Martin Phillipps on songs and survival
A few years after he was expected to die, The Chills’ Martin Phillipps is glad to talk heat pumps, happiness and Hep C with Virginia Fallon.
It’s a funny thing, being asked if you’re happy, and Martin Phillipps has to think about it for a while. Right now, he’s happy enough. He’s spent the morning watching a heat pump be installed at his Dunedin home and, apart from having to clear hundreds of DVDs out of the way, he’s stoked with it.
As for whether he’s happy in general – with life, his work, his world – things are pretty good, he says.
It might not be the most effusive response, but it’s enough coming from a man who shouldn’t even be alive to make it.
Phillipps’ past unhappiness has been well documented. The 57-year-old frontman of New Zealand band The Chills has battled drug addiction, alcoholism and crushing depression, but it was Hepatitis C that was meant to kill him.
The musician was told he was dying in 2016, after nearly two decades suffering from the virus he’d picked up after getting high with a friend. His mate had left a used syringe in a paper bag and Phillipps was stuck by the needle when he picked it up.
The drug use stemmed from depression following the dumping of his Dunedin band by its US label in the 1990s. He’d formed The Chills in the 1980s and with songs like Heavenly Pop Hit and I Love My Leather Jacket, the band became a big deal in New Zealand, but its overseas success had waned.
Unsurprisingly, the virus made his depression worse, and plunged him into ‘‘the dark years.’’
‘‘I have very low tolerance for anyone who says, ‘oh everyone gets the blues’. You just have no f ...... clue what it’s like, that dark space is not the normal blues,’’ he told Stuff in 2017.
Hep C attacks the liver and in 2016, with stage 4 cirrhosis from heavy drinking, Phillipps was expected to die within a year.
As it happened, he was on a 2017 reunion tour with The Chills when his doctor called to say a new wonder drug named Harvoni seemed to be working. And so far it has.
The heat pump looks like something NASA created, Phillipps says from his Dunedin house.
‘‘It took three and a half hours to install and meant having to shift a couple of hundred DVDs from my to-be-watched pile, but it’s great.’’ Other things are pretty great too.
The Chills new album Scatterbrain drops on May 14, and Phillipps says it’s a good one, even if it didn’t quite follow his initial plan.
‘‘We recorded and completed 13 songs and the album only contains 10. The three that were left off all worked out well but were the three I first wrote and they no longer fitted.
‘‘They were warning people about the usual stuff – the environment, corporate mayhem – but a couple of people pointed out the stuff that works best for me is when I actually write personally, about what’s going on in my own life. Scatterbrain seemed to be a very apt title for what was going on in my world.’’
What was going on was things like the death of his mum, the coronavirus, and a taking-stock of, well, pretty much everything, including the music industry.
The pandemic has hurt the band. A 30-day tour of the USA due to take place in November had to be cancelled, and the chance of getting back anytime soon is unlikely.
‘‘Suddenly the thing I’d worked on for decades was devalued, there was going to be no golden outcome to all the years the band and I have put in to this. It’s not quite worthless, but you’re told ‘go out on the road and tour’ and all of a sudden you can’t do that either.’’
What you can do, Phillipps says, is reflect, and while he stops short of saying he’s had a revelation, he’s definitely had a something. That’s why those first three songs didn’t make the cut.
‘‘They were an attempt to do something meaningful and talk about current issues, but people aren’t particularly interested in the point of view another single white male on what’s going on in the world. The best thing for the handful of people who are interested in The Chills’ music is to be honest with them, and you connect much better with people who are also going through this time of questioning.’’
Scatterbrain stems from the perspective of a man who finally understands both his age and mortality. Some of that is to do with the children he always thought he’d have, and the lessons in patience and suffering he’s missed out on by not having them.
‘‘Essentially I’m still the adolescent creative type, still on my own selfish little pathway but realising a lot of people around me have gained life skills I’ll never have. That’s part of what the record is about as well, realising it’s not going to change now.’’
Mortality-wise, Phillipps says he does feel like he’s been given a second chance, although the damage has already been done.
‘‘I only have 20 per cent of my liver working and that means my duration won’t be as long as most, but it does make you aware of trying to make use of every day a bit more than perhaps I did in the past.
‘‘I’ve been asked if I regret the whole dark past – the drug journey – and there are two sides to that. It was an experience that gave me insight and brought me to where I am now, no matter how rough, and I also met some people with stories I could not have dreamed of.
‘‘At the same time I wasted years of what could have been creative times. It’s a mixed bag.’’
Now sober, Phillipps is dubious about the quality of any creative process influenced by toxins.
‘‘When I was young a bit of marijuana or my first trip did genuinely inspire, but by and large it’s not your greatest material. It may up your output, but you have to be pretty careful when you are sober about reassessing and discarding that.’’
Creative types have a tendency to walk a slightly more troubled path than some.
‘‘We can fall into patches of darkness more easily... I’ve seen it too many times, we had another creative person down here take their lives in the past few days, and it’s endemic, it really is.’’
Asked once more if he’s happy, the answer comes a little quicker.
‘‘Overall, yes. I’m a human being, 57, and there’s a lot to consider, but at the same time feeling very fortunate I have this wonderful vehicle to get out and meet people.’’
As well as the new album, The Chills have a new tour beginning in April. The borders might be closed but there are still plenty of places to play in NZ, and despite his health issues Phillipps says four shows earlier this year proved that when it comes to performing, he’s still got it.
‘‘I’m always nervous before a show and yet as soon as that music starts, and I’m up there with my friends, and the power of that sound rises up, its like ‘yes, this is it, this is what I’m here for’.’’
‘‘When I was young a bit of marijuana or my first trip did genuinely inspire, but by and large it’s not your greatest material.’’ Martin Phillipps, above