The Clean

‘The Clean … pioneered the loose psychedelic sound that made its country famous in underground circles in the 1980s. Any visit from the Clean would thrill aficionados. Each song pulsated as if it had its own circulation system, with subtle movements in tone and melody shifting the stream.’

‘The Clean made some of the music that has meant most to me in my life. The band’s exuberant style effortlessly fused post-Velvets garage drone with the spacious, edge-of-the-world feel of the New Zealand landscape, birthing a euphoric, naive and inexhaustibly affirmative form of DIY that opened the floodgates for the NZ pop revolution.’

‘There has yet to be a book that tells the story of the band at the heart of New Zealand underground music and that became synonymous with things like Flying Nun Records and the “Dunedin Sound” that travelled around the world. It is much needed and long overdue. It is written by the ideal author who was not only there when it all happened, but who also recognised why it really mattered more than most.’

‘It fell to the men of the Clean – David Kilgour, his brother Hamish, and various associates – to unveil the New Zealand sound in its full shabby glory. They began as rank teenage amateurs, and to a certain extent they stayed that way. Even when David learned to play guitar, he avoided pedantries of exact pitch in his vocals. But the songs had an indelibly catchy lilt, pop glamour surging out of the basement, and David’s hoarsely shouted lyrics spoke to the existentialism of artists on the dole … Even though “Tally Ho” and various later efforts climbed into the New Zealand charts, this was a band with which executives were not wont to tamper.’

‘I’m a fan of everything they ever did.’

‘The Clean delivered raw current with laconic beauty. I’d never known anything like it. It made me ecstatic. It proved other worlds.’

‘The Clean continued to mesmerise … they really were the ultimate cool, independently minded band … they showed us the way.’

‘Aotearoa has many musical heroes, but only a handful can claim to have changed the culture. The Clean did with their very first handful of releases.’

‘A self-contained, perfect unit. I’ve never stopped listening to them.’

‘We were punkier than The Clean. They were almost like avant-garde R’n’B, they were weird.’

‘I saw them at the Coronation Hall … and it just clicked: this is orchestral music played by people with guitars.’

‘I never stopped loving The Clean. I was an ex-member but I was always a complete fan of what they did.’

‘I care about The Clean. I always did. They are the greatest band NZ ever produced.’

They deserved a book. But what kind of book, for a group that treated induction into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame as a kind of ethical crisis? Their longtime friend Richard Langston seems to have provided an answer.

He dug up interviews with band members, partners, friends, and collaborators that revealed details even he had never known. The influence of the Sex Pistols, moments of violence at gigs, the close-knit creative relationships that formed naturally in Dunedin’s compact geography – all of it helped reconstruct the lived experience of the era.

Langston was asked to create this book by Sam Elworthy a long time ago … What a visually impressive book it turned out to be: based on everybody keeping their own record of photos, posters, and ephemera, Langston has done a superb job as the editor, just adding some text for continuity in places. Certainly, there is immense creativity in the images made by the band members themselves, but with the help of friends and lovers, this is an absolute visual treat.

An essential book, even for those with just passing interest in this country’s popular music.

When hardcore fans write about their favourite band there’s always the risk of them seeing things through rose-tinted glasses … but Richard Langston did a fine job of avoiding any such thing and the way he did it was by allowing the story of The Clean to literally tell itself.

Richard Langston is a journalist, poet and television director who has written about the Dunedin music scene since the 1980s. The fanzine he edited from 1984–86, Garage, was issued as the book Pull Down the Shades: Garage Fanzine 1984–1986 (HoZac Books, 2023). He has been friends with the members of The Clean for forty years.

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