Martin Phillipps has died unexpectedly

Martin Phillipps, the founder and frontman of seminal Dunedin band The Chills, has died unexpectedly. He was 61. Phillipps’ death was announced this evening on The Chills’ social media pages. “It is with broken hearts the family and friends of Martin Phillipps wish to advised Martin has died unexpectedly,” The Chills’ post read. “The family ask for privacy at this time. Funeral arrangements will be advised in due course.” The guitarist and lead singer was the driving creative force behind The Chills and has been part of the band since its inception in the 1980. The Otago Daily Times reported Phillipps was recently admitted to Dunedin Hospital with liver problems. The band signed with Flying Nun Records and were one of the earliest proponents of the Dunedin sound - a musical, and cultural, movement in the Otago city in the early 1980s characterised by a mix of punk rock with jangly, psychedelic-influenced guitar playing. The Chills website described Phillipps as having “a single-minded determination to take quality, original NZ-sounding, melodic rock music global”. He battled with drug addiction, alcoholism and contracted hepatitis C in the 1990s. Some of the The Chills’ biggest hits include; Pink Frost, Heavenly Pop Hit, I Love My Leather Jacket and Kaleidoscope World. A 2019 documentary titled The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps explored the history of the band and Phillipps’ life-threatening brush with hepatitis C and liver failure. Phillipps told RNZ in 2021 that watching the documentary led to some self-reflection. “I had not sort of seen how basically odd I was and how that impacted on other people and that gave me a lot of cause for reconsidering things that had happened in the past and so on,” Phillipps said. “I know that I’m not a hurtful person by nature but realising that just the sheer being unaware of people’s situations around me could also be hurtful, so that was quite a revelation really.” Phillipps said his health was much better having cleared the hep C, but compared to other people his energy levels were still comparatively depleted. Reflecting on one of The Chills’ later singles Destiny in the same 2021 RNZ interview, Phillipps said he was trying to face up to his own mortality in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s a wee bit of a struggle between how much of this is pre-planned and how much of it is me shaping my own destiny... I think a lot of people have been going through those same kind of questions, particularly overseas where there is still a lockdown, they must be thinking a lot of them ‘well what did I do to deserve this or what have we done?’.”

NZ Herald