HEADPHONE JUNGLE.(The Talk of the Town)(Phil Collins)(Interview)

The other day, at a recording session for the cast album of "Tarzan," Disney's new Broadway musical, Phil Collins, the drummer and singer who wrote the show's songs, walked across the floor of a recording studio in midtown. The studio was capacious. At the far end, as at a dance in a high-school gymnasium, were a band and some singers. Collins was wearing a dark T-shirt, pale-green linen pants, and black canvas sneakers. His head is small and round, like a globe, and closely shaved, so that the dark patterns of hair suggest land and the bald parts suggest water. He was adding percussion parts to the tracks--a small task, but one that he preferred to see to himself.

Collins came to rest by a microphone and a music stand. He put on a pair of headphones, like a pilot. From a table, he picked up a cylinder about the size of a spice bottle and held it in his left hand, with his elbow bent. The cylinder was filled with pellets. Over a speaker an engineer said, "Everybody ready to run? Here it comes . . . Rolling."

With the fervor of citizens just released from colonial rule, the actors sang, "Two worlds, one family," while Collins moved the shaker back and forth in front of the microphone. In the control room, one man said to another, "The back was better on that one, but the front was better on the one before it."

Meanwhile, Collins stepped to the middle of the studio and embraced a man in a dark shirt and jeans. He put his arm around him while a third man took a photograph of them. They parted. Briefly, Collins walked in circles. He picked up a tambourine. He lifted one knee, apparently to study a detail on his pants leg. Finally, he sat on a stool and rocked back and forth several times.

Over the speaker a man in the control room said, "End of measure fifty-seven, we cut to seventy-eight. No vamp." On these takes, Collins played ...