"He Was Just A Beautiful, Thoughtful Human Being." An Interview With Chills Producers Greg Haver And Tom Healy About The Legacy Of Martin Phillipps And The Final Chills Album

The music of The Chills shaped so much of my sensibility as a listener. When I first heard Brave Words in late 1987, I was hooked. The tunes were smart, catchy, and full of heart. When Martin Phillipps died in 2024, it was tremendously affecting, and not only because of his legacy of song, but because he was still crafting impeccable pop.

A project begun before his death, Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs By The Chills found Phillipps resuscitating earlier compositions, giving new life to his youthful gems and cast-offs. Armed with the current line-up of his band, a slew of guests and assistance from musicians and friends, the album took shape.

I was lucky to have a chance last week to sit down and have a chat with Greg Haver, producer of the 2023 edition of Brave Words, who played percussion on every track on Spring Board, and producer Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins) who oversaw production of 2021's Scatterbrain, as well as this new Fire Records release.

On The Genesis of Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs of The Chills:

Greg Haver: "When I did Snow Bound, I remember Martin had all these files on his computer. Quite well organized too. He would keep all these old ideas. The middle eight of 'Complex', for example, was from a really old demo he did years before, and we just slotted it into the song. He would go to the computer and slot these ideas from his files he'd saved. He was a catalogist -- is that a word? -- and it was very much in his nature to catalogue everything. I imagine this project was a natural extension of that. This is a lot of material -- 20 songs."

"Martin was always a completist so this was the ultimate project he wanted to complete. So we all got on board with it when he wanted to do it. I wasn't aware it would be his swan-song."

Tom Healy: "Some of the songs were just memories. Some of them were on Secret Box. Some of them had been recorded, but morphed again during this recording. But there's a degree of muscle-memory for the ones he hadn't played in decades. He talked to me about some he was 'looking for' still. I got a lot of the demos. A lot of times they had been rewritten and I was getting phone recordings of him playing them, or his taped performances -- 'I'll Protect You' was one that I got as a phone recording of him playing the song on tape. Some, like 'Dolphins', the band had demoed so they had familiarity with."

On the vibe during the making of Spring Board with The Chills:

Greg Haver: "Martin was always keen to keep his musical family close -- and I don't know if that was a result of the chaos of the early line-up changes but look at how stable that last iteration of The Chills was!"

"But it was just a different vibe when we went in to work on this one [due to Martin's health]. But yeah, it is still a very youthful record, mainly because so many of these 20 songs were from earlier."

"When I went in to play, I thought Martin didn't look that great. I took a photo in the studio and showed my wife. And even my wife said, 'Oh, Martin doesn't look that good!' So we all knew his health had been bad for years so shocked-not-shocked [when he died]. When my phone rang on the Sunday evening [that Martin died] and it was Oli [Wilson] from The Chills, I just knew what it was."

Tom Healy: "He was really unwell. He had a sense that he had not a lot of time left. Some songs he felt were unfinished business. He commented during recording that it was such a relief to have the songs finished. The loose ends were being wrapped up for him. He felt like he had a catalogue, this oeuvre that hadn't been served before, whether because the songs were ones Martin never finished, or moved on from, or because a previous producer just didn't like them."

On Greg's musical contributions to the record:

Greg Haver: "'I'll go in and play on a couple of songs.' That was my initial thought. In Tom Healy's studio. 'How many songs?' '20.' 'Oh this is gonna be a long day!'" [laughs]

"That one song "Lion Tamer", I kinda rebuilt with percussion into a kind of Dr. John-sort of number. Martin was a huge Dr. John fan."

"When I see the list of luminaries on the record, I am like 'Holy Shit!' It was a real honor to be asked to be on the record."

On Tom's contributions to the record as a musician and producer:

Tom Healy: "I know Martin's style and how to play guitar like Martin so you'd be surprised at what was me on the record. Martin was quite unwell towards the tail-end of the recording, and that, coupled with the number of tracks, and numerous guest contributions, made this the most difficult project I've worked on."

"In hindsight, it was the burden of this [bringing Martin's old songs to life with him], as well as his health. It seemed counterintuitive for an unwell Martin to be doing such a project -- he was obviously unable to do long hours so we had to work around his schedule -- and we had discussions, 'Is this the right time? Is the stress worse for Martin than it would otherwise be?' That kind of thing."

Greg Haver: "Kudos to you for doing that. I didn't know really well going in how sick Martin really was. The layered-on issues with his health made this more difficult."

"It wasn't so much a rush to the end -- it was just another record but Martin was unwell. Only later we all saw..."

Tom Healy: "Martin was on medication which made him drowsy but he was still always there -- always full of wit."

Greg Haver: "I'm so glad that my last day [doing 'Lion Tamer'] with him was doing something musical, something creative with Martin. We got sushi, got the music done, and had a great time."

Tom Healy: [On mixing what had been recorded] "It was a lot of work. Opening a folder of 20 songs, was like... I mean, going from producing the cuts to then mixing mode was a lot."

On entering Martin's world and confronting his legacy of being difficult to work with:

Tom Healy: "He was a bit of a pop culture vulture. He was a collector -- curios, films, etc. I remember the first time I met him, he gave me a DVD, because he'd got home and realized he had two copies. 'Oh cheers Martin!' And during the sessions with him, he gave me a CD, and then months later he called to say, 'Oh that's my only copy. Can I have that back?' Then much later he called, 'I found the other copy. You can have that one back' so he was very much in his own world. Like in the song 'If This World Was Made For Me' on this new record."

Greg Haver: Martin's not difficult but you just have to understand his world. He's the same generation as me -- we grew up on "Star Trek", "Thunderbirds", etc. So meeting him, looking at his Starship Enterprise blueprints, is part of the process of getting to know him, and understanding his world."

"Getting to know him is such a key part of making music with him. I had been forewarned about him, and heard he was called difficult. But he has a specific methodology and how he hears the world. You have to know the music he likes, and know where he's trying to go with things."

Tom Healy: "I got to know him at first because of my connection with Graeme Downes of The Verlaines due to another record I'd done. [Kenixfan: Tom Healy is in the current line-up of The Verlaines and played lead guitar on the group's 2019 album, Dunedin Spleen.] He was one of the old Dunedin 'rock star' types. Oli [Wilson] of The Chills is who I knew better. He got in touch with me about making a Chills album. We were on friendly terms before, but then making Scatterbrain was straight into the deep end in getting to know Martin."

"Martin's musical vision -- despite the myths around him, the talk of being difficult, a perfectionist, and so on -- is broad. I was a bit thinking that it might be difficult [to work with him]. It was not. He was very gracious, very open to ideas from the band."

"He had things in his head that he really cared about for the music, and if he heard that in the song, he was happy with everything else. A backing vocal-line and a guitar solo, for example... he had a very specific vision for the ideas in his head, and then he would be receptive to other parts of the song once he heard that idea of his in the actual song. As long as he heard that part he had had in his head, he was okay with the rest, with changes, additions from others."

On guest contributions to Spring Board, specifically those from Neil Finn:

Tom Healy: "Martin knew Neil, of course, and Neil had an apartment above his own studio and I think Martin maybe had stayed there before. Neil was coming off work with Fleetwood Mac and was happy to do this. I think he did those parts in his own world and sent them to me."

"On 'I'll Protect You' -- my favorite song on the record -- Neil contributed those wonderful backing vocals which are very much like 'old Neil' in terms of vocal style. They are very tender, very heartfelt. I put them on now, and they're so perfect. Martin's voice was fragile -- he couldn't do long sessions as he'd lose his voice, so couldn't do long takes -- so Neil doing this sort of counter-melody in his backing vocals is so Crowded House-y and wonderful."

Greg Haver: "I think they knew each other for a long time. They went back a ways. I remember the last day of recording Snow Bound, Neil came in and sat in for a bit."

"Hearing that Neil part on 'I'll Protect You', maybe they just have this synergy. I mean, I grew up on Split Enz and all that, so I don't know. Maybe the two of them just had this synergy, one which took them back to those days [in terms of the sound of 'I'll Protect You']. I might be overthinking it..."

Tom Healy: "Every song Neil played on, he took it up a notch."

On being part of the Martin Phillipps family, and having Spring Board as his legacy:

Greg Haver: "Producing a Chills album is not something that a lot of people get to do. So we [producers] are a very special, exclusive club."

Tom Healy: "He was such an engaging person, even afterwards. There were nice gestures, instances of getting an email of things. Songs he liked and that sort of thing."

Greg Haver: "I have such great memories of him. Watching comedies, and just sitting quietly with him and occasionally realizing, 'Oh God, that's the Martin Phillipps!'"

"He was just a beautiful, thoughtful human being."

"I don't know about you Tom, but I feel there's a big hole."

Tom Healy: "I'm thankful Martin got to hear the masters of this."

"Literally, as he was finishing this record, he was talking about what he wanted to do next. He was a creative guy, and that's the truth. He was still writing."

Greg Haver: "The way he rebuilt his legacy from the dark days on is really admirable. From Silver Bullets on. He could have faded away, but he was determined to have a bigger legacy."

"And it was a real privilege to be a part of this, and a part of his world."

Thank you very much to Greg Haver and Tom Healy for their time sharing memories and thoughts of Martin Phillipps.

Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs By The Chills by The Chills is out now via Fire Records.

[Photo of Martin Phillipps in the studio, 2024, courtesy of Greg Haver; Black-and-white photo of Martin Phillipps by Jon Thom / Moodie Tuesday]