Murray Grindlay
Murray Grindlay grew up in the Scottish town of Stenhousemuir, then relocated to Auckland at age 13. He joined blues group the Soul Agents soon after leaving high school, then won fame as lead singer of legendary r'n'b band The Underdogs.
The Underdogs had already been through their first lineup change before Grindlay joined in 1966. He took the singer's mike in time for debut single 'See Saw', and The Underdogs' biggest hit 'Sitting in the Rain', a dreamy take on a John Mayall number. Music writer David Eggleton argues that "Grindlay wittily subverted the lugubrious lyrics with a droll, deadpan delivery".
John Dix provides an evocative account of the Underdogs in concert, in his book Stranded in Paradise. Labelling them the enfant terribles of Kiwi rock, he describes screaming fans, ear-splitting feedback, and Grindlay performing cartwheels across the stage.
Kevan Moore, producer of popular 60s music show C'Mon, soon made the Underdogs regular guests, thanks partly to their predilection for donning firemen's jackets, kilts and swastikas. "Kevan loved us because as soon as we went on, the phones would be jammed with people complaining . . . so many complaints meant the show was getting noticed." After the band performed sheathed in dry ice, newspaperTruth headlined a story 'NZBC Gone to Pot?'
Grindlay finally left The Underdogs and spent two years in Australia. He sang seven days a week at legendary Kings Cross club Whisky a Go-Go, alongside Kiwi keyboardist Claude Papesch, and began playing guitar.
Back home again by the early 70s, Grindlay began writing his own songs, and got his first taste of jingles. Though there were many memorable gigs, some were the wrong kind of memorable. The final straw was being pelted in the face with a glass by a drunk gang member, while performing at Auckland's De Bretts Hotel.
"I thought 'that's it, I'm finished with $30 a week to do this,'" he says in this extended interview. "I'd sung a few jingles for other people. Anyway I thought 'I reckon I can do this; I can write'. And so what I did was I just got my old Māori kit bag . . . and stuffed it full of my songs on cassettes, and started going round the agencies."
It worked. Grindlay found being in the studio was his true passion. His talent for taking on different voices and musical styles soon became clear. "I just loved the thing of going into the studio, even in the early days, and being somebody else for the day. After, say Crunchie — which was one of the first big ones I did — that's when I really started getting a lot of work."
Grindlay composed and sang the rollicking 'Have a Crunchie' song in 1975. After hearing Roger Macdonnell's lyrics, the music rolled straight out of him. The song was the backbone of Tony Williams' epic Crunchie Great Train Robbery ad, which screened for a number of decades to come.
Grindlay's CV of classic Kiwi ads also includes the big budget Travellin' On spots, Toyota's Welcome to Our World, the BASF Dear John commercial, Mitre 10's 'Bring on the Weekend' jingle, and a Just Juice ad featuring bluesman Taj Mahal. Along the way he has ranged from country to orchestrals to 50s style swing. By 2005 writer John Dix would describe him as "New Zealand's undisputed jingles king"; his run of commercials runs to more than 1000 tunes.
For 1981's Dear John ad — in which a soldier receives some bad news —he reinterpreted a country and western hit. Grindlay writes here about how vocalist Jacqui Fitzgerald "totally owned it and got that torch thing I was looking for". Grindlay also has fond memories of two extended Travellin' On Europa promos, which saw him filming on roads across Aotearoa with bluesman Midge Marsden and model Brigette Berger. The second ad featured Grindlay singing alongside legendary American guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. Grindlay's varied achievements in commercials would win him an Axis Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
His time as a jinglesman has been punctuated by memorable excursions into composing for film. Grindlay began in 1977 by joining David Calder and Mathew Brown on the score for breakthrough New Zealand movie Sleeping Dogs. Grindlay concentrated on songs, composing six, often country-tinged tunes— including singing duties on opener 'Don't Look Back'. Sleeping Dog's music also made it onto vinyl, an early entry in the relatively short catalogue of local film soundtracks.
In 1994 Grindlay joined "life-long musical compadre" Murray McNabb (the pair affectionately called each other 'Muz and Muz'), to compose music for another local movie classic: Once Were Warriors. Grindlay had already worked with director Lee Tamahori on high profile ad campaigns for Fernleaf butter and the Commonwealth Games. In this interview, Grindlay reminisces about seeing an early cut of the film without music, and how "incredibly raw" he and McNabb found the material. It was daunting but important work.
"One of the first things that I did was I found this master Māori musician: Hirini Melbourne. And he played all these...he brought them all in, all these Māori instruments. I'd never heard of any of them . . . like the bullroarer . . . which we used a lot in Once Were Warriors. It worked great." The two Murrays also called on Herbs guitarist Tama Renata to add grit to their main theme for the film.
Grindlay and McNabb won a 1994 NZ Film and Television award for Warriors. They were invited back to work on Communicado's next stab at an international hit: interracial romance Broken English. The pair supplied a moody, percussion-heavy soundtrack, coloured with vocals by jazz and jingles singer Andrea Cook.
The pair reconvened to provide the soundtrack for Warriors sequel What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, but despite protestations from director Ian Mune, their completed soundtrack was replaced by the work of Australian David Hirschfelder.
On television, the two Murrays composed for religiously-themed miniseries The Chosen, and orchestrated colonial bodice-ripper Greenstone. Grindlay's voice and subversive lyrics also feature in the closing minutes of around the bays documentary The Greatest Run on Earth.
"I'm not sorry I didn't do any other films", says Grindlay. "They were really hard work, and pretty badly-paid too. And you'd come up against the committees all the time...whereas in the advertising world, at that time, there was none of that."
Grindlay has continued to perform and release occasional material (including a self-titled 1977 album). He has also done time as a novelty act. In 1982 catchy single 'Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma (Wang Dang)' got to number two. Follow-up 'Sheba (She Sha She Shoo)' didn't. Grindlay sang under the moniker Monte Video, telling outrageous lies to the Australian media about Ringo handling drums — many dutifully printed. The song topped the charts in many Aussie states; it also won the attention of David Geffen's new record label, whose stateside publicity efforts (including Monte moustaches) ultimately floundered.
Grindlay has also produced for others — including debut Electric Confectionaires album Sweet Tooth, and Goldenhorse's second album Out of the Moon, which reached number two in the local charts. Goldenhorse guitarist and co-producer Geoff Maddock praised his work, arguing that Grindlay's recording experience went "beyond most studio musicians or even engineers".
In 1986 he arranged and produced star-studded America's Cup single 'Sailing Away', which until 2009 held the record for the longest chart-topper by a local act (nine weeks). He co-wrote hit 'You Make the Whole World Smile' and produced a 2005 Greenpeace remake of Mutton Birds classic 'Anchor Me'. New music is promised.
Profile updated on 16 August 2024
Sources include
Murray Grindlay
'ScreenTalk Legends - Murray Grindlay' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Chris Terpstra. Loaded 15 August 2024. Accessed 15 August 2024
'Murray Grindlay: Film composer and jingle writer extraordinaire' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded 6 October 2014. Accessed 15 August 2024
Mark Bell, 'Once in a Golden Moon' - NZ Musician, February 2005 (Volume 12 number 1)
John Dix, Stranded in Paradise (Auckland: Penguin Books, 2005)
David Eggleton, The Story of New Zealand Rock Music (Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing, 2003)
'2012 CAANZ Axis Awards winners revealed' (broken link). CAANZ website. Loaded April 2012. Accessed 16 May 2012
ScreenTalk (Video Interview)