Extract

The definitive story of The Clean in their own words.

Now, you said it was yesterday, yesterday’s another day
Heading round in make believe, I don’t know if it’s you or
If it’s me oh, I don’t know, I don’t know
Tally ho, tally ho!

In 1978 in Dunedin the Kilgour brothers, Hamish and David, and their schoolfriend Peter Gutteridge, got together to form a band called The Clean. When Robert Scott joined in 1980 the band found a combination that endured for nearly forty years.

The Clean profoundly changed alternative music: hitting the New Zealand charts for months with a single made for $50, ‘Tally Ho!’; helping establish Flying Nun and a music scene independent of the big labels; pioneering a low-fi, do-it-yourself approach to rock music; and touring internationally to influence bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.

Raw and immediate, this is the story as told by members of The Clean and their inner circle – fellow musicians such as Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps, Graeme Downes and Ira Kaplan, friends and family, pub promoters and sound engineers, and their good friend, Richard Langston. From teenagers in a Dunedin practice room to New York City on 9/11 – this is the band’s history as it unfolds.

Author

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.

Endorsements

‘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.’ – Matthew Goody, author of Needles and Plastic: Flying Nun Records, 1981–1988 (Auckland University Press, 2022)

‘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.’ – New York Times

‘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.’ – David Keenan, novelist and author of Volcanic Tongue

‘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.’ – Alex Ross, New Yorker, author of The Rest is Noise

‘A self-contained, perfect unit. I’ve never stopped listening to them.’ — Alec Bathgate, Tall Dwarfs

‘I’m a fan of everything they ever did.’ — Ira Kaplan, Yo La Tengo

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

‘We were punkier than The Clean. They were almost like avant-garde R’n’B, they were weird.’ — Chris Knox, The Enemy, Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs

‘The Clean continued to mesmerise . . . they really were the ultimate cool, independently minded band . . . they showed us the way.’ — Roger Shepherd, founder of Flying Nun Records

‘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.’ — Simon Grigg, writer, founder of Propeller Records and AudioCulture Iwi Waiata

‘I saw them at the Coronation Hall . . . and it just clicked: this is orchestral music played by people with guitars.’ — Graeme Downes, The Verlaines

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

‘I care about The Clean. I always did. They are the greatest band NZ ever produced.’ — Jim Wilson, former promoter for The Gladstone and founder of Phantom Billstickers

Reviews

• '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.' – Russell Brown reviews The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul for the Listener

• 'I just wanted that real sense of place. I wanted you to get a feel of being in the van with the band or being in the city with the band and also feeling at times just how hard it was for them . . .' – Richard Langston speaking to Matthew Littlewood of the Otago Daily Times 
  
  
• Tim Gruar for Music NZ: '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.' – SA Boyce for FlaxFlower Reviews
  
  
• 'An essential book, even for those with just passing interest in this country's popular music.' writes Graham Reid for Kete Books
  
  
• 'I wanted the reader to feel like they were in the van, that they were on the dancefloor, that they were in flats in Dunedin when [the band] were discovering the Sex Pistols. I just wanted that whole feel of, also, ennui and boredom in Dunedin, and the weather, and the fact that they weren't popular. It's all in there. I wanted it to go in real-time.' – Richard Langston, interviewed by Mihingarangi Forbes for RNZ's Saturday Morning 
  
  
• Richard Langston, interviewed by Gary Steele for Witchdoctor: 'I have opinions, but I’m not a critic; I’m a storyteller . . . I knew the last thing The Clean would want is me making some big claims about their cultural importance on their behalf . . . I would be telling this story from inside the band.'
  
  
• Ian Chapman reviews The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul for RNZ's Nine to Noon: '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.'
  
  
• Listen to an interview with Richard on 95bfm. 
  
  
• 'You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Langstons’ The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul.' – from That Devil Music blog 
  
  
• Grant McDougall selects the books as the ReadingRoom book of the week: 'Their story as told by Langston is an enchanting, deeply rich and rewarding read. The Clean were one hell of a band; their legacy is now set down on paper'.
  
  
• Read a review of the book on takahē. 
  
  
• Listen to Richard in conversation with Brian Turner for East Village Radio.