Music man turns paperback writer
Paula Green is swept up by Nick Bollinger’s stunning musical memoir.
Nick Bollinger is one of my favourite New Zealand music critics. He wrote a music column for more than 20 years and currently presents The Sampler on Radio New Zealand National.
It is not just what he says, but how he says it that makes his music reviews addictive reading and listening.
Awa Press has recently published Goneville, Bollinger’s music-steeped memoir. The original manuscript won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. Enter the memoir and you enter the joy of language, the joy of music, the hurdy-gurdy of young life.
Bollinger begins with the boy who built huts and swung vines in Wellington’s town belt and was raised in a family cultivating freedom of thought and free ranging questions.
At 6 he was eager to go see the Beatles but had to make do watching A Hard Day’s Night with his dad. By 13 Bollinger was in Union Hall listening to bands and by 18 he was on the road with Rick Bryant and Rough Justice.
Part of the allure of the book was being a similar age (I was 13 in 1968, Bollinger was 13 in 1971) and spending much of the 70s in Wellington. I remember descending stairs to a music shop in my hometown of Whangarei in my teens – it seemed dark, dangerous and essential.
Bollinger captures that senseexploding musical assault on a forming self so perfectly.
There is so much to love about this book. The autobiographical thread – thankfully Bollinger’s efforts to keep himself out of the story failed – is riveting as he reflects back on his parents’ origins and parenting.
His father, whose early death struck such a blow, would ask of everyone, ‘‘Are you happy?’’
Bollinger’s detail is electric and takes you right back to that time. I had a thousand anecdotes spinning in my head as I read: Resistance Bookshop, The Little Red School Book, Cold Duck (arggh!), Lion Brown beer, the Last Resort cafe, The Whole Earth Catalogue, the infamous Wellington
Enter the memoir and you enter the joy of language, the joy of music ...
posties and a whole fleet of bands and musicians.
Rick Bryant is a major protagonist, with Bollinger having played in both Rough Justice and The Windy City Strugglers. I got to see Bryant in a new light. At a time when New Zealand bands only played covers and radio stations were conservative in their music choice, Bryant was rebellious in the covers he chose.
Inspired by a broad sweep of American blues, Bryant only played music he loved, regardless of how that might affect his exposure. The arrival of punk delivered a generational back slap and for a time the rebel became the outdated.
This is a memoir that is all the better for experience, for paying acute attention and for relishing the glint and trigger of words. I seriously hope to read another book penned by Bollinger, he is so very, very good.