Fill your head with alcohol, comic books and drugs,
This is the way
(This Is the Way, The Lost EP, 1985)
I first see The Chills at a dance that my brother organised for the Dunedin Junior Council at the Dunedin Town Hall in 1984. In that big, cavernous space in front of the city’s bewildered youth, Martin’s guitar makes swirling circus sounds. His lilting voice turning words inside out, his lyrics bouncing around with the sentences back to front. I’m hooked.
Once we were damned, now I guess we are angels
For we passed through the dark and eluded the dangers
Then awoke with a start to startling changes
All the tension is ended, the sentence suspended
And darkness now sparkles and gleams
(Heavenly Pop Hit, from Submarine Bells 1990)
I remember being in Echo Records on George St one Friday evening in 1990. Martin comes in. He’s a star, on top of his game. I have a bit of Russian courage in me from Happy Hour at university. I approach him to ask for an autograph. He draws a fish in my philosophy textbook and thanks me for asking. Martin loved his fans, because, as I saw someone say this week, he was one. He loved music and musicians.
That year, we are back to the Town Hall for the sold-out return of the Prodigal Son. Submarine Bells is out, and it captures the moment. Martin gets the keys to the city of Dunedin. The shining cities await …
If you’d asked me at a concert
Standing by The Clean
I’d have said I’m okay
And this is what I mean
But now a little later
A crisis has evolved
Those ancient complications
Remaining unresolved
They say you have to give them what they want
Say you have to give them what they want
Say you have to give them what they want
Say you have to give them what they want
(Soft Bomb from Soft Bomb, 1992)
The genius songs keep coming, spilling out of Martin. He is on the cusp of something special. Always. My brother Craig writes a review of a gig for Critic, the student newspaper at Otago. Invoking New Order’s Touched By the Hand of God, Martin, he says, has been “brushed by the hand of God”. Always, just about, making it.
The pop music machine is too much for Martin. It spits him out. It’s Dunedin, so I hear stories. Shoplifting, alcohol, drugs. There have always been stories. His intensity and drive are just too much. He knows in his mind’s eye what he wants. If it’s not there, he can be brutal. It’s not personal. It’s about the music.
Does apathy come with age
Cause I’d much rather go down fighting
Then at least I could go with pride
I’d rather go trying to battle
Battle the doubts inside
(Brave Words from Brave Words, 1987)
It’s 2019 – somehow, we are adults now. I take a rare day off to go to The Others Way festival in Auckland. It turns out we are staying in the same hotel as The Chills. They play a blinder. I have a photo from that night, Martin is exploding in green. Straining every muscle, exacting every last ounce of himself. At checkout the next morning, he is slumped in a chair in the lobby. The band are packing the van. We talk. Politics mostly. He cares. A lot. We have had a few chats in recent years, some virtual, some real. We cover the US, New Zealand, the world. Martin’s sense of social justice drawn from his parents is never far away.
Do the years fly by
Do the years fly by
Only when you’re counting
Counting, Counting
(Hourglass from Scatterbrain, 2021)
In 2021, I turn 50. I ask The Chills and The Bats to play at my party. They agree. Covid doesn’t. We cancel the gig. Martin sends me a note. He tells me he is better, and he wants to tour overseas. He does it twice. The second time looks like fun. I wake up in the morning and look up YouTube to see how they have gone in Glasgow and Dublin and London. It feels joyous. I am so happy for him.
I wear my leather jacket like a great big hug
Radiating charm – a living cloak of luck
It’s the only concrete link with an absent friend
It’s a symbol I can wear ‘till we meet again
(I Love My Leather Jacket, 1986)
Last weekend, my husband Alf gave a jacket he no longer fits to our friend Alex. Later that day, he simply messaged, “I Love My Leather Jacket”. We smiled; everyone knew the reference. It didn’t matter if you knew a lot or a little, The Chills and Martin’s songs were like a gateway drug to the music I love.
Leather Jacket, Pink Frost, Heavenly Pop Hit, Doledrums, Kaleidoscope World. They were recognisably Martin and The Chills. And they were just a fraction of an extraordinary catalogue.
And their last two albums –Snow Bound and Scatterbrain – were some of his best work. The products of a settled, committed, understanding band who were lifting Martin to new heights and places.
I know I won’t avoid the void eternally
And mortality – well, it must be met alone
But Destiny – have empathy
I can’t face this on my own
Though I’ll make this voyage alone
(Destiny from Scatterbrain, 2021)
And now he is gone. I don’t pretend to have known Martin well. There are others who can speak more to the person he was. But as we have seen in the outpouring of grief in the past few days, he has touched so many. He wrote a big part of the soundtrack of my late teens and early 20s. Those years of finding out, wondering how and why, and looking for answers. His songs gave me a map, full of magical, mystical byways.
Martin’s quirky, superstitious sci-fi brain played tricks on us all. From Submarine Bells onwards, every album is an SB. Soft Bomb, Sunburnt, Silver Bullets – you get the idea.
Together, all of it, that is his legacy. Something Beautiful.
Former deputy prime minister and finance minister Grant Robertson is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago.
