Phil Collins

Phil Collins wrote "In the Air Tonight" in the wreckage of his first marriage. He was alone in a house in Surrey after his wife had left with their children, and the song, with its brooding synthesizer and that famous thunderclap of drums, became his first solo hit in 1981. It turned the drummer from Genesis into one of the biggest pop stars of the decade, and it was built almost entirely from domestic heartbreak.

His chart is weighted toward exactly that territory. Collins was born at 12:05 a.m. on January 30, 1951, in London, a time rated B by Astro-Databank, and four planets fall in the fourth house: the Sun and Venus in Aquarius, and Mars and Jupiter in Pisces. The fourth is the part of the wheel concerned with home, family and private life. With so much there, astrologers would expect someone whose deepest material comes from the household, and his early solo albums are full of it: separation, loss and the strange quiet of an emptied house.

He started as a child actor, playing the Artful Dodger in the original West End production of Oliver! In 1970 he answered an ad and became the drummer for Genesis, then the band's lead singer when Peter Gabriel left in 1975. Under Collins, Genesis became a stadium act while his solo career ran alongside it, through No Jacket Required, "Against All Odds" and "Another Day in Paradise." At Live Aid in 1985 he played in London, flew to the United States on Concorde and played again in Philadelphia the same day.

His Moon is at the very start of Scorpio, in the first house. Scorpio is the sign of emotional intensity, and a first-house Moon tends to show feelings close to the surface, even when the person tries to hide them. That raw quality runs through his best-known vocals, which often sound less like performances than confessions.

His Ascendant is Libra: charm, likability, the knack of getting along. On first meeting that comes across as friendly and easy, and his public persona in the 1980s was exactly that: the approachable everyman, balding and good-humored, at a time when rock stars were supposed to be remote. The combination of a Libra face and a Scorpio Moon helps explain the contrast between the genial interviews and the bleakness of some of the songs.

Later in life, injuries and nerve damage made it impossible for him to drum. He continued singing, wrote the music for Disney's Tarzan and won an Academy Award for "You'll Be in My Heart." When Genesis played its final tour in 2021 and 2022, his son Nic sat behind the drum kit while Collins sang from a chair.

The house in Surrey is long gone. The fourth-house planets kept supplying the material.