The Clean

The definitive story of The Clean in their own words. 

Now, you said it was yesterday, yesterday’s another day 

Heading round in make believe, I don’t know if it’s you or If it’s me oh, 

I don’t know, I don’t know

Tally ho, tally ho! 

In 1978 in Dunedin , New Zealand, the Kilgour brothers, Hamish and David, and their schoolfriend Peter Gutteridge, got together to form a band called The Clean. When Robert Scott joined in 1980, the band found a combination that endured for nearly forty years. 

The Clean profoundly changed alternative music: hitting the New Zealand charts for months with a single made for $50, ‘Tally Ho!’; helping establish Flying Nun and a music scene independent of the big labels; pioneering a low-fi, do-it-yourself approach to rock music; and touring internationally to influence bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo. 

Raw and immediate, this is the story as told by members of The Clean and their inner circle – fellow musicians such as Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps, Graeme Downes and Ira Kaplan, friends and family, pub promoters and sound engineers, and their good friend, Richard Langston. From teenagers in a Dunedin practice room to New York City on 9/11 – this is the band’s history as it unfolds.