Martin Phillipps

GONE interview #1 20/9/04

(c) Andrew O'Connell 2004.

GONE: Lets go back to the Same. That's where your musical career kicked off, was that in 1979?

MARTIN: 1978.

GONE: How old were you then?

MARTIN: Must have been fifteen or probably just turned sixteen. No fifteen.

GONE: Were your key influences coming from the whole English punk rock explosion or did you have some literary influences too?

MARTIN: Oh definitely musical but I really didn't know much about what was going on. I didn't have the kind of context that like Chris Knox or the Kilgours or even other people in the Same like Jeff Batts who went on to be in the Stones and Craig Easton who went on to the Verlaines and stuff. They had a much better idea, you know they used to get like Sounds & Melody Maker & NME and stuff but I was like . . . I'd been a big Bowie fan and I'd brought Queen - A night at the Opera and a couple of Kiss records. Then this whole punk thing happened and I suddenly realised - 'I'm going the wrong way you know?'. I was only just kind of turning around and finding this whole world of music. One real moment was umm I'd had Lou Reed - 'Rock & Roll Animal' . The version of Heroin which on that is . . .coming back to it now it's still pretty cool but it's very heavy metally compared to the Velvets and then one night sort of stoned listening to the Velvets first album and hearing Heroin played without all the distortion but just so much more powerfully. It was a revelation you know? Just shonky but really much more powerful.

GONE: What high school did you go to?

MARTIN: Logan Park High School.

GONE: They would have been more supportive of the arts than say a rugby focused school like Otago Boys.

MARTIN: Yeah definitely but it was just starting to become that kind of school then. I guess in some ways we were some of the first people to form bands and stuff.

GONE: How long had you been playing when you started the Same?

MARTIN: I'd only just started basically. I'd had enforced piano lessons maybe three years before that. I didn't take it in much. I think my piano teacher who was umm Gail Donaghue, who ended up running for the National party. She had that standard way of teaching piano which I think just kills your enthusiasm. You know just 'go back to tiny tots' with those stupid wee tunes and stuff. They should just teach you a few chords and get you to start playing some rock 'n' roll and learn about scales and playing melodies and stuff. And then sort of start teaching you fingering techniques. Get your interest in music up first. I just virtually gave up music after being taught piano. Just crazy!

GONE: At least you would have had a little grounding in that you would have known what notes and chords were.

MARTIN: Yeah exactly that sort of helped but when we started in the Same I didn't even know how to do a proper chord I was just like playing on one string.

GONE: So back then in 1978 you must have just been so excited to just be in a band! When was the Same's first gig? Was it at a party or something?

MARTIN: No. I've got the date back at the house. It was supporting the Clean and it was the Clean's first headline gig at the beneficiaries hall. It's now called Raphael's or something.

GONE: How did you know those guys? Like the Kilgours, where did they go to school?

MARTIN: They went to Otago Boys but Jeff Batts and Craig Easton had both been at Otago Boys and came across to Logan Park so they sort of got talking and found out we were in a band and they needed a support band so . . .

GONE: What was the scene like then? The audience must have been as ready to be the audience as you guys were to be the band.

MARTIN: It was kind of weird because it was just after the Enemy had gone so the excitement of having them around had brought this kind of crowd together. This crowd was now left without bands. They were coming along to see any gig so obviously the Clean gig went off well.

GONE: So if you were only 15 someone like Chris Knox must have seemed like an old man!

MARTIN: Oh yeah I think most of us were in awe of him completely. When I first saw the Enemy - I only saw them twice. The first gig I saw he had some sort of horrible tweed jacket on. I thought he was like someone's Dad sort of up there helping shift gear round until he started singing. He just looked atrocious! He looked like somebody who'd been let out from Waikari Hospital for the day or something! Just really weird and then this music started . . . I was with a guy who was more kind of a surfie disco kind of guy. That was what my life was like at that time. One weekend going off to these parties up in Opoho where it was all kind of like flares and Saturday Night Fever Dancing and then the next weekend going off with these other friends to a punk gig in someones house. Just basically trying to work out where I stood. So I took this surfie guy along and after we left he said 'Well if that's punk rock I don't like it!'. I sort of tried to agree with him but I'd got the bug. Songs like 'don't catch fire' and stuff, already I was into them.

GONE: The Toylove album was to me, when I first heard it in 1985 as a 15 year old, a revelation. But everyone that I know now who is a bit older than me and saw them live is so disappointed with that record. It had been Aucklandised and polished up. It was an end of the road Toylove album and definitely not an Enemy album.

MARTIN: It wasn't even a good Toylove album that was what really disappointed people. It was just so much weaker. You know Chris Knox is on record a lot saying how disappointed he was. I remember rushing down the street to what ever it was . . . EMI records and seeing a friend walking across the road. She had a copy, I asked her what it was like and she just said 'It's shit. Don't buy it !'. Certainly listening to it now the powerful songs don't come across very well the ones that are more interesting are kind of the stuff that was more recent at the time it was recorded. Like bedroom and some of the more kind of strange songs.

GONE: Were you just finding your feet as a song writer in the Same? I ask that because even your first Chills songs are quite accomplished and the only the Same song I have heard is the excellent primal punk rock of 1979.

MARTIN: No they were Craig Easton and Jeff Batts songs. It was only near the end that I wrote two songs.

GONE: Oh right, who is actually singing on that 1979 recording then?

MARTIN: Umm probably Jeff Batts I think. He left and I took over vocals after awhile. Near the end I wrote Satin Doll and Kaleidoscope World in 1980. We used to do Kaleidoscope World in the Same. I was in the Same when I wrote that kind of stuff but they just couldn't really play it.

GONE: How old were you by then? It's just that those songs have got real psychedelic imagery.

MARTIN: It was 1980 by then so I was about 17. Yeah certainly they are psychedelic I was really enjoying that kind of thing then. The Same just weren't a very exciting band at all though.

GONE: So when they played they just stood there?

MARTIN: Yep. Jeff Batts tried to sort of be a bit of a front person. I was no good at it. I just didn't understand the necessity of it all. Performance and energy. Not so much in that band anyway. It was only really when I sort of started with the Chills that we kind of started pushing things along a bit more. The Same was just kind of very nervous and very amateur. But you know we had fun and people enjoyed it.

GONE: Did the Same do any covers?

MARTIN: Just sort of embarrassingly obvious ones like 'Louie Louie' and 'wild thing'.

GONE: What were you listening to by then?

MARTIN: Starting with obvious stuff like the Doors and the Velvet Underground, Television.

GONE: So you had that New York-Detroit exposure from the get go. You didn't just buy punk as an English product like a lot of Kiwi's did.

MARTIN: No, no it was weird because luckily people like Craig Easton in the band had things like the 13th floor elevators and sixties garage stuff. There was a friend I used to correspond with in England who was a real Bowie fan like I was. When he found out we just couldn't get hold of Raw Power he sent me two copies! We were like the first ones in town to have it. That was great. Of course we were into the Pistols and the Clash. One I was thinking of the other day was X-ray spex. They were a lot bigger than people remember.

GONE: Did they do that song Identity?

MARTIN: Yeah that whole album - Germ free adolescence is really good. Then through the Kilgour brothers especially I discovered the whole sixties garage punk thing.

GONE: How were they into that?

MARTIN: I guess because Hamish being a bit older had been into that stuff for quite a long time. It was hard to find the records but he used to hang out a bit with Chris Knox and some of the other people who did have big record collections back then in the mid seventies.

GONE: When did Roi start Records Records?

MARTIN: Shit I'm not sure. I went in there first about '75 kind of thing and he'd been going for a while then.

GONE: So Roi and his knowledge was quite an influence?

MARTIN: Certainly. I'd always be asking questions. You know 'what's this like?', 'what's Rick Wakeman like?'. He'd put you straight you know? Say 'If you like that you'll probably like this'. He made sure that people got to check out all the right records. It was very important.

GONE: What about Joy Division, was Dunedin crazy on them?

MARTIN: I was never as into them as other people were but yeah a lot of people were into them.

GONE: You know how I asked you earlier about literary influences what were you reading at that time in your life?

MARTIN: I read a lot when I was young but basically when I discovered music I just sort of stopped reading for a long time. I used to be like a big Ray Bradbury fan and read a lot of science fiction. Arthur C Clarke that kind of stuff but I hadn't really started to read more adult stuff.

GONE: I know myself when I was a kid I was always aware that some words were more powerful than others. I was always madly into reading and even poetry through the war poets and also Baxter though I got into him through reading his fathers autobiography when I was about 12. I guess what I'm saying was I've always been into words. You know and the impact they can have. Just little things like 'that sounds cool when you use lots of words that start with the same letter'. Were you like thinking little thoughts or over hearing something and just going to your self 'wow! I better write that down'

MARTIN: Yeah definitely. I got aggravated by overtly obscure lyrics. I thought if your really trying to make contact with people it's got to be reasonably understood. You can still make it beautiful or use all kinds of big words but . . .

GONE: But it's got to be about something to start with.

MARTIN: Yeah. That was my main criticism of (my) earlier stuff. The lyrics are you know almost bland. Oh I did do a few good ones I think but it wasn't until later in the eighties that I'd been reading some better books and understanding the power of words.

GONE: I don't think any of your lyrics are bland?

MARTIN: Not bland but I don't know just . . .

GONE: When did you write 'double summer' & 'on coming day'?

MARTIN: 'On coming day' is like '82 and 'double summer' is like '92.

GONE: I can see that I 'spose as 'On coming day' is so full of hope whereas 'Double Summer' I guess speaks of a little more life experience. From that Kaleidascope World period there is a lot of natural imagery. Is that partly the psychedelic influence?

MARTIN: Yeah that's been commented on before but it's also the natural influences. Dunedin being so close to such a powerful natural environment. The peninsula and the beaches and stuff. With 'on coming day' I still remember that night. Just going home after partying up and sitting quietly down in the living room 'cause my parents were upstairs asleep. I used to go home and put the head phones on and listen to Ziggy Stardust or something while I was drunk. Just being really wound up about some girl and just thinking I can't describe this so I'll describe all the things I'm looking at and hope that by what I'm choosing to put down . .

GONE: Is that where you say 'describe it all in a song for you.'

MARTIN: Yeah yeah so I was like looking across the peninsula and seeing how the black of the top of the hill joined with the black of the sky so you couldn't see where the top was. I thought if I described everything I saw and how the street lights blended in with the stars on the hills and that you couldn't see where the land finished. I hoped that something about the impact of that environment, the size of it, would convey the feeling inside me. I think it kind of did cause a lot of people related to it.

GONE: When did you start the Chills is I guess the next logical question. When and why?

MARTIN: I'd got to the point in early 1980 where the band couldn't play the songs anymore.

GONE: How was your own musicianship progressing at this point?

MARTIN: Oh very rudimentary. I was basically teaching myself my own little style so that was one thing but it wasn't until 3 or 4 years ago that I actually learnt to jam with people.

GONE: Did that contribute to the high turnover rate of band members? Just you having clear ideas of how something should be in your head rather than letting it evolve with the band? It being 'your' song.

MARTIN: Exactly. This note goes after that one. I was just kind of joining the dots that I had in my head. I wouldn't even know that you could do a much easier chord or whatever. Just sort of basic stuff. It was a pretty daunting process for some of the other Chills members who probably had a much greater knowledge than me. But they could see what was coming along and that it was worth persevering and explaining things to me. So I'd left school in 1979 and worked in a flower shop of all things for 6 months thinking it would be good for an art qualification. I went back to school in 1980 to do the 6th form again but I'd already got the freedom bug. The Same was underway and we played at Logan Park High School. The Clean played at Logan Park High School in 1979 - Same promotions presents the Clean!'. Chris Knox and stuff came along and watched it. Toylove were in town and they loaned the Clean some gear. So I persevered through 1980 at school and then went up north at the end of that to Sweetwaters and that sort of opened my eyes too. Did the whole sort of 'Kerouac on the road' kind of thing of hitching round and having all sorts of adventures. Actually in 1979 at the end, my friend and I had gone north to track down Peter Gutteridge and Terry Moore. So we'd sort of tracked them down in Auckland and Peter had been kicked out of The Clean. We were talking about the music we loved and I said ˇ§Well lets form a bandˇ¨. He said ˇ§ Yeah that'd be good so long as it's not like the Same!ˇ¨ He'd been in Auckland doing a printing apprenticeship. He chucked it in, came back to Dunedin and we started the Chills in late 1980.

GONE: So Peter Gutteridge was in the original line up?

MARTIN: Yeah we basically formed the band. I brought along Jane Dodd on bass and my sister Rachel on keyboards who'd both been in the final version of the Same. Peter introduced me to Alan Haig who was the drummer and yeah we started up in late 1980.

GONE: How big was the set back then when you started?

MARTIN: Quite big. I've got a tape of the very first gig. We just got up and did a couple of songs unannounced at a Bored Games/Clean gig. I just remembered looking down and seeing a girl with a tape recorder and years later I tracked her down and got the tape. The first full gig we did was 12 or 13 songs. I've got a tape of that one too.

GONE: What happens with your song writing at this point? Is it the psychedelics? You go into a very productive phase.

MARTIN: Things started pouring out. I mean your just at that age where your out experiencing things. Psychedelics had a wee bit of an influence but not too much. I think I was always an imaginative person anyway. Art and English were the only things I was good at at school. In some ways the psychedelic stuff is the most pretentious looking back. You know trying to be a bit out there.

GONE: When did you start thinking ˇ§This is pretty good. This is what I want to doˇ§.

MARTIN: Pretty early on. Like by '81 or '82 I'd determined it was going to be music for me I reckoned. I remember when 'Pink Frost' came out, cause it was delayed for 2 years because Martin Bull, our drummer, got sick. So we ended up going back and re-recording the vocal and putting an extra guitar on it. It eventually came out in '84 and I remember Karen Hay reviewed it very favourably on Radio with Pictures and my parents were watching and that was when they started thinking 'this is not just some hobby thing'.

GONE: To write a song like 'leather jacket' to remember your 'absent friend' must have been very satisfying. The most powerful emotions are invoked yet it is a rock song not some slow ballad.

MARTIN: It was good to do it in the context of a glam rock song so it wasn't some big morbid ballad. For people who knew what it was about they could understand the words otherwise it didn't matter.

GONE: It is your only piece of work that is really in the mainstream mindset and can be called Kiwiana.

MARTIN: Yeah I guess so. It's really funny though cause in New Zealand we are the 'I love my leather jacket band' In Europe and England it's the 'pink frost' band and in the US we're the 'heavenly pop hits' band!

GONE: So you had some career ambitions and wanted to sell a lot of records?

MARTIN: Yes but other ones too. It annoyed me that there was this great music going on that people didn't know about. I wanted to get that across. In some ways we were the perfect band for it because we had this pop stuff that people liked and still had this punk ethic about playing it hard! That seemed to me to be a really good combination so I thought you know we're the ones to get it out there. I felt like we were part of something you know?.You see in all the interviews we did right through from when we first went overseas in '85 for like six weeks which was all London and a couple of shows outside of London and then back for most of '87 and stuff. All the time, every interview, which would amount to literally hundreds, probably a couple of hundred. Through fanzines and magazines through Europe and stuff. I always mentioned the Clean, the Bats, the Straightjacket Fits, Sneaky Feelings and the Verlaines. Just the sort of bands that were probably going to be coming you know. It made a big difference for the bands that followed. We just felt like we were part of this thing that was coming. Then we got back and found out we'd been austracized by everyone. We were the big sort of like 'sell out rock stars'. All these knives in our backs. It really put me off. In Dunedin, in our time. You know the late seventies & early eighties there was a great community feel. Of peer group support, equipment, friends everything.

GONE: Was there a real culture of home recording going on? Did many people actually know what they were doing?

MARTIN: I'd been frustrated a bit when I'd been touring with the Clean a wee bit earlier around like '81. Doing sort of keyboards on tally ho or bass on this song or mixing or something. I just did one tour and a few other gigs. Anyway they had this attitude that I don't know just seemed to be too purist. Too elite. They didn't think you could go into a big studio because they'd lose sight of it. I just sort of thought it is hard but I know now you can certainly lose track of the music in a big studio but also you can come out with the most amazing version. There is no reason you can't get some thing great in a big studio. It's just a real shame. One of the things that would have changed the whole New Zealand scene is if we had some good producers here. If only like some of the '60's producers, the people who'd done the Who or something had came out here to retire and discovered this incredible music. If that had happened we would have all had some excellent recordings. I was a shocking home recordist for a long time. I don't know if you've heard my Sketchbook of 4 track cassette recordings that I put out a few years back. I really like the feel of a lot of them but they're terrible recordings. A lot of hiss and everything. I never used to worry about that. I liked trying reversing things or trying weird sounds stretched or backwards or whatever. In terms of getting a really quality sound well recorded I wasn't interested. I thought it was only to remind me of what the song was like. It just wasn't important to me and now I kind of wish I had. There's a lot of things I'll have to do again.

GONE: Business wise did you have a manager early on or did you do it?

MARTIN: If I was bad at recording I was much worse at business! Luckily there were people quite early on, even within my own band. People like Terry Moore who played bass, he was a bit more astute about business matters. Then Doug Hood, who had been the Enemy/Toylove manager and original Clean vocalist took over.

GONE: What does he do these days?

MARTIN: He's actually selling houses now I think. In Auckland. He got interested and was booking our tours and then became manager officially in the mid '80's. After that there were always managers but it wasn't like them telling us what to do. It was very much a discussed shared vision. We knew we had to sort of tour round, build things up over here and get overseas. Not go to Australia, go to England.

GONE: So looking back you almost cracked it around 1991 in the US but . . .

MARTIN: It was just about to take off in terms of crossing over in the states when the industry went through that post Nirvana. The Chills had kind of done our 'power' thing earlier on and we were experimenting with other things right at the time when grunge came along. We were really completely out of step with what was required by the industry at that time.

GONE: What is Peter Gutteridge doing these days? Why did he leave the Chills?

MARTIN: He has always been a very intelligent man. He's sort of kind of hidden from the world a bit because the world didn't quite see him the way he wanted it to see him - as the kind of dark lord of gutter rock or whatever. He has maybe hidden in the drug thing to the extent that he has got a self constructed world which suits him fine but it's not a very good reality for functioning with other people. It's very hard for him to get out and actually mingle with the real world. For all that though he's writing a lot of good stuff at the moment. Back then though we just basically couldn't play in the same band because what he was going to do was SNAPPER and what I was doing was the Chills you know? That and he couldn't play my stuff, it was getting too complicated and we just sort of both realised we loved what each other did but it wasn't gonna work out being together (in the Chills). You asked about literary influences earlier. Peter was much better read than I was at that point. The lyrics that I saw him write, well not so much lyrics but when he had his guard down and would write other stuff. Like little bits of prose, there is some truly beautiful stuff. To this day I keep encouraging him to write. I just think he could have been a genuine New Zealand Burroughs/Kerouac kind of writer. He's got that anger and that kind of insight into that other way of looking at things.

GONE: You have to get out there 'on the road' though. Burroughs & Kerouac actually did a lot of stuff.

MARTIN: Yeah that's the trouble. He's always wanted to be like William Burroughs but in fact Willianm Burroughs didn't hide at home. He got out and travelled. Peter hasn't you know? His entire music career could be compacted into about 5 years I reckon.

GONE: You mean if he'd been someone totally focused on a musical career?

MARTIN: Yeah easily and his musical development is probably only about two years beyond where he started. He's always reinventing the wheel or trying to. He doesn't want to be told anything by anybody. If he's touring he wants to tour his way. If he's playing instruments it's got to be . . . it's all about like the magic thing he talks about you know.

GONE: By 1986 or so did you have any bands business wise that you maybe looked to as role models or benchmarks? I mean bands like REM or Husker Du, you know indie bands that had broken through to a wider audience without compromising their sound. There's that famous REM quote about the Chills from about that time isn't there?

MARTIN: Yeah somebody said they'd read a quote where they were being interviewed and were asked 'Don't you think the Chills are the best band in the world?' and Mike Mills said 'Second best!' you know meaning REM were the best.

GONE: I think I've read something even more flattering than that but maybe I imagined it!

MARTIN: They were actually really supportive when we did get together through the Warner Brothers connection.

GONE: You met them?

MARTIN: We played at their club in Athens (Georgia).

GONE: I love all their early 80's stuff and then Document as well and Green is an incredible pop album. Even the more middle of the road stuff is still good what's that one where he's swimming in the video.

MARTIN: Is that Night swimming? What's the album that's on?

GONE: There are a lot of nice songs on that album.

MARTIN: I love that album. It's got If they put a man on the moon on it. What's it called? I remember hearing about this band called REM. The weird thing was Roi Colbert got a record in by a band called Rapid Eye Movement. We thought 'Oh is this them?' and then found out it wasn't. I've never seen that record again strangely enough. Then the first album came out and I loved it straight off.

GONE: That is the one with Radio free Europe?

MARTIN: And don't go back to Rockville.

GONE: Murmur that's it. What's the one with I am superman on it?

MARTIN: That is great but that's a cover.

GONE: Is that a cover!

MARTIN: Yeah I've got the original! It's a sixties band called the Clique. I'll play it to you when we get back to the house. The originals got a great harmony on it that REM don't do it. 'I am I am I am superman' (sings). Back to your actual question though - at that point I was still kind of learning about my rock history so the fact of someone being an indie band or not wouldn't have really meant a lot to me. And as for Husker Du I didn't catch on to for years. Not until it was way too late. I missed the opportunity of seeing them in London which turned out be one of their very last gigs. You know when you've got the girlfriend and it's one of those argument nights and if you go out you probably won't get back in! That's one of my big regrets gig wise. We had our names on the door and everything! I did a solo support with Bob Mould and that was great. Actually Ox his boyfriend looked a lot like you!

GONE: Thanks! So business wise back then you were just basically hoping to sell heaps of records.

GONE: What about that song of yours, you know the instruction manual? The one that goes 'fill your mind with alcohol, comic books and drugs'.

MARTIN: It's real tongue in cheek and some people really came down quite heavy about that. 'Do you think it's good advice to give young people?'

GONE: The end. Well there is more but I'm done. Maybe it'll come out in a book some time.

Video stills by Ben,
taken from The Chills @ the Jet Set,
Christchurch, 2004.