To those who have followed New Zealand music for the past 40 years, Don McGlashan is a man who needs no introduction. Though he’s always done good introductions. Because if there was an introduction, it would have to mention many things. Beautiful Things. Things Well Made.
Things like his time as the drumming singer in Blam Blam Blam, one of Aotearoa’s greatest groups of the post-punk era, and his time in From Scratch, the country’s strangest pipe band.
Or his time as half of the Front Lawn. Never heard of them? Well, you know how Flight of the Conchords was New Zealand’s “fourth best parody folk duo?” The Front Lawn was the first.
And it should be mentioned that drumming, guitar-playing McGlashan, who was also once a teenage member of the brass section of what is now the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, is also New Zealand rock’s greatest euphonium player, ever.
He has also conducted orchestras while writing soundtracks for Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table and the opening ceremony of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
He also wrote the music to Toa Fraser’s film No. 2, the greatest movie ever made in Mt Roskill. It spawned the song Bathe in the River and as sung by Hollie Smith, the song took the hint and went to No. 2. It also lodged itself in the nation’s jukebox.
Then there was the Mutton Birds, a band that achieved many things, including time travel – they brought back the Fourmyula’s song Nature from the past and made it a top five hit. The revival helped get it voted the best Kiwi song of Apra’s lifetime in 2001. However, Don McGlashan’s induction into the hall of fame is about his songs, the stories they told and the places they took us.
Places like Takapuna beach with Andy.
Like Mt Eden, Balmoral, Sandringham and possibly even Mt Roskill with Dominion Road.
A gun shop in Christchurch with A Thing Well Made.
The back seat of a car headed to the Hokianga with Miracle Sun.
The terror inflicted on Parihaka with John Bryce.
The seas between Tahiti and Pitcairn Island with Queen of the Night and South Georgia with Shackleton.
He took us to unsettling places in the New Zealand heartland with White Valiant and Envy of Angels. And also to places and moments in people’s lives. Sometimes his own. But when McGlashan wrote a love song – like Anchor Me, While You Sleep, When You Come Back Home and more – he made sure of a few things.
Things like at first, we didn’t know it was a love song. But by the time we did, it was too late. The tunes were stuck in our heads, the words in our hearts, the pictures they evoked looked like the places we lived in and the people we loved.
He joins many other greats in the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, but as a songwriter and, yes, a euphonium player, McGlashan remains in a league of his own. And his songs have built a world of their own, a place that came with a map. Most of the pins in that chart describe a New Zealand seen through the eyes of an artist who could be from nowhere else in the world.
Don McGlashan is on a national tour until October 7. He will be inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame by Apra (Australasian Performing Right Association) at the Silver Scroll Awards on October 4.
