"It's also like those expressions the beatniks used to use and it was just a word that kept coming up while I was writing the book."
Bollinger is a music writer and reviewer and has produced and presented The Sampler on Radio New Zealand since 2001.
In setting out to write what became Goneville Bollinger wanted to write about New Zealand music in the 1970s, a period he felt had been left undocumented.
"It's glossed over a lot in the music history of New Zealand."
Having been a teenager at the time and touring the country with band Rough Justice it was a formative decade for Bollinger.
So a memoir became the best vehicle for what he wanted to talk about.
"It's kind of my story as well as the story of the music."
Goneville is also an insight into New Zealand society in the 1970s.
It went from the optimism around the election of Norman Kirk as Prime Minister and ended with the country spiralling towards the "1981 showdown between the two New Zealands".
"It was actually a pretty tumultuous decade in New Zealand," Bollinger says.
"Where that decade started and where it ended were two different places. The music in a funny way parallels all that. Music doesn't come out of a vacuum. It's always a reflection of something."
New Zealand had a pub circuit where bands toured and trotted out covers.
At the same time some bands were trying to break away and play their own stuff and create their own scene.
"There was an alternative circuit set up in response to that."
With Rough Justice Bollinger got first-hand experience of what it was like to be part of this counter-culture.
"We felt we were in rugby culture turf, this very conservative New Zealand which wanted to hear what they heard on the radio.
"Sometimes we were threatened, literally. Sometimes we felt lucky to get out alive.
"You had the 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll' culture and then 'rugby, racing and beer' living uneasily side by side."
Bollinger believes it was this tension which exploded during the 1981 Springbok tour and anti-apartheid protests.
"It felt to me as if it had been brewing, that this was a much more divided country that we had been prepared to admit."
Meanwhile, Bollinger's other recent books include 100 Essential New Zealand Albums and How to Listen to Pop Music.
He says he has been lucky to carve out a career in music journalism in New Zealand.
"I guess the cost of that has been pretty much the uncertainty that goes with a life-long freelance career.
"I have been able to ride that for the last 25 years or so and there's certainly been some luck.
"But it's also having the confidence to play by your wits and say 'somebody's got to do this stuff'."
• Nick Bollinger - Writing, Music and Memoir - is at the War memorial Centre on October 7 from 11.30am. For ticket information visit writersfest.co.nz/tickets.html
