Composer and Mutton Birds founder David Long on music that shaped his life

Wellington-based composer David Long, a founding member of 90s band The Mutton Birds.

The Soundtrack to My Life: From Bowie to Bollywood, Wellington composer David Long shares some of his musical milestones.

NOCTURNES IN THE SUBURRA, Nino Rota (1969)

Nino Rota is one of my favourite film composers. He wrote scores for all the Federico Fellini films, but there’s a rawness to Satyricon, which this piece is from — it’s a wild ride. I’ve always been interested in music with images and Rota always seemed to write something that made the movie come more to life. He did two of The Godfather films, too.

Tupua and I talk about movies all the time [Long composed the music for choreographer Tupua Tigafua’s new work for the New Zealand Dance Company, which premieres in Auckland next week]. Satyricon was one of the first films I recommended to him, so it was one of our common bonding things.

AYE DIL E NADAN, Lata Mangeshkar (1983)

Other people play, I don’t know, gym bangers when they’re exercising. I listen to old Bollywood music. This track [from the 1983 biopic Razia Sultan, about a 13th-century Indian empress] is beautiful. Lata and her sister Asha sang on thousands and thousands of Bollywood songs. In a lot of early Bollywood there’s almost a jazz feel but played with tablas [twin hand drums]. It’s a sort of cultural mash-up I find really exciting.

LAZARUS, David Bowie (2016)

David Bowie was the first big concert I ever went to, in 1978. We lived in Upper Hutt and I made my mother take me up to Auckland for it. He was someone I’ve loved all my life, from when I was about 12. In the 90s, he lost his mojo and went into what I think he described as his Phil Collins years, but then he came back. Lazarus, one of my favourite songs from his final album Blackstar, came out a couple of days before he died, so there was a resonance in that too.

When you make art, sometimes audiences are unforgiving. They expect everything to be brilliant all the time. But if you’re really trying to make art that’s a little bit different, you’re going to fail sometimes. And Bowie failed at times, but then he also made some great art. I think it was the same with [dancer/choreographer and long-time collaborator] Douglas Wright. It’s about not being afraid to fail.

CALL TO YOU, Trinity Roots (2002)

I’d left The Mutton Birds a couple of years before and when I came back from England, there was all this talk about the Wellington reggae scene. That was great, but I remember seeing Trinity Roots and you just couldn’t categorise them. They were sort of astounding and in live performances they’d improvise into all these different places. It was also emblematic for me, coming back and finding a place in New Zealand music. It was like, thank God I’m home.

SILENCE, Charlie Haden & the Liberation Music Orchestra (1983)

I bought the album Ballad of the Fallen in my early 20s. It’s gorgeous. I spent a lot of time listening to more experimental jazz, but I always loved melody, and I’ve realised that Charlie Haden, who was a double bass player, is the common link speaking to me in all the albums I kept of that style.

— As told to Joanna Wane

Choreographer Tupua Tigafua's new work LittleBits and AddOns opens up a "picture book for dance", with music composed by David Long. Photo / John McDermott

• A founding member of The Mutton Birds, David Long composed the music for Samoan choreographer Tupua Tigafua’s new work LittleBits and AddOns, which premieres at Auckland’s ASB Waterfront Theatre on April 21 and 22 as part of the New Zealand Dance Company’s double bill, Stage of Being. Long, who won best score at the APRA Silver Scrolls in 2020 for the BBC drama series, The Luminaries, has just released a new album, I’ll Hum the First Few Bars. It features a 17-minute title track commissioned by Orchestra Wellington, which has an animated video by David Downes, and music originally written for Douglas Wright’s 1978 dance work, Rapt.