Dave Dobbyn - Overnight Success

Television (Full Length) – 1999

I think it's an enduring one because I'm not afraid to fail...and I've done a lot of failing in my life.
– Dave Dobbyn on his "affectionate" relationship with his Kiwi audience

I think I've got the bad taste in clothes so I'm off to a good start. All I need to do is get my pens in my pocket, get the walkshorts...
– Dave Dobbyn pokes fun at the clichés of being a proud Christian

I was going through some kind of weird big trouser thing ... a fashion atrocity.
– Dave Dobbyn describes his attire in the video for DD Smash hit 'Outlook for Thursday'

[David Lange] flippantly said "If the Herbs had kept playing there wouldn't have been a riot", you know. We were playing a ballad at the time...
– Dave Dobbyn describes Prime Minister David Lange's comments after the Queen St riot

I just escaped into a world of drugs and alcohol actually. That’s how I handled it. There was a definite sense of abandonment. I’ve always been afraid of abandonment. That’s part of the reason you jump on a stage, to be accepted. It was the deepest kind of abandonment inyour hometown to be perceived that way. The six months between the riot and the trial were very difficult, really hard.
– Dave Dobbyn on the hurt he felt after the infamous 1984 Queen St riot, Metro Magazine, 8 October 2013

Luckily the song survived the video.
– Dave Dobbyn on the famous one shot video for 1988 hit 'Loyal'

...I think I got to hell and then took a U-turn, you know. It's the best U-turn I ever took.
– Dave Dobbyn on "stopping" rather than "giving up" alcohol

There's a point at which your songs — although they're your property and you should justly get paid for them —they become everybody else's as well.
– Dave Dobbyn on songs becoming 'national anthems'