Doug Hood, a key figure in the left-field of NZ rock through the 1980s and 1990s in his roles as a sound engineer, manager and promoter, has died after a long illness. This story from June 2023, when he was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the music industry, looked back at his varied career. Hood’s death comes a little over a month after the passing of Martin Phillipps of the Chills, a band Hood helped along the way.
The honours lists are always full of people most of us haven’t heard of. Often, that’s because they’re people whose lives have been spent making it possible for others to shine. Doug Hood, who was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the music industry in the King’s Birthday Honours, is such a person. It’s no exaggeration to call him a cultural hero.
Hood, who turns 70 this year, had moved to Dunedin from his hometown of Te Kūiti and was working as a Post Office technician in 1977 when his “wacky” friend Chris Knox decided to form a punk rock-inspired band, the Enemy. That they are fondly remembered now is in no small part down to Hood.
He was the one who leveraged his Post Office training to assemble and operate the band’s PA system, looked after the money and drove the band’s van. It was the beginning of a life of working out what needed doing and doing it.
As the Enemy morphed into Toy Love, Hood stayed on as their manager. It might have ended after Toy Love’s short, unhappy time in Australia and subsequent breakup. Hood went back to Te Kūiti and got a job spraying gorse, but soon found his way back to Auckland, just as the Flying Nun label was taking off.
The legend of the four-track Teac tape machine bought by Knox and used to make some of the earliest Flying Nun recordings, notably the Clean’s Boodle Boodle Boodle, is an established part of the label’s lore. But although Knox provided an essential aesthetic input, it was Hood at the controls for Boodle, employing the ear he’d developed as a live sound engineer to make a record. He understood the music – he’d arranged the Clean’s first gig, a 1978 support slot for the Enemy, and had actually been their singer that night.
Similar projects followed, including the so-called Dunedin Double EP, the recording debut of the Chills, the Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings and the Stones. But Hood’s good ear had a much wider influence. The rejection of big studios in favour of simple, direct recordings in natural spaces – Boodle was made in an old wooden hall, the Dunedin Double in a house – would later be championed by American indie musicians as an inspiration for the “low-fi” movement. Knox would always insist that “low tech” was a better term and he had a point – Point That Thing Somewhere Else still sounds miraculously good, 40-odd years on.
Hood ran the PA system at Auckland’s Windsor Castle pub, and later booked the venue, too, which proved to be a bonus for the young Flying Nun bands venturing north. Not only did he understand their music, but also he was a vital level head. When AudioCulture published tributes to Hood last year, everyone recalled his kindness, unflappability and even temper.
Hood paid particular attention to the Chills, partly because they seemed most likely to break through commercially, but mostly because he believed strongly in what the band’s leader, Martin Phillipps, had to offer. When the Chills became the first Flying Nun band to venture outside New Zealand, with their UK tour in 1985, Hood was there with them, taking care of business.
He also marshalled the Chills, Children’s Hour, the Doublehappys and the Expendables into 1984′s nationwide Looney Tour, named by cartoon fanatic Knox, who also provided the Looney Tunes-themed poster. The name, as it turned out, would live on.
Hood had organised New Zealand tours by the Fall in 1982 and the Birthday Party in 1983 – as usual, because there was no one else to do it – and decided to formalise his relationship with Australian promoters Ken West and Vivian Lees and form his own touring company. The original idea was that it would be Tally Ho! Tours, as a nod to the Clean’s first single, but to avoid a branding clash with a caravan company, Looney Tours was born.
Looney Tours brought the Violent Femmes, Billy Bragg, New Order, John Cale and many others on their first New Zealand visits. At first, visiting artists would be entertained in the Grey Lynn villa Hood shared with Knox and his partner Barbara Ward – he even managed to convert the Femmes into one-day cricket fans.
His relationship with Lees and West took a step up when Hood brought their festival, the Big Day Out, to New Zealand in 1994. Another generation would have its formative live music experiences thanks to him. He stepped aside from the festival some years later and eventually from the music business altogether, but has remained part of the community around the music.
Hood is also, like Shayne Carter and the Headless Chickens’ Grant Fell, an influential Māori figure in what may have appeared to be a musical movement that was all about Pākehā kids. Like others of his generation, he lost touch with his iwi affiliation, but through his mother, he is part of the Flavell family tree, with its roots in Ngāpuhi.
He has faced significant health challenges in recent years and it appeared he might not survive 2022. Happily, he is now faring better and is around to see his contribution recognised. His touring days are long past, but he has fond memories of not just the music but the road.
“Most groups fly everywhere now,” he says. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”
