All th'young dudes

Th'Dudes are one of those Kiwi bands whose songs never go away. Here, then-guitarist, now-producer IAN MORRIS recounts the early days of the Auckland group that launched his career and that of Dave Dobbyn and Peter Urlich.

Should you ask me to put a date on when Th'Dudes began, I'd point to a Saturday afternoon sometime early in the Auckland summer of 1975. Dave Dobbyn, Peter Urlich, Peter "Nyolls" Coleman and I were gathered - as usual - in Nyolls' grandmother's basement in Green Lane. We were "getting a band together".

Dave, Peter U and I had known each other since form one at Sacred Heart College in 1968, laughing at Spike and Sellers and Cleese, passing notes in sex ed class, and blanking out the wretchedness of canings and new maths and Latin verbs with a love of music and a heightened sense of the absurd.

I'd come from England in 1966. Wild colonial New Zealand was all a bit of a shock after the sandals and socks and shy reserve of the Old Country.

I had trouble fitting in to this bare feet and beer jugs place. I did have a guitar though, and an older sister who - back in England - had exposed me early on in life to the wonders of pop music: the overwhelming magic of Beatlemania, the depravity of the Stones. Radio Caroline and Top of the Pops and Ready, Steady, Go: I was hooked on the soundscape of the three-minute wonder. Tennis racquet as guitar? I was that cliche.

Peter Urlich was a living light entertainment show in himself. He could grease up the teachers yet still spit with the bad boys at the back of the class. And a sharp dresser: even then he was the sort of guy who could play a hard rugby match in a hurricane and still look like he'd come straight from the dry-cleaners via the hairdressers.

Together we had been harbouring a dream: that one day we'd be like Mick and Keef, or Bowie and Ronson, or Daltrey and Townshend.

I knew I was going to be friends with Dave on our first day at SHC. When he walked into class late, wearing a too-large hand-me-down uniform and a savage crewcut courtesy of his mother's kitchen shears, I recognised a fellow loner.

I see him still: ginger on porcelain swaddled in a tent of navy blue. He was picked on and put upon all through school and found solace in his guitar.

At lunchtime a sport-hating half dozen of us would gather in the hall or a music room, banging away on guitars. While the others were diddling around with Simon and Garfunkel, Dave would stonk into some riff-driven Neil Young. When Abbey Road was released and everyone was trying to plinkety-plink their way through Here Comes the Sun, Dave impressed upon me the blackfoot boogie of Come Together.

He and I lived for the days when Mr Gannaway, the music master, brought his electric organ to class and played the Peddlars' Girlie with wah wah and everything. Together we'd jam for hours on endless Santana riffs.

We'd yell "[expletive] the neighbours!" along with the Small Faces. We'd pound out the entire bridge of Something in the Air on an out of tune piano.

There was never - praise be - a scrap of formal shape to his music; he's probably never read a chord chart in his life. If my guitar playing was ordered progression; his was a tumbling, swirling cloud.

Nyolls came to SHC from the Waikato in third form to work hard and pass exams, but when he wasn't studying or breaking both legs skiing he'd be sitting around with a bunch of guitar-strumming boarders, all plinking and tinkering away at Cat Stevens songs, easing the misery of life far from the farm.

Despite Cat, Nyolls was sensible enough to realise - even at that early age - that the Guess Who could never be cool. And sensible enough to realise that becoming a doctor would most likely be a more prudent career choice than playing the bass guitar.

He would eventually leave the band to explore his own personal Hippocratic frontier, and in his place we pulled in someone we'd had our eye on for a while.

Peter White had been playing in bands for - ooh, ages. Over a year. And he'd even managed to grow a slight beard. He played a solid and melodic bass, like his heroes McCartney and Entwhistle. His Jewishness and deadpan humour were perfect foils for our arrogant, tight-arsed Catholicism. His high kicks alone could provoke hours of scoff and counter-scoff.

The only thing really wrong was his name: we felt we couldn't have yet another Peter, so we shortened his middle name and - whether he liked it or not - made him "Lez".

Anyway, this afternoon here we were with our Teisco and Jansen guitars and some fuse-blowing, shock-giving amps made by a bearded valve-nerd in Forest Hills. Also an endless supply of Krispie biscuits and L&P. A year out of school and still chemistry-class daydreaming of Fender Twin Reverbs and Telecaster basses, Shure microphones and JBL K120 speakers, Ludwig drums and WEM Copycats. The Stones and Little Feat and Ziggy Stardust. Playing at Madison Square Garden and the Hammersmith Odeon and the Marquee Club. Recording at Strawberry Studios and Mussel Shoals and Abbey Road and the Manor, produced and engineered by Glyn Johns and Ken Scott and George Martin and Bill Szymszyck. Day-glo posters, album liner notes, Creem and NME, Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent.

Just for now, though, we'd settle for the sniff of a chance to get up and play at the Glendowie Tennis Club annual dance.

For some weeks we'd been honing a repertoire of other people's songs, the songs that had inspired us. Some of them we could play passably well, some were a shambolic lurch, and some would always remain beyond our ill-timed and out-of-tune grasp. The rhythm and blues of Chuck Berry, the Stones, the James Gang and Little Feat. Funk from the Commodores and the Average White Band. The perfect pop of Mott the Hoople, Bowie and T-Rex. Wildly ambitious covers of 10CC and Steely Dan, trying to recreate on a Saturday afternoon with two guitars what Godley and Creme, and Becker and Fagen had taken a year and several million dollars to achieve.

There was but one thing holding us back, we reckoned: we had no drummer. Today we'd advertised for one in the Herald. Three people answered.

The first guy was ancient - 25 at least - and wore the ubiquitous leather jacket of the aged.

He pulled up in an Anglia van and unloaded case after case of Tama gear, which wasn't exactly Ludwig but there was a lot of it. Once he'd set it all up though, he played with a skippy little beat that reminded me of shiny suits and saxophone sections. He paradiddled and mummadaddad his way around the edges of the songs. He looked blank when we mentioned Keith Moon and Charlie Watts.

The next auditioner was more our own age and had at least heard of Ringo Starr and even the Prairie Prince, but his kit was a mish-mash of put-together parts. His pants, however, were fashionably high-waisted with huge flared legs. Peter counted in Blue Suede Shoes. The guy got the stops okay, but when we hit the chorus it sounded like a split bag of King Edwards tumbling down the cellar stairs. We staggered on for a few more seconds. Strictly a play-in-the-bedroom man.

Finally, a yellow Toyota Corolla station wagon reversed down the drive. A Japanese car was unusual in itself. Looked like it cost a few grand. Had a tow bar. Certainly a step up from my hundred-dollar Humber 80.

The driver had bad hair, neither short enough nor long enough, and bad jeans with creases in the front. Bruce, he said, and he certainly looked like one. Bruce Hambling set up a Premier kit - about midway between Tama and Ludwig in our estimation - all polished and tidy.

We decided to skip Blue Suede Shoes. Instead, Dave started the riff to Alright Now. Bruce raised his meaty arms. Clenched in his carpenter fists were small tree trunks. The thick varnish on them glinted in the exotic half-light of the fly-spotted fluorescent over the pool table. Through an L&P-induced haze I watched as they hammered down towards drum and cymbal.

In the explosion on beat one of bar five, a new universe was created. I took on a dazed expression of bliss, like a tummy-scratched labrador. The music took shape and hovered over us with electrified, uncontrollable life. A heaving Frankenstein's monster of noise created from the darkest parts of our individual souls. I came close to almost believing there could possibly be a remote chance that there might be some sort of God somewhere. Either that or I'd eaten too many Krispies.

* Th'Dudes' "definitive collection" Where Are The Girls is released this week.