When I said yes to doing this, I thought I was going to sing all the songs," Collins said. "I think everybody else did as well for a while."
That was before Disney CEO Michael Eisner suggested that having Collins sing the opening number, Great Spirits, might have viewers automatically making comparisons to Tarzan.
"Obviously they didn't want that and I didn't want it," Collins said. "I was a little bit upset about it at the time because I wanted to sing."
The filmmakers turned to Tina Turner, semiretired and living in Switzerland where, coincidentally, Collins resides. Her rendition sets the spiritual tone for an adventure set 10,000 years ago when a boy (voice of Joaquin Phoenix) is magically transformed into a bear for lessons in seeing the world through the eyes of your enemy.
Then the filmmakers wanted a choir feel for Collins' mystical theme Transformation, so the Bulgarian Women's Choir was hired. Later, someone up the corporate ladder at Disney suggested that other voices beside Collins would help a number titled Welcome, sung when a bear clan goes salmon fishing.
"Well, by this time I was getting used to not singing my songs, you know?" Collins wisecracked. "The Blind Boys of Alabama came to mind, so that's why they're there."
Sting would have been tearing out his remaining hair by that time, but Collins rolled with the flow.
"If you don't want to bend and appreciate that you're a team making a film, you're sunk," Collins said. "I don't know all the answers. You take on everybody's suggestions and go down that line. It turns out that the right suggestion will get used. Sometimes they'll listen to something I've got to say that isn't about music, so I have to listen to what they say."
In fact, two of the funniest gags in Brother Bear - involving head-butting rams and a flock of geese - made the final cut because Collins griped when they were deleted. He likes that Gary Larson-style of humor, guessing what animals really say to each other.
However, it took awhile for co-directors Aaron Blaise and Bob Walker to feel comfortable sharing those kinds of creative suggestions. Collins took them aside one day and demanded that they speak up about his music.
"They're first-time directors, they'd never met me, probably heard my stuff on the radio," Collins said. "Suddenly they're in the position of telling me: "I don't like it.' I could see they were worried: "How do we tell him? What do we say?'
"I told them: "Let's cut out the first two years of this relationship and go straight to the third year and let's just be friends. Tell me what you want in any shape or form and I won't be offended.' I wanted to get that uneasy part of the relationship out of the way so we could move along quicker: "You don't like this? How about this? I've got one in blue.' "
On the other hand, Collins' familiarity with Mancina made the correction of a simple first-time composer's mistake easier to solve. He tried too hard to be another Ennio Morricone (The Mission) or Dimitri Tiomkin (The Alamo), two film composers he greatly admires. Collins took the liberty of writing music for a couple of scenes and sending it to Mancina, who called him back and told the singer to sit down and grab a pen.
"He told me all these things that were wrong with what I did," Collins said. "For a moment, it was depressing. But on the other hand I could see what he was talking about. I changed the way I was going to be doing this. Things like leaving space for the action rather than just filling it up with this dense piece of music. But he told me before I went along and did a whole bunch of stuff like that. That's what I was trying to get the directors to do. "In the end, I've just got to sit down and write songs. It's the same as writing for me. The only difference is that I have a story to follow. I have to hit certain marks from a story standpoint.
"My criterion is: If the film suddenly got canceled, would I like these songs enough to put them on my record? Yes or no? And if it's no they'll never get to hear it. What I present (to the filmmakers) is stuff that I would think, yeah, I'd put it on my record. I have to please them, but I still write for me."
