Midway through the most recent Die Hard movie, there's a nailbiting scene in which a sinister-looking woman slinks through a series of corridors in methodical pursuit of a bank security guard. In her hand is a 15-inch scythe. As she approaches the guard from behind, the woman goes into a whirling dance of death, slicing and dicing as she spins in a shower of blood. The scene continues for several harrowing seconds, until finally a hand grabs her wrist, stopping the macabre ballet. "I think he's dead, my dear", whispers her terrorist-husband, looking bemusedly into he wife's blood-spattered face.
Say hello to Sam Phillips.
For most folks, Phillips' appearance as the mute villainess in Die Hard With a Vengeance was their first encounter with the acclaimed singer-songwriter. Despite five brilliantly crafted pop albums, Phillips remains, in her words, "a specter" in the world of music. Hailed for years by her peers, Phillips nonetheless defies the type of niche which makes for a good marketing strategy. In the record industry vernacular, she's a "prestige" artist, one who brings critical respect to a label but not platinum sales.
"I've always been kind of frustrated with trying to find a place to fit in," she explains from her home in Hollywood. "There doesn't seem to be a good place for me> I feel like I go around haunting the world of pop music. I won't go away but I never find a place to rest, exactly."
Unlike the aloof outsider who stands at the periphery and watches and reports as the world goes past, Phillips immerses herself in the things she writes about. With typical enthusiasm, for instance, she likens the experience of filming Die Hard to a trip to summer camp. ("I felt kind of like George Plimpton, learning how everything works.") Her approach to crafting music from the raw material of her life is best summed up in her own words: "It all goes into the brain or into the soul, or something - and then comes out in the pen or through the guitar. Songs are like living things to me. Sometimes they just won't go away."
Perhaps Phillips' new album, Omnipop (It's Only a Flesh Wound Lampchop), will lift her from obscurity, but don't ho making any bets. People have been predicting big things for the songwriter for quite some time. 1994's Martinis and Bikinis garnered her a Grammy nomination (in the female rock vocalist category), as well as a Rolling Stone critic's poll selection as that year's second best female songwriter. Still, she remains relatively unknown to the public, her anonymity attributable in part to a rather circuitous career.
Those who know anything at all about Phillips probably know this: in the early 80's, under her given name of Leslie Phillips, she recorded four successful "Christian pop" albums for the Word label and, in the late 80's, she disowned them all. As one might expect, Phillips is weary of discussing those early years which ultimately constitute a story of disillusionment and subsequent awakening. In brief, as a child, Phillips' attraction to religious philosophy let to a desire to explore her own spirituality. At 14, the age at which she began writing songs, she was convinced the church would provide the best context in which to do that. However, instead of allowing her to posit ideas in her music and to undertake a spiritual quest, the folks at Word insisted on turning her songs into dogma and propaganda, For Phillips, questions were more important than answers; for her label, the reverse was true.
Today, whenever the talk turns to her gospel Phillips politely but firmly refuses to discuss them.
"I really don't want to talk about them at all. They really have nothing to do with my life at this point, except that the way I started out was kind of odd. I didn't go from club to club. My friends operated a halfway house on Hollywood Boulevard that helped prostitutes and drug users. They helped the girls get off drugs and go back to school. So I would go there and play guitar with the girls who had come off the street, or teach them guitar, or sing for them. Or sometimes I'd go out to this union hall rented by a group of Hispanic people, where they fed street people, mostly guys who called themselves 'winos.' I was the entertainment on Friday night while these guys were fed. I did lots of stuff like that. The way I entered music at all was very different."
1987 marked a major turning point for Phillips. Frustrated with seeing her music converted to gospel rants, the songwriter told Word that she was finished, that in effect she could no longer be a voice for the label's message. Fortunately, one kind soul at the company suggested Phillips meet with producer-songwriter T Bone Burnette [sic].
A maverick spirit and renowned writer, Burnett is perhaps best known for helping usher Bob Dylan into his "born again" period. He nurtured the sense of wonder that lay at the heart of Phillip's music. With her new, empathetic producer, she recorded The Turning, a darkly beautiful album that captured her creative sensibility and laid out the blueprint for the albums that would follow. Soon after recording was completed, Burnett and Phillips were married.
"He was such a character. And he had so many interesting ideas. For the first time, I felt like someone was listening to my songs for what they were, rather than trying to make them into something they weren't. We didn't have much money, so we went into this studio in Fort Worth, Texas, and used whatever guitars and amps were lying around. A few other musicians came in and played, but basically The Turning was an album we put together ourselves, with very little money. I was really happy with the album. It turned out to have a lot of atmosphere."
In the decade since, Phillips' music has zigzagged between Beatlesque pop (The Indescribable Wow, Martinis & Bikinis) and somewhat more experimental material (Cruel Inventions, Omnipop). Her progression as a lyricist, however, has been more linear. While her first two albums for Virgin Records were introspective, dear-diary affairs, Martinis found Phillips looking outside herself and not always liking what she saw. Confident, brazen, and often steeped in the black humor of favorite writers like Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, Martinis couched scathing, sometimes political wit in a swirl of beautiful melody and Rubber Soul-ish psychedelia. Phillips was pleased by the glowing critical response to the album; however, she doesn't seem to share the opinion of those who consider it her finest work.
"I feel like Martinis & Bikinis was a very plain album. We purposely made it dead simple. But then again, I tend to swing back and forth all the time. My first album for Virgin had sort of plain music and was close to the Beatles, perhaps. But Cruel Inventions, my second album, wasn't Beatlesque at all. And now there's so much of that, so many people are doing that style so well, I though it would be nice to have something a little different."
The "Something different" that Phillips is referring to is her latest release. Her most ambitious album to date, Omnipop not only marks a radical departure from her previous work, it also risks the sort of stylistic mishmash that often elicits adjectives like "uneven" or "capricious" from reviewers. Upon first listen, Omnipop seems to careen wildly from Tin Pan Alley nostalgia to sprightly showtunes to campy mystery to straight-forward pop. It's a dizzying ride, and only those with the patience to give the album some time are likely to detect a method to its madness. Phillips admits the album can be tough going at times, but then again, her ambitions as an artists have always been left of center and never trendy.
"This album is a lot more complicated [than Martinis & Bikinis]. I was trying to do something a little more 'omnipop', as it's called. I was trying to take from different styles and moods, and different ideas. It's sort of like a little model, like Walt Disney used to make of Epcot Center, or 'Tomorrowland' or whatever his new creation was. This album is my model for what I'd hope to see happen in the music business. I'd like to see more odd ideas and more diverse hybrids, musically."
As with all Phillips' albums since The Turning, production duties for Omnipop were handled by Burnett. Phillips likens her husband's role as producer to that of a Hugh Hefner figure, someone who "keeps everyone's glasses filled, who invites the right guests to the party." Asked if there are any particular perils involved in having her husband oversee the recording of her work, she laughs and says no, that it's "the second most fun thing [we] do together." And in fact, as Phillips points out, it falls primarily to Burnett to recruit the stellar musicians who contribute their services on her albums. With names like Elvis Costello, Jerry Scheff, Van Dyke Parks and Marc Ribot appearing regularly in the credits, no one could argue that Phillips doesn't tend to attract formidable supporting casts. Still, when the subject of collaboration is raised, she explains that any outside contributions, including Burnett's generally come only after the songs are already written.
"I don't usually go to T-Bone until I'm finished. And then he becomes sort of an editor, from there. I don't usually write with him, although he's certainly done some interesting things. He'll sometimes take a piece of a song and stick it in the middle of something I've written, or maybe he'll come up with some interesting lyrics. But usually the comments are after the fact."
In some ways, Omnipop picks up right where Martinis & Bikinis left off. The 12 original songs on Martinis were steeped heavily in the spirit of John Lennon, and in fact the album concluded with a stark, beautiful version of Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth." The song not only slapped an exclamation mark on the end of Martinis & Bikinis, it also heralded a shift toward a tougher philosophical stance. Although Phillips continues to try to capture love and beauty in her music ('the two things closest to perfection"), Omnipop's perspective on American culture is clear eyed and unsentimental. It's also more than a little angry. While she doesn't sound harsh or embittered in conversation, Phillips is quick to voice opinions about those aspects of modern life she fins most disconcerting. Not surprisingly, fundamentalist Christians are particularly prone to being skewered.
"I think those people are afraid of something - although I'm not exactly sure what. And I think they should just shut up. Everybody has heard it and everybody gets it. It's not as if there are very many people left in the world who don't know what Christianity is saying. I think they should just be quiet, and start being loving and serving their communities. I don't even think they have to campaign, politically. That's not the way to get things done. Those people seem basically narcissistic and a little crazy and a little needy. But I don't think most church people are like that. Most people in the church are not that fanatical or stupid."
Never one to stand still, Phillips is already excited about the prospect of recording her next album. Even as she gears up for a tour in support of Omnipop, she's contemplating a strategy for its follow-up. Fans who find Omnipop's experimental flavor a little harsh might want to brace themselves: although plans are still vague, for her next outing Phillips is thinking of recording "either an all-instrumental album, with no vocals at all, or else perhaps an all-vocal album." When she's told that Todd Rundgren released an all-vocal album in 1985, called A Cappella, Phillips is not at all deterred. "I know various people have tried it, but I think there's always room for that sort of thing. Everyone's voice is different, and obviously I'm a much different songwriter from [Rundgren]. It would be an interesting project to try, anyway."
SAM ON SAM
Phillips on her most memorable songs
"Zero Zero Zero!" (from Omnipop) - "I grew up listening to the Tijuana Brass and I wanted to make... not necessarily a kid's record, or something silly, but something that was happy, like those Tijuana Brass albums. When I wrote the song, I was going to write words to the chorus. But I kept hearing this line played by the horns, so I thought, 'No, I'll just have the horns play the chorus, do something odd.'"
"Help Yourself" (from Omnipop) - "It's a little complicated. It's sort of like The Big Sleep, which I've seen about fifty times and still can't figure out exactly who is trying to kill who, or what happens. You don't know who the victim is, or who's tempting who, or who's taking advantage of who. It sort of works both ways."
"Lying" (from Cruel Inventions) - "I remember starting to write it at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, which is a great old hotel. There's all kinds of folklore associated with it, and it's really one of those types of places I find inspiring. The recording of the song was really difficult. We couldn't figure out how to record it until Elvis Costello came in and saved us with a crazy idea. He took some pencils and started banging on a 12-string guitar, and created a drone which sort of set the tone for the whole piece."
"Entertainmen" (from Omnipop) - "The line 'I learned to sing and dance on water at my mother's feet' is implying that my mother was idealized as this sort of God-like creature, and that my father was really sort of a jerk... (laughs). It's a very twisted comment on my parents' setup, and how I was trying to play along in their game and somehow get their love and attention. But I don't deliberately use... (pauses) See, that's the funny thing, I think, about gospel music. People uses [sic] biblical metaphors and think therefore it's holy, or something, which is a really ludicrous idea. It's like thinking that if you drink water out of a beer bottle, it's alcohol. It's such a shallow ignorant way of thinking."
"Strawberry Road" (from Martinis & Bikinis) - "There's an Indian legend - I forget which tribe- but one of the American Indian tribes said they believed the road to heaven was paved with strawberries, which I think is really pretty. But it's funny. Since the song has the word 'strawberry' in it, people are always saying, 'Oh yeah, the Beatles song,' even though it sounds nothing like 'Strawberry Fields'."