Collins The Chameleon Despite A Divorce And Attacks By The Press, Singer Phil Collins Finds New Peace And Sets It To Music

He’s viewed as a superstar, but Phil Collins still wonders about fitting into today’s fast-changing music scene. Some of his albums have caught the public’s fancy, some haven’t.

So he’s eager for a reaction to his new disc, “Dance into the Light.” It’s a more upbeat, more world-music-influenced album than past efforts, despite being made while he’s endured a messy divorce and been ridiculed in the British tabloids.

None of which has stopped Collins.

“I’m very excited about the record, because I have no idea where I stand,” Collins says. “Every record that comes out is always a surprise, because musical tastes change so quickly nowadays and radio formats change with them. To be honest, I feel like I’m putting out my very first record.”

Collins has earned his excitement, because “Dance into the Light” is the happy climax to a year of profound change. He left the British tabloids behind, moving to Switzerland with his new girlfriend. He refused to do a “divorce album,” instead accenting the positive side of what he feels is a reborn life.

“The record has more energy than probably any of the other records I’ve made. It comes from feeling happy, from wanting to do something that was a lot more rhythmic, a lot more grooving,” he says from his new home in Geneva, where he overlooks the Alps and water-skis in Lake Geneva - something he never had time for in Britain.

The new album soars with African rhythms on the title track (currently a hot chart single) and on the satirical “Wear My Hat,” which echoes Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” Several other tracks provide exuberant pop-rock hints of the Byrds and Beatles via a shiny Rickenbacker guitar sound. The disc concludes with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” which not only illustrates Collins’ social consciousness, but sums up his new life.

Many of these sonic influences actually came from Collins’ recent listening habits in his car. “I was listening to a lot of Youssou N’Dour and Salif Keita, as well as Beatles and Byrds. And a lot of Dylan. I was going for different flavors.”

On Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the flavors came from building to a tribal drum sound. Collins played all the drums on the album, despite having a “dead bone” in his wrist after breaking it on tour last year. (“Basically, I can’t put any pressure on it because it’s still broken.”) The song was further enhanced by synthesized bagpipes. “I also used them on the last record,” Collins says, referring to the more somber “Both Sides of the Story.” “I’ve always loved the sound of bagpipes and have since learned to play them. I come on stage sometimes and play ‘Amazing Grace’ with them.”

As for the African rhythms, they came from Collins sitting in his hotel on the last tour, tinkering with a keyboard sequencer after listening to African albums.

The new disc is a nice rebound from “Both Sides of the Story,” whose content, he says, was too sad for the U.S. market. For that album, he played all the instruments and recorded at home. For the new disc, he enlisted his regular band - including guitarist Darryl Stuermer from Genesis, the supergroup that Collins recently left - and went into an outside studio.

“I also wrote a lot of things from a guitar point of view, which changed the feel of the record,” he says. “Normally, I’d write on a piano with my drum machine or keyboards. This time I was often writing in a very different way. Songs like ‘Love Police,’ ‘It’s in Your Eyes’ and ‘That’s What She Said’ really don’t sound like me because they’re based on strumming guitars like Tom Petty, (Roger) McGuinn and Dylan.”

There is one dark song on the record, namely “Just Another Story,” which denounces violence against women and the too-easy lure of drugs. But the most heartfelt tune is “Lorenzo,” an accelerating track in which he wrote music to lyrics by Lorenzo Odone, the subject of a 1992 film, “Lorenzo’s Oil.” Odone had contracted an incapacitating nerve disorder during his childhood in East Africa. His mother reached Collins and asked him to turn the lyrics (“Once upon a time I made a lion roar,” the boy wrote poignantly) into a song.

“Normally I wouldn’t do that, but I had seen the movie two or three times and I felt I knew this person,” says Collins. “I changed a couple of the lines, but 80 percent of it is as he wrote it. When I finished, his mother called me up and was very tearful, but said they loved it. It’s nice to know I touched his life in the same way he touched mine. And all proceeds will go to charity.”

Collins has always been a pop chameleon, moving from the art-rock of Genesis to everything from R&B/ pop to world music in his solo discs. Earlier this year, he quit Genesis to focus on his solo career. He also has a 20-piece, big-band jazz group that toured Europe this summer. His next album will be a live record of those performances.

In the meantime, there’s a pop tour to put together. And he’s just started working with the Disney Co. to score the animated film “Tarzan,” due for release next year.

However, Collins has still managed to find more time for his personal life. “I don’t want to be working 24 hours a day like I always did,” he says. “I’m drastically trying to find ways to cut back and have a life outside of music. I love skiing and I love boating. I love doing things that other people take for granted on the weekends, but I’ve never done. … And it’s nice to just look at the Alps. It’s peaceful here.”