Daryl Stuermer may best be known as the six-stringer behind Phil Collins' biggest hits, with his electric guitar chops on full display on iconic tracks such as Sussudio, In The Air Tonight, Easy Lover, and One More Night.
Aside from being Collins' right-hand man, Stuermer also had (as he aptly puts it) a “permanent part-time stint” as lead guitarist with Genesis, from late 1977 onward. Now, in a frank conversation with Vertex Effects, the guitarist has shared his Parkinson's diagnosis and revealed how the condition has impacted his playing.
“It has a lot of effect for me to play a steady rhythm,” he tells Vertex Effects’ Mason Marangella. “Like when we did the Genesis tour in 2020, 2022 [The Last Domino? Tour], within that period, after the pandemic, or during the pandemic, I was noticing I was having a hard time playing a simple thing, like the beginning of Turn It On Again, which is steady.”
He continues, “‘Why am I having a problem playing this?’ I didn't know yet. And the thing is, like when I was just playing Easy Lover, I could play that solo up to the fast line. For some reason, [when I] play something that fast and that accurate – where it's all picking, not hammering, or anything like that – it's all picking. This hand just doesn't work like it did. I don't have the control that I had before."
And while Stuermer says there are things he can still accurately play, he has noticed that when he gets “a little excited about something” or “get anxious about something, I shake a little more”.
“I was diagnosed about eight months ago or a year ago,” he details. “It was after the tour, which made me understand, because I was trying to play certain things. I thought, ‘Is this just me getting older? Is this why I can't play it?’ No, it was really [because] Parkinson's was coming in.”
Thankfully, Stuermer mentions how he hasn't gotten “worse than I was originally”, and even divulges that there are “some things I can play now that I couldn't play before.
“What happens is you have to kind of tell your brain to do it a different way, or think differently,” he asserts, right after showcasing the first few notoriously tricky bars of The Police's Message In A Bottle. “And your brain finally finds a different way.”
Last year, Judas Priest's Glenn Tipton spoke to Guitar World about his Parkinson's diagnosis, and how he will continue “writing and playing for as long as I can”.
