The Parts Left Out of the Kill Bill book 




An interview with Philip Brigham was left out of the Kill Bill book, probably for space considerations. I have reprinted it below.

Appendix: An Interview with Philip Brigham
The man who wrote the once-obscure song "The Chase" used in a scene in Kill Bill Vol. 2 talks about the song, the source movie, and working with Tarantino.


Philip Brigham is one of the three credited writers and musicians on one of the most mysterious of the songs used in Kill Bill Vol. 2. Called "The Chase," it plays over images of Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) speeding down a desert road in her Pontiac Firebird.
Before the CD was released, Internet chat boards speculated about the role of the music in the then-forthcoming film, and besides being baffled by the Johnny Cash song, "A Satisfied Mind," which yielded up no information for Google searchers, posters were also mystified by "The Chase," which came unaccompanied by any other discographic information.
Soon enough, of course, everyone knew that "The Chase" was a piece of music composed and recorded by a band called Clinic for the film Road To Salina, an Italian-French production released in 1971 by Avco Embassy and directed by Georges Lautner, now 78 and a prolific writer-director.
How Lautner came to use Brigham's music, and how in turn part of Lautner's score ended up Kill Bill Vol. 2, is further illustration of how large a net Tarantino casts when he goes trawling for inspiration.

Where and when were you born?
I was born on January 24, 1952, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. But most of my childhood, from ages 8 to 17, I lived in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Were you always musical?
I've been interested in music from since I can remember. I played the sax in the school band from 4th to 9th grades, though I wasn't very good at it.
I do remember that seeing Ricky Nelson on The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet and The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 made me want to play guitar, but I really didn't start on guitar until the fall of 1966. I took lessons, watched how other people played, whether live or on TV, and listened to a lot of music.

Did you want to be a singer-songwriter?
Because of The Beatles I think I just assumed that if you played guitar, you sang, and you wrote songs, too, so I started writing songs once I knew a few chords.

How did you hook up with the guys in Clinic?
My father worked for the international division of 3M. At the end of my junior year in high school, my dad announced we were moving to Paris, France. So for my senior year of high school (1969–70) I attended the American School of Paris.
In Paris, I met Phil Steele, then known as Phil Trainer. He was a 22- or 23-year-old bass player and vocalist, and he raided my high school rock band, taking me on guitar, Gerry Murphy on drums, and flute player Chris Hayward.
Phil Steele had previously played in Japan and Italy and knew British keyboard player Alan Reeves, then 25 or 26, because Reeves had played in a band called Clinic in both countries, and Phil did some Clinic gigs in Italy. Somehow, Steele realized that Alan was also in Paris.
So we put together a five-piece band, and perhaps because we were British-American, and Alan had some connections, we got signed to a production company, and they in turn got us signed to EMI France. We called ourselves Clinic.

Paris in the 1970s. God, what was that like?
Paris was wonderful in the '70s. Through Alan Reeves, I met fashion photographers, models, film people, artists, jazz musicians. It made a big impression on me (I was 19 or 20 years old at the time).



So how did Clinic end up doing movie music?
Well, after we signed with EMI France, another even more exciting offer came up. Alan Reeve's fashion model wife, Albane Navizet, had a bit part in French film director George Lautner's movie Road To Salina. Lautner already had French pop singer Christophe on board for a few songs, and some orchestral stuff, but Lautner wanted some "rock music" for his film. He originally wanted Pink Floyd, then popular in Europe though virtually unknown in the U.S. at that time, but they were asking for too much money, so we got the offer to come down and show him some songs. He liked what he heard. In other words, we were then in the right place and time.

Within the band itself, who wrote what?
Since the songs were being written individually by Steele, Reeves, or me, or in some combination, we decided to say that all songs were Brigham-Reeves-Steele, to avoid arguments over which songs got shown to the film people.

Did you score the movie, in the traditional sense?
Some of the seven songs used in the film were written before we saw the sections of film they wanted music for, but luckily they fit. In a few cases, such as for example "The Chase," that was a brand new composition and really was a collaborative effort between the writers.

What were some of the influences on "The Chase" and the other songs you did for Lautner?
We were very young when we got the chance to write music for Road To Salina – young, as in late teens, early 20s, and young, as in the band had not been together very long.
By the time we did our own album, Now We're Even (recorded in 1971, released in 1972 in France), we had more of a style, kind of Santana instruments meet Crosby, Stills and Nash vocals – only not as good as either of those bands!
But when we were either writing new tunes specifically for Salina, or trying to find ones that fit from songs various Clinic members had written before we even met each other, we still were finding a sound. Phil Steele was kind of a pop guy, kind of influenced by The Hollies, or The Turtles or The Zombies. Alan Reeves had learned jazz piano by his father's side when Alan was a boy, and Alan had become quite the Hammond organ player, a la Jon Lord from Deep Purple, or Keith Emerson (The Nice, ELP). Flute player Chris Hayward had studied classical music for flute and recorder. Drummer Gerry Murphy was a jazz fan but was also the kind of guy that turned me on to The Band. And I was coming at music like a singer-songwriter, like Donovan or James Taylor or Neil Young, although since Clinic, other musicians think of me more as a rock lead guitarist.
So bringing all those influences together was kind of exciting, but it took time to figure out how it might all fit.
We were lucky that Road To Salina seemed to need a variety of genres, so our being eclectic might have been seen as an asset. And besides us, there was this typical French pop singer named Christophe, and an orchestra doing some of Christophe's stuff, too. So the music in Salina is all over the map.
The classical-sounding piece in the movie was written by French film composer Bernard Gerard. It's called "Cold Water" and appears in a scene where the "fake" Rocky character (Robert Walker) and his alleged sister "Billie" (Mimsy Farmer) are getting it on beachside.
"The Chase" was kind of a jam thing that we wrote specifically for Road To Salina, as opposed to some of the other tunes in that film were written before it, and they just happened to fit.
I started "The Chase" by spontaneously playing the guitar riff that opens the tune. Alan Reeves played some Deep Purple-influenced, almost classical jamming on top of it. At one point we go to another section with four sustained chords, just to get some relief from the repetitiveness of the riff.



Do you know why Clinic isn't cited as the group doing the song on the film credits or the CD?
When Tarantino's company wanted to use "The Chase" in Kill Bill, someone probably realized that there's another more famous band called Clinic these days, so the song was credited to the writers, Alan Reeves, Phil Steele, and Philip Brigham. In addition, the Clinic I was in hasn't existed for over 30 years, so it's better for the three writers as individuals to have their own name out there instead of a band. All three of us are still active in film and TV soundtrack work, especially Alan Reeves, so even though it's kind of a fluke thing having a 34-year-old song find new life in a huge movie, with luck it's going to help all three of our careers.

Did you see the finished film at the time?
I was a senior in high school when we did the soundtrack, and I never saw the totally completed film until later (we would be shown say 1:03 minute's worth of film, and told "put some music of such-and-such type here"). When the movie came out, even at age 19, I was a little embarrassed at how bad the quality was.
The movie was neither a commercial nor critical success, but I did receive royalties (along with Reeves and Trainer, as the three songwriters) from 1972 to 1988. So, while Road To Salina is kind of crappy, if I never took part in it, I'd never have gotten a writing credit for a Tarantino film.

What ever happened to Clinic?
Clinic eventually got in legal trouble for being signed to EMI France while we recorded the Road To Salina, which came out on another record label. A settlement was reached.
We went on to do another Georges Lautner film soundtrack, but only a single was released.
We were hot to do our own album, so we recorded Now We're Even, which was supposed to come out on Roulette Records in 1973, but by then there was no band. The album did get released in France.
Philip Steele went on to write one of the biggest classic hits ever in Europe (10 million sales to date) called "City Lights" (1987), recorded by several artists, especially William Pitt.

Do you have any idea how Tarantino came upon the music?
At first I was guessing that he saw Road To Salina and remembered the parts of it that are kind of impressive – the desert cinematography, for one thing. In Salina they play "The Chase" for the first time in a scene not unlike the way "The Chase" is used in Kill Bill Vol. 2, with a car speeding across the desert on its way somewhere.
But later I found out more about how "The Chase" music got in Kill Bill Vol. 2. It turns out that Julie Dreyfus, who plays Sofie Fatale in Kill Bill, knew that Tarantino was looking for music, and her father Francis Dreyfus had the rights to quite a lot of soundtrack music, including Road To Salina. The soundtrack called La Route De Salina was re-released, on CD by Dreyfus Records in 2003 (go to www.dreyfusrecords.com if you want to see the cover). Curiously, there's at least one Clinic song, "Come On Come On," that's in the movie, but not on the LP, and vice-versa. A song called "Jacqueline" is on the LP but not in the movie.

So what have you been doing since recording "The Chase"?
After Clinic, I came to Boston to go to the Berklee College of Music. Didn't last that long there. Went on to play in scores of bands, duos, and so forth. In 1981, my then-wife Anne English and I co-wrote and recorded a song that made the WCOZ Best Of The Boston Beat Vol. 2 LP (WCOZ was a top-rated FM station in Boston at that time). Anne and I got some nibbles from A&M Records, but ultimately they passed on us.
I did get some original instrumentals placed on TV between 1990 and the present: an NBC Sunday night made-for-TV movie called Condition Critical and an ABC Sunday night movie, I Saw What You Did, starring Rosanna Arquette. Also Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, 20/20, Nickleodeon (Adventures Of Pete & Pete) and Lifetime (Intimate Portrait, with Stefanie Powers) and others have used my music.
These days I'd define myself as a semi-pro guitarist-vocalist, playing cover tunes for fun and extra money. In 1997, I finally had to get a "real” job, working in the workers' compensation insurance field.

Over the years since Clinic, how has songwriting changed for you?
Playing well-written cover tunes helps you to realize that if you're going to write your own stuff as well, it better be decent. Writing instrumentals is very easy for me to do. Writing lyrics is harder, and I almost have to wait for inspiration to do it. I can write instrumentals on demand, but usually not songs.

Besides new royalty checks, has anything changed since "The Chase" came out in KB2?
I have yet to receive any dollars from "The Chase" in KB2, although I'm expecting to do all right pretty soon.
To be honest, I don't think we ever played "The Chase" live back in Paris in ’71, and I never played it since or even thought about it that much until Tarantino used it in KB2. Than I pulled out my guitar and played along, just in case someone came over to my apartment and asked me to play it! 

 

Posted: Tue - March 22, 2005 at 04:41 PM          

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