Author: Henry

Kevin Costner was Yellowstone‘s biggest star until his character was killed off midway through the show’s fifth and final season. Costner, 71, who played John Dutton, the family patriarch, had confirmed in 2024 he would not be returning to the show for its final episodes.

On the Sunday, June 28 episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan offered some rare comments on Costner’s decision to leave, saying that initially, the Dances with Wolves star was “only supposed to be in the first three seasons” of the hit neo-Western series.

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“That was in his contract. In my mind, that’s when his youngest son takes over [on the show]… But the network was so scared of not having Kevin be a part of it, even though Kevin was ready. He was ready to go,” Sheridan said, via PEOPLE. “He had other things he wanted to do but he stayed on for another two seasons.”

“And that was just because the show was such a behemoth. It was such a huge hit,” Sheridan added. “The notion of giving up a hit before it had run out of juice to squeeze is very foreign to a network. There was even pressure from some of the cable companies wanting to put it in their deals, that they were going to get an X number of seasons of Yellowstone to re-up what this cable company is. That’s the power of a really big hit show.”

An exit clouded in finger-pointing

Two years ago, when Costner officially exited the series, his departure came with a back-and-forth over whether the actor or Sheridan and his production team were to blame.

“My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project [Horizon] he wanted to direct,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. “He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did.”

Costner, meanwhile, refuted reports that scheduling conflicts had anything to do with it.

“That’s not true,” he said. “That’s bulls–t. That’s a lie…They made the contract and they picked the days…They weren’t able to make those. Horizon was set in the middle, but Yellowstone was first position. I fit [Horizon] into the gaps. [Yellowstone] just kept moving their gaps…I left my movie to be on time for them for [season] 5B.”

Stefan Joubert of London Drum Institute named In the Air Tonight one of the most iconic drum solos of all time.

“You know the moment: the song builds up, the tension rises, and then – bam! – that iconic drum fill hits, and you can’t help but air-drum along. Phil Collins’ solo in In the Air Tonight is short but legendary,” he said.

“It’s the kind of drum break that’s so simple yet so powerful that it’s become a cultural moment all on its own.”

But there’s a slight problem with Joubert’s ranking. Collins’ iconic playing on the song isn’t the problem, but there’s more of a technicality at play as the “solo” on In the Air Tonight isn’t really a solo at all.

It’s a drum fill.

Phil Collins Settles Debate

While many view Collins’ work as one of the best drum solos in history, he previously admitted it’s just a fill.

“Although that fill has apparently become a trade mark of mine – it could have been anything. I didn’t sit down and think, ‘What would be the best drum fill to do?’ I just decided where I wanted the drums to come in, and sat down and just did that. There’s probably another take somewhere with me doing something totally different,” he said in a 1985 interview.

During the interview he also revealed how they got the sound for the recording, when he was playing on Peter Gabriel’s self-titled third album.

“I was playing around in the live room while Hugh the engineer was mucking around with some noise gates and compressors, and this drum sound started developing and I was hearing it through the headphones,” he said.

“I started playing with the sound and playing [the In the Air Tonight pattern]because that was the tempo being set by the gate’s cutting off. Pete [Gabriel] was in the control room and said that was great, ‘just do that for 10 minutes’. So I started playing the pattern. I knew it was good and I said to Pete afterwards, ‘If you don’t want it, I do’.”

Collins went on to create his biggest hit reaching No. 2 in the United Kingdom and No. 19 in the United States.

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