Laura McGoldrick takes The Exponents' Jordan Luck for a drive in her hot hatch ahead of tonight's music awards, where he will receive the New Zealand Herald Legacy Award.
On the eve of a music industry tribute, the Exponents examine their career in 10 songs with Russell Baillie.
It's been a long time between drinks but tonight at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, the Exponents add one more to the trophy collection - the New Zealand Herald Legacy Award, which recognises the band's enduring influence and our lasting affection for those songs of theirs.
The Exponents' career story - of triumphs and setbacks, mainstream popularity and musical left-turns, fruitless overseas sojourns followed by local comebacks - has been well canvassed in these pages over the years.
What's less well-known is the stories behind the songs that on record and at countless shows made them local heroes to more than one generation of Kiwi music fans.
Here's today's TimeOut cover paying tribute to the Exponents, recipients of tonight's NZ Herald Legacy Award. Keen-eyed fans should be able to spot three visual references to lyrics in the the band's songs. Answers at the bottom of the story.
So we and the band picked 10 and asked frontman Jordan Luck, bassist Dave Gent and guitarist Brian Jones to take us back to where those tunes began (fellow founding member, drummer Michael "Harry" Harallambi, didn't respond to TimeOut approaches).
Here the three talk about how the songs we know them by came to fruition and the roles others outside the band played.
They also talk about the mates they lost. Like original member guitarist Steve Cowan, who left the band and returned to Timaru after the success of the first singles. He died in the mid-80s.
Like, guitarist Chris Sheehan, who was Cowan's eventual replacement and whose playing left an indelible mark on the band's mid-80s period, didn't return with the rest of the band from Britain in the early 90s. He died last year.
They also talk about their own influences and happy accidents behind the writing and recording of the tracks, just some of the 18 New Zealand top 40 hits which the band delivered over the years.
1. Victoria
The string section enriched classic debut single went top 10 when it was released in mid-1982.
Luck: This is about my Christchurch landlady who ran an escort service. This song took the longest to write in as much as the chords all started at Steve Cowan's girlfriend's flat in Timaru. But the final lyrics weren't finished for around four months later. There were six or seven verses. It took ages to get together, too. We were running throught it over and over but Harry and Dave didn't know what to with it. At least half an hour into it probably out of frustration Harry bashes into the chorus. "Flip, that sounds brilliant. We'll play it on our own until you feel like coming in!" Boom, arranged.
Jones: I woke up at our first band flat in Woodham Rd, Christchurch with a guitar line in my head and by the strangest coincidence it fitted perfectly with a song Jordan had just penned, called Victoria.
Gent: The first time we played this at the Aranui Hotel in Christchurch it lasted seven and a half minutes because we hadn't worked out how to finish it.
Luck: Mike Chunn (who signed us to Mushroom records) tells me he was "mesmerised" by it in our live set. We were happy but bewildered by his selection. It was completely unlike the rest of our punky pop output.
Gent: When it was chosen as the first single, we jumped in an old transit van we had bought off The Clean and drove non-stop to Auckland with Steve Cowan and Jordan driving, got lost near Wanganui and it took four hours longer than it should have to make Auckland. The recording was fast. We didn't have any real studio experience so it was recorded as we had been playing it live. As soon as our parts were done, we left for Rotorua to watch the Screaming MeeMees play. Mike Chunn played some piano and the strings written by Pete from The Wastrels were added - whatever magic is in it happened after we left. Sadly the only song Steve played on.
The Exponents in the early 80s (with fifth original member, Steve Cowan, centre).
Jones: I think my guitar line sparked the string arrangement. I remember sitting with Pete Cooke and Richie Hlavac of Christchurch contemporaries the Wastrel working through ideas for the strings. Pete's mum was a music teacher so he kind of had an idea how to transcribe music. We fiddled around and ended up with a page of scribble. When the string quartet arrived at the studio I handed them the handwritten piece of A4. The response from the string section wasn't great but it was a start. We managed to sing and hum and twiddle lines on the guitar until they got it.
Luck: Only a handful of radio stations played New Zealand songs in 1982 so the fact that drums do not appear until 1:45 didn't come into the equation. We recorded this in three or four takes.
Steve Cowan, who played rhythm guitar was perfect every time. They are still the trickiest chord sequences I have written. We heard the beginning of the strings being recorded but left. "Don't you wanna hear the mix?" enquired producer Lee Connolly. "No, it's okay, we trust you, it sounds really good. We've got to go. We're gonna go see The Screaming Meemees in Rotorua."
The song lyric is completely true except her for reading Cosmopolitan. Victoria read Cleo and Vanity Fair but neither scanned syllabically. The odd bit when I'm singing it today is wondering "what time did the soaps begin in 1982? It must've been lunchtime. Eleven?
Gent: We usually played it mid-set so Harry and I could have beers in the first half before his drums come in.
2. I'll Say Goodbye (Even Though I'm Blue)
The band's fourth single in 1984 swung them from post-punk pop to music hall singalong complete with video of high-dairy content.
Luck: I was living in Gibraltar Crescent, Parnell. A two-minute walk away was a deli selling samosas. I walk there, buy a mince and a vegetable samosa and this whole tune, lyric and all, is in my head. I get back, squeeze some lime on the samosas, brew an Earl Grey, pick up the guitar and work out the chords. In my head it is on piano though. The protagonist I find is dead. Broken-hearted. Deceased. He or she sings goodbye from the grave. A calamitous occurrence wrapped in a cheery tune.
Jones: Dave and Harry came from early Christchurch punk band Channel 4 and Jordan and I had a background playing punk covers. I'll Say Goodbye was a bit of a departure musically and probably a bit of a pop crossover. We started to get mainstream radio play on the back of it. We didn't really plan it or think it through but we did pick up a lot of fans but probably lost some of our punk mates in the process.
Luck: Our favourite bands litter the videos - the Dabs, Prime Movers. This one has got The Wastrels. And on the recording, that's Screaming Meemee Peter Van der Fluit playing piano on the outro.
Gent: For a band that did a lot of crap, awful videos this is right up there. It's a pretty cheesy song and the pub singalong thing and banging of glasses is cringe inducing. A crowd favourite that is fun to play - we barely have to do anything.
3. Sex & Agriculture
A few months after the release of the cheery I'll Say Goodbye, the band goes to the dark side with this Melbourne-recorded slab of South Canterbury gothic-funk, which is also released as an extended 12-inch dance mix. Teen fanclub confusion reigns.
Luck: This is one of the first songs I wrote. It is essentially a four-finger exercise over four guitar frets. You don't have to move your hand until the chorus. Before I began learning guitar, I had a small ream of poetry. As I practised this riff I found I was able to sing this poem along to it. It was brought to life by guitarist Chris Sheehan who had just joined the band. Intended to be played on bass, the riff was picked up by Brian on guitar while Chris threw mechanical industrial sonics over, beneath and through it. The title I owe to The Go-Betweens' Cattle And Cane. I like the fact that the title isn't a lyric in the song.
An early recording was done at Mandrill Studios in Parnell with Don McGlashan. His band Blam Blam Blam were an inspiration for what you could do with songs. I recall Don introduced the stuttered "barbed wires" and "tractors".
Gent: This must be the worst song title ever. It's written by Brian and Jordan but really it's all about Chris' guitar parts. He had just joined the band and instantly dominated the sound and musical direction. We loved it - he was a great musician and we were trying to get some traction in Australia with a harder sound. It's a bit Hunters and Collectors and Models-influenced and the producer Julian Mendelson had been engineering Two Tribes for Frankie Goes to Hollywood and expected a lot more from us musically than our previous recordings.
Side by side with our last single I'll Say Goodbye it was too radical a jump in some ways but at the time seemed a perfect combination of Jordan's melodies and Chris's rad guitar parts.
Jones: The Jordan riff is still a bit tricky to do. It's been hard to do it justice live as Chris departed the band years ago. We did a fundraiser for Chris [who died last year] with Brett Adams from The Bads on guitar and it was fantastic. Brett's an amazing musician and slotted in beautifully.
4. Caroline Skies
An ode to Timaru and original guitarist Steve Cowan, who, having left the band and returned to the city after their first flush of success, died a few years later of asthma. From 1985's Expectations album, it was released as a single in 1986. It was re-recorded for albums Amplifier (1986) and Ten Days at Roundhead (2013).
Gent: It's one of my favourites about friends drifting apart and places changing.
A wistful Carnival Is Over, summer, post haycarting going-to-town from Temuka, Kurow, or Methven. Friday nights off to Timaru, the Hydro Hotel, Scottish Hall.
This song reminds me of Steve Cowan in a bikini entering Miss Caroline Bay and a poster he did of his private parts with a cigarette and sunglasses to make them look like a face. He plastered these on every lamp-post in the bay.
The Dance Exponents in the mid 80s (with guitarist Chris Sheehan, centre).
Luck: We recorded this at Harlequin Studios. We did Victoria there but the third album, Amplifier, was a different kettle of kelp. Not much fun. It should've been. This song captures the dour gloom of it all. Despite that, it is one of my favourite sounding recordings.
Essentially, it's about missing the fun times in South Canterbury. Fortuitously the glorious Caroline Bay Carnival is not over and continues - like the final refrain of the song.
Jones: When we went to Steve's funeral we planned to play it. I remember standing, holding an acoustic through the service, but it somehow didn't feel right and we were grieving so much that we didn't have it in us. It's a song about loss and growing up and friends leaving town. We had just lost our best friend.
5. Only I Could Die (And Love You Still)
One of the band's most soaring anthems. Recorded twice - for 1985's Expectations and 1986's Amplifier.
Luck: When Brian met Chris and asked him if he'd be interested in becoming a Dance Exponent I don't think he knew he'd have a top five album and open for David Bowie within two months. Nor did we. I enquired if he had anything up his sleeve. He showed me this riff. Pulling a page from my ream I found it to be an appropriated Wordsworth line "Tis said that some have died for love" with the rest of the lyric recounting a mid-Canterbury day spent commiserating with one of our favourite bands, the Wastrels. The fit was perfect.
New Zealand musicians, The Exponents.
Gent: The first time we recorded this for the Expectations album, Psychedelic Furs drummer Vince Ely drummed on it, he was a friend of producer Ian Taylor and it was pretty intimidating being in the studio with him. He was a great guy and super drummer but the version we did for the Amplifier album was so much better. Chris was basically living in the studio and in a lot of ways the album was his baby. He nailed probably his best lead break in the middle of the song and Jordan added a great early-morning vocal take.
Luck's 1985 ode to the garden city over gently metronomic beat and muted guitars which took on a new meaning post-earthquake.
Jones: I started messing around with a simple guitar line on a four-track reel to reel that I borrowed from [Christchurch underground rock figurehead] Bill Direen and played it to Dave. He added the bass, played it to Chris. He added the high guitar, played it to Jordan and he came up with some of his best lyrics. I especially like the middle eight with its chiming cathedral of guitars.
Gent: We were living in Christchurch when not touring and getting songs together for our second album. This song always worked with the audience live but was not that enjoyable to play. All the bass, guitar and drum parts are so constant and metronomic, making them mesh and still sound good is a bit of a challenge. Playing this at the post-earthquake concert, though, was quite an emotional moment. Jordan's lyrics were given added meaning in light of the tragic circumstances.
Luck: Again with a poem I found a fit for this magical piece. Lyrically it was inspired by poets Sam Hunt and Gary McCormick, Christchurch found me being located in the past but instead of seeing the swamp I see a city. It became the theme song for the Band Together concert after the first 2010 Earthquake. The song seemed to bring a happiness, a positivity, a unity to the 100,000 gathered.
After the second quake, well, alas, I saw the city as a swamp. Optimistically, Cashel St is way way sunnier now than when the song was written when cars still drove between Columbo St and Oxford Terrace. I don't know if you can wait in Fergie McCormick's bar any more.
7. Why Does Love Do This To Me?
The 1991 first single off the back-from-UK, chart-topping Something Beginning with C album from the following year. The band's biggest song.
Luck: I often recall writing a song, where I was, what was going on and especially if the circumstances are unusual. I used to show my new songs to a guy called Mick Hodgkins and his songs to me in a squat in Plaistow, London. I was about to show him one of three new songs when Why Does Love Do This To Me? fell out almost in the time it takes to play. It was just another song in the set when we demoed it at a place called Picnic Studios.
The tapes arrived back in New Zealand with Brian Jones. Adam Holt, an old friend of the band, from Polygram New Zealand heard it. After four years without a contract we were suddenly recording again.
There are people who may have heard of me. There are people who know of The Exponents. But most New Zealanders can sing Why Does Love Do This To Me?
In Queenstown one evening we saw four different line-ups playing it. They were pretty close to the recording apart from one, which was a lady and a pianist doing a lounge-jazz kind of style with it.
The Exponents at the 1991 shoot of Why Does Love Do This To Me music video.
Gent:Why Does Love changed everything. It's our most popular song, it's sort of got a life of its own, we thought it was a good song when we recorded it, the reviews weren't great, it charted well but no better than the other singles off Something Beginning With C.
But it seems to have been adopted as a classic Kiwi anthem like Bliss or April Sun In Cuba. When it was used by Air New Zealand for their ads it became synonymous with rugby. Hearing the crowd singing it at Eden Park when we won the 2011 World Cup was one of my favourite band moments.
Jones (who wore shorts in the tiki-tour of a video): I've got the best legs in the band, so it would have been a shame to cover them up.
8. Who Loves Who The Most?
Second question song in a row released as a single in 1991 ahead of Something Beginning with C which sounded influenced by the dance-rock emerging from the "Madchester" scene of the era.
Gent: "It's been bugging me" is Jordan's best opening line ever. This song is so good to play, lots of space a reasonable groove and it's different every time. We were living in London and I was playing with Chris Sheehan in The Starlings, we had just covered Wasn't Born To Follow by the Byrds and the bassline is a similar feel. It's a bit Manchester but super-poppy. When we returned to New Zealand, Harry rejoined and I think this is the first song we worked on. As soon as he started the drum feel the whole thing worked perfectly.
The Exponents, circa 1991.
Luck: Most songs I presented to the band altered little from the initial concept. Exponents rehearsed barely a skerrick. I can count rehearsal rooms on two hands. It was intended as a Bennett-Sinatra croon and it was about to be thrown out until Harry quadrupled the tempo.
9. Like She Said
From 1994's Grassy Knoll album featuring some new Dude on very loud guitar.
Gent: Dave Dobbyn became our guitarist for an album after Brian Jones went back to England to live. We were in Sydney and he lived down the road from us in Paddington. We had always loved his playing from the DD Smash days and were chuffed he agreed to do it. This is my favourite from those recordings - he nailed a great opening guitar hook and then in the middle a brilliant lead break, all one take, feedback all over the place, perfect on top of the fat bar chords played by Brent Williams the first guy I ever played with in Oamaru as a 14 year old.
Luck: Dave is recognised as a brilliant singer-songwriter yet it is his acumen on the axe that I celebrate. We were recording this at Midnight Oil's studio in Sydney. A fantastic environment. I walk in and Harry exclaims "Man, listen to this, Dobbyn is going off!". I don't recognise the song. Dave's opening riff is incendiary. Dave walked out, "How's it sounding?". "That's it, Dave. Next track!".
Dave Dobbyn.
10. The Summer You Never Meant
Dreamy Beatlesque ballad that was the B-side to band's last top 20 single La La Lulu in 1995.
Luck: Australian David Barraclough was the guitarist we settled on to fill Brian's sandals. His first contribution to the band was his hit composition La La Lulu. Its B-side was this beast - our first collaboration. A true collaboration where you actually sit down together and go through the chords, the melody, the lyric, the structure. It became a surprise radio hit. I believe its success is due to Eddie Rayner's Hammond organ playing. It gives it the haunting groove.
Jones: This is The Exponents song that I wish I had played on. I was gutted when I heard it.
Luck: It got astonishing airplay but it took an ardent advocate to get us to play it. It would be in a set list. There would be a few nods around the stage and generally skipped over.
David Barraclough:Summer was pretty special. I just had this simple chord progression and a line about a hardware shop. I've done some crap solos for jingles and film school stuff but I remain steadfastly proud of that one.
Answers: 1. Tractor - Sex & Agriculture 2. The postcard from Tracey - Whatever Happened to Tracey3. Future Shock by Alvin Toffler - one of Victoria's favourite authors, according to the song
