Martin Phillipps, The Chills’ Founding Frontman, Dies Aged 61
Martin Phillipps, the acclaimed singer-songwriter whose band the Chills was a mainstay of the 1980s New Zealand indie-rock scene that influenced the likes of R.E.M. and Pavement, has died. He was 61.
His death was announced in a statement posted on Sunday, 28 July on the Chills’ social media accounts. It read: “It is with broken hearts the family and friends of Martin Phillipps wish to advise Martin has died unexpectedly,” the post read. “The family ask for privacy at this time. Funeral arrangements will be advised in due course.”
The statement didn’t say when or where Phillipps died or specify a cause but noted that he’d died “unexpectedly.” A 2019 documentary about Phillips and the Chills chronicled the musician’s struggles with hepatitis C. New Zealand’s Otago Daily Times reported that Phillipps had been admitted recently to Dunedin Hospital with liver problems.
A proponent of the so-called Dunedin sound associated with New Zealand’s Flying Nun record label, the Chills played jangly yet propulsive guitar pop that set wistful melodies against arrangements drawing on punk and psychedelia. Phillipps, who wrote with a poetic flair about art, death and romance, was the band’s only constant member in a career that attracted a devoted cult following across four decades.
After playing in a short-lived group called the Same, Martin Phillipps formed the Chills in 1980 with a line-up that included his sister Rachel. In 1982, the band signed to Roger Shepherd’s Flying Nun imprint — whose other other tightly connected acts were The Clean, The Bats and The Verlaines — and proceeded to make a string of highly-regarded singles including the stomping I Love My Leather Jacket and Pink Frost, which became perhaps the band’s best-known song.
“I want to stop my crying / But she’s lying there dying,” Phillipps sang over the latter’s oddly buoyant bass line — a striking juxtaposition that led Spin magazine to advise readers to “imagine Paul McCartney attempting Joy Division.”
Mortality and bad luck stalked the Chills. Proceeds from Pink Frost were diverted to cancer research following the death of drummer Martyn Bull, who succumbed to leukaemia in 1983 just as the band was gaining an international foothold.
Having already cycled through more than half a dozen line-ups and spent time based in the UK, The Chills issued their first studio LP, Brave Words, in 1987. For 1990’s Submarine Bells, they signed in the U.S. to Warner Bros. subsidiary Slash Records, which helped drive the knowingly titled Heavenly Pop Hit to No. 17 on Billboard’s modern rock chart.
Eager to capitalize on that success, Slash brought the Chills to Los Angeles to record the band’s next album, 1992’s Soft Bomb. Peter Holsapple, who’d played with R.E.M. on its smash Out of Time LP, contributed keyboards in the studio, while Van Dyke Parks devised a characteristically whimsical orchestral arrangement for the song Water Wolves.
Parks, the veteran pop eccentric known for his work in the ’60s with Randy Newman and the Beach Boys, invited the Chills to Capitol Studios to watch him oversee the recording session, Phillipps told KCRW in 2022. Yet the band showed up late: “We took a wrong turn, so we missed the speech that Van Dyke gave the orchestra about what they were doing,” Phillipps said. “But it was beautiful being there and hearing it come to life.”
The Chills spilt following the tour for Soft Bomb, but later reformed and it speaks volumes for Phillipps’ growth that the final lineup of The Chills remained almost entirely intact for more than 20 years. Beginning with 2015’s Silver Bullets (one of rock’s most rewarding, and least likely comebacks from oblivion) they toured the world to great acclaim, releasing two more studio albums, Snow Bound and Scatterbrain.
A documentary about the band, The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, in 2019 shone a light on Phillipps’ life, including being told he may only have months to live due to the hepatitis C he contracted in the 1990s. He had said the film forced him to look at himself closely, and open up old wounds.
Paying tribute to Phillipps, Neil Finn of Crowded House — a fellow New Zealander whose early band Split Enz once enlisted the Chills as an opening act — called Phillips “one of NZ’s greatest songwriters” and described him as having been “fascinated by and devoted to the magic and mystery of music.”