DAVE DOBBYN: Set list for a riot

Dave Dobbyn was midway through a ballad when the crowd caught fire.

The year was 1984, the concert Thank God It’s Over.

It was a free gig in Aotea Square in Auckland that was supposed to celebrate the end of the academic year. Dobbyn’s band, DD Smash, were the headline act, supported by the Mockers and Herbs.

Their set got off to a bad start, with the power cutting out during the first song. While the problem was being fixed, a couple of drunkards climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and started urinating on the crowd and throwing bottles.

Police arrived and arrested the rogue rioters, but members of the crowd stopped them leaving. A riot squad was sent in to clear a path. It was like sparks to dry wood.

‘‘It spread like a fire, that’s the only way you can explain it,’’ Dobbyn remembers.

The 10,000-strong crowd became a rioting mob that rampaged down Queen St, breaking windows, looting shops, flipping cars and lighting fires. The bill for the damage was in the millions.

‘‘It was very scary to be in. It’s not something I’m proud to have been around, to be honest, and I think anyone involved, it was a pretty horrific thing to see in our home town,’’ Dobbyn says.

Things got even worse for It spread like a fire, that’s the only way you can explain it. Dobbyn. He was formally charged with inciting the riot. The charges stemmed from a comment he allegedly made to the crowd as the riot squad forced its way in: ‘‘I wish those riot squad guys would stop wanking and put their little batons away.’’

It took him ‘‘a lot of money and a very good lawyer’’ to prove his innocence.

Dobbyn still has the setlist from that performance – his wife Anneliesje found it among all the clippings she’s kept from his long and storied music career. He’s loaned it to the museum to put on display for Volume.

‘‘A lot of ballads in it, it wasn’t exactly insightful rock ’n roll, headbanging stuff. In fact, when the whole thing went nuts it was in the middle of a ballad,’’ Dobbyn says.

If it wasn’t Dobbyn or DD Smash’s music that sparked the riot, then what did cause it?

Memories of the 1981 Springbok Tour were still fresh in the country’s mind. The economy was in the doldrums. Rob Muldoon had just been ousted from government, with David Lange sweeping the polls. ‘‘Everybody was in this other frame of mind,’’ Dobbyn says.

‘‘It was a desperate time for a lot of people, so I think a lot of the anger, there was a tipping point.’’

Despite living in Sydney at the time, Dobbyn had experienced the country’s economic hardship first hand. Shortly before Thank God It’s Over, DD Smash had done a sell-out tour of New Zealand, playing standing-room-only shows throughout the country.

Before he’d made it back to Sydney the New Zealand dollar dropped to 25 cents against the Aussie. ‘‘We went back poorer than when we started,’’ Dobbyn says.