Dave Dobbyn says he still gets butterflies before every gig knowing he has to live up to the affection people have for his songs. Photo / Supplied by Lorraine Barry

Dave Dobbyn says he still gets butterflies before every gig knowing he has to live up to the affection people have for his songs. Photo / Supplied by Lorraine Barry

Be Mine Tonight

I clearly remember the moment it hit me in a Brighton Rd, Parnell house I was sharing with two student-teacher friends in 1977. The ringing guitar chords hooked me. Of course I was convinced it would be a huge hit overnight.

Springsteen's Born to Run had got to me, along with an overdose of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Brian Eno and Lou Reed, so I was going guitar crazy. I wrote this song on a brand new $650 blond Fender Stratocaster that weighs a tonne.

I played the verse chords over and over for hours until the words came. I was too shy for a girlfriend at that age, so I had to write with the swagger of one who'd had many - as you do. I think I got away with it. Th' Dudes hadn't long been performing, and from the moment we included this one in the set it shone and people connected with it. When fans say, "I grew up with your music", I say, "Well, well, so did I." I continue to play this song as much for the young dudes as for Th' Dudes.

Whaling

I was touring in Australia with DD Smash, and the whole song came to me in Kings Cross at the house bar of the Barclay Hotel in the wee smalls.

I remember the words flying on to a beer coaster. I was deeply missing my fiancee and we sent letters across the ditch daily. The touring was gruelling; we were playing eight shows a week and losing money.

The idea of the reluctant whaler appealed to me as an expression of exasperation and a symbol of my homesickness. The verses are self-encouraging and an aid to persevering against the tide in what seemed insurmountable waves of hard slog.

I finished the verses of Whaling in the summer of '82 on the shores of Lake Okataina in the Bay of Plenty. Anneliesje and I were together there after my months in Oz. We had just toured New Zealand to full houses, only to lessen the debt of what we had endured. The reluctant whaler is still out there, so this song remains in the live set for those who are fellow sloggers.

As to the metaphor of whaling, it went completely past a Melbourne radio programmer, who refused airplay on the grounds that whaling was a "dead issue".

Loyal

Loyal was written as a devotional love song. We were living in a Sydney flat near a park at the time. There was a pathway outside that students would use on their way through after school. One sunny day on the deck I came up with the basics of this one, and after singing it quietly over my strumming, under a fully bloomed flame tree, hearty applause came up from the pathway. I blushed.