New Wax Wednesday

Here’s an upcoming multidisc collection that practically whispers one of its song titles as an instruction for potential, pun-intended suitors: Take me home. Or, to be more precise, Phil Collins and his team are suiting up for a proper, imminent release of the sartorially titled No Jacket Required (Fully Tailored) 180g 4LP box set via Atlantic/Rhino on September 12, 2025.

This well-manicured 4LP box set is intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Collins’ third solo album, No Jacket Required, which was initially released on Atlantic in February 1985 and has since gone on to become Diamond-certified, signifying over 10 million copies sold in the U.S. alone. In addition to the new vinyl incarnation of Jacket that includes three additional discs comprised of live cuts, demos, and other rare offerings, a companion, separately released BD features a new Dolby Atmos mix of the original album by surround-sound maestro Steven Wilson.

The 4LP deluxe collection, No Jacket Required (Fully Tailored), is pressed on 180g black vinyl and features a 20-page booklet complete with new liner notes and photos. LP1 features the original album remastered and cut at half-speed at Abbey Road Studios. Said half-speed mastering was most likely done by Miles Showell, who performed similar duties for Phil’s September 2024 5LP box set Both Sides (All Sides), which was released by Craft Recordings/Rhino essentially in conjunction with that underrated, one-man-band, November 1993-released album’s 30th anniversary (plus one) — and ditto re Collins/Genesis engineering stalwart Nick Davis likely having handled the Jacket remastering. (If we hear/confirm anything different in regards to the new box set’s production personnel, we will update this section accordingly.)

The Jacket 4LP box set’s SRP is $124.99, and you can pre-order it from Music Direct here, and/or via the MD link graphic below that’s just ahead of the tracklisting section. (The BD with the Atmos mix goes for $24.99, btw.)

As for the rest of the Jacket box’s music content, LPs 2, 3, and 4 comprise 23 additional songs, many of them B-sides, live material, and rare performances appearing for the first time on vinyl — including a stripped-back performance of “One More Night (BBC Live Session)” (LP3, Side B, Track 1), and “Long Long Way to Go” (LP3, Side B, Track 2), the latter track having been culled from Phil’s iconic appearance at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. Some of the other tracks that inhabit LPs 2-4 that are making their above-noted LP debuts, such as three of the demos on LP4, Side A, were included on Disc 2 of Atlantic’s April 2016 2CD digipak edition of Jacket — itself alternately subtitled Extra Large Jacket Required. (Can’t keep all your Jackets pressed and neat without a hanger, er, scorecard.)

As someone who eschewed purchasing No Jacket Required on vinyl when it first came out at the front end of the final semester of my senior year in high school — mainly due to its overwhelming ubiquity on both the AM/FM airwaves and on MTV — I’ve come to appreciate spinning all 10 tracks on wax in recent years, mainly via the 2016 180g LP reissue on Atlantic. I’ve especially grown fond of the arrangements and performances on certain Side B tracks (the label of which is shown above), such as Don Myrick’s sax solo and Daryl Stuermer’s guitar wrangling on “Inside Out” (Track 4) and the blending of Peter Gabriel and Helen Terry’s background vocals on “Take Me Home” (Track 5), now that some time has gone by for me to listen to this album with better intent and belated appreciation. Heck, I even have more respect for “One More Night” at the end of Side 1 (Track 5), after zeroing in on Phil’s layered vocals on the title phrase and choruses, his understated Roland TR-808 drum machine work and Yamaha DX7 synth programming, and Arif Mardin’s string arrangements. (Myrick’s alto sax solo on “Night” is also quite tasteful and classy, in a John Anthony Helliwell kind of way.) Needless to say, I expect to hear great things once I drop the needle on the new half-speed-mastered Jacket LP-to-come.

When I sat down with Phil in person on February 4, 2016, in New York City to discuss that year’s solo-LP reissue series that had been dubbed Take a Look at Me Now, he told me he preferred LPs and the vinyl format because “if you had a great side closer, they [the listener] would want to turn it over. With CDs, it all went on one side, so people started to say, ‘Hey, I’m not going to buy an album that’s only got three or four good songs at the beginning, and the rest I could do without. I’ll just buy the three or four songs.’” And then Collins added the kicker, with a wistful smile attached: “Personally, I have fond memories of putting a coin on the needle to stop it from jumping.” (Been there, done that!)

Growing up in England, his family had one of those big Grundig consoles, with a lid that closed. “And,” Collins added, “I used to play drums with that console playing behind me, so I could play along to the records that I loved.” Said records were made up of “the whole ’60s thing,” in his words. “I remember listening to [The Beatles’] Sgt. Pepper the day it came out [June 1, 1967],” Collins continued. “I went out and bought it, came back, put it on, and I was looking at the cover. You lived and breathed it.” (Many of us continue to do that album cover living/breathing thing to this day, myself very much included.)

Brief sidenote: If you are a fan of Phil’s solo career, Analogue Productions’ relatively recent Atlantic 75 Series 45rpm 180g 2LP versions of his first two solo forays, February 1981’s Face Value and November 1982’s Hello, I Must Be Going! — mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, cut to lacquer from a 1/4in EQ’d Dolby tape copy of the original master tape, and pressed at QRP — are both worth the $60-per investment (though Face Value may in fact be going for a higher face value than that, since it’s currently harder to find, at least as of this posting). Ratings-wise, I give the Atlantic 75 Face Value a 10 for the Music and 10.5 for Sound (though “In the Air Tonight” on its own rates a full 11!), while the Atlantic 75 Hello gets an 8.5 for the Music, but also a 10.5 for the Sound (but ditto re an individual 11 just for “I Don’t Care Anymore”). Both are essential listening — as are the Atlantic 75 editions of the Genesis catalog to date, albeit a story for another time.

A few more Jacket stats now, as per the official press info, along with some of the usual MM notes added. No Jacket Required mixed Collins’ then-trademark emotional balladry alongside the strong funk and R&B influences that really began blossoming on his first two solo LPs. The four hit singles on Jacket — “Sussudio,” “One More Night,” ”Don’t Lose My Number,” and “Take Me Home” — would all also become staples of the man’s solo-band live shows in the years that followed. No Jacket Required was a clear global hit, reaching No. 1 in 11 countries, including the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. The album received three Grammy Awards: Best Album, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and Producer of the Year for Collins.

No Jacket Required has sold over 25 million copies to date worldwide, reached 6x platinum in the UK, and also won two Brit Awards — Album of the Year and Best Male Solo Artist. It was the second-best-selling album of 1985 in the UK (behind Dire Straits’ forever epic Brothers in Arms, of course!), and it spent five consecutive weeks at No. 1 overseas as well. Here in the U.S., “Sussudio” and “One More Night” were both No. 1 singles. Collins’ No Jacket Required World Tour played 85 shows in 12 countries, concluding with two special performances at Live Aid on July 13, 1985 — the first being at Wembley Stadium in London, and the second at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on the same day — right after Collins infamously flew across the Pond on the Concorde. Ah, those were indeed the days — and there was no jacket required for that Live Aid performance either, come to think of it . . .

PHIL COLLINS
NO JACKET REQUIRED (FULLY TAILORED)
180g 4LP (Atlantic/Rhino)

LP1, Side A
1. Sussudio
2. Only You Know And I Know
3. Long Long Way To Go
4. I Don’t Wanna Know
5. One More Night

LP1, Side B
1. Don’t Lose My Number
2. Who Said I Would
3. Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore
4. Inside Out
5. Take Me Home

LP2, Side A
1. Sussudio (Live, 1990)
2. Don’t Lose My Number (Live, 1997)
3. Who Said I Would (Live, 1985)
4. Long Long Way To Go (Live, 1994)

LP2, Side B
1. Only You Know And I Know (Live, 1994)
2. Easy Lover (Live, 1997)
3.Inside Out (Live, 1990)

LP3, Side A
1. Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore (Live, 1990)
2. One More Night (Live, 1990)
3. Take Me Home (Live, 1990)

LP3, Side B
1. One More Night (BBC Live Session)
2. Long, Long Way To Go (Live Aid, 7/13/1985)
3. Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) (Live, 1985)
4. Sussudio (A Hot Night In Paris)

LP4, Side A
1. Only You Know And I Know (Demo)
2. One More Night (Demo)
3. Take Me Home (Demo)
4. Sussudio (Demo)

LP4, Side B
1. The Man With The Horn
2. I Like The Way
3. We Said Hello Goodbye
4. Medley Mega Mix (Sussudio / Don’t Lose My Number / You Can’t Hurry Love)
5. Separate Lives