Give It A Whirl 4 - Anarchy in the Air (Episode Four)

Amazing record isn't it? It really is one of the great New Zealand singles. I think Phil Judd's production is phenomenal, the guitar at the beginning is just one of the crucial points in New Zealand rock and roll.

– Music writer and manager Simon Grigg on The Suburban Reptiles 1978 single 'Saturday Night Stay Home'

..there'd be three people in the audience and we'd be playing these New Zealand songs, and the people would just hate it they would absolutely hate it, because they just wanted hard rock songs. Even today if a New Zealand band goes to Australia for a few months, they come back, they have a much harder sound and Australia does that to bands, I dunno why. But it's a much harder sound, the Australian sound.

– Th'Dudes' Ian Morris on what happens to New Zealand bands when they try to crack Australia

We'd read the NME New Musical Express magazine that we'd get air freighted over and we just...completely fascinated by rock n' roll.

– Peter Urlich remembers the impetus behind Th'Dudes formation

We were thought of as cocky, arrogant, you know too big for our boots um, who the hell do Th'Dudes think they are...you know and tough, you know. We were our own little unit, being in a group's like being in a gang and that was our gang and it's like 'f**k you...how about this we can play, yeah, good songs...

– Peter Urlich on his band's unapologetic 'star' behaviour

Sometimes with people who dedicate themselves to something the stars line up, you know, if you've got your talent and you believe in it and keep going every now and then the stars line up and you get...fortune smiles on you and call it what you will that was one of those times with True Colours.

– Neil Finn on Split Enz finally tasting worldwide success with 1980 single I Got You from True Colours

Daylight. The Windsor Castle on Parnell Road. The sun barely screened out. Crowds queuing for jugs of beer. Chris Knox contorted on the stage, cutting his arm with a broken beer bottle, red blood following the brown bottle’s gouging – “I don’t feel any pain/but the doctors say I’m clinically insane …” – in front of an audience taking it with a cool, seen-everything attitude. It was exactly what the punters had come for, something real.

– David Herkt describes a scene at Windsor Castle pub in 1978, Audioculture, 4 September 2013

Oh he told us to be rock stars — attitude, basically. 'You're different, you're special, you're up there. There's your public down there, and they want you up there. You stay up there, and you have this relationship where you feed them inspirational songs, and they keep you alive.'

– Th' Dudes singer Peter Urlich on the star mentality promoted by the band's manager Charlie Gray

...yeah we used to scare the shit out of Hello Sailor and Th'Dudes and Hammond Gamble and Street Talk. All these young kids came in completely wired on amyl nitrate probably, and really bad beer and cheap wine, and looked scarey. They were scared, I remember them sort of running with their tails...'let's get out of here, there's a new breed in town...'.

– Bones Hillman (The Suburban Reptiles) on the tribal nature of the late 1970s music scene in Auckland

...we just went out constantly up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia in the back of a Falcon 500 you know, with a trailer on the back. I think at that stage we had two managers, both taking ten per cent. I dunno why we had two managers. We may as well have had three. and had one each...

– Bone Hillman from The Swingers, on the unglamorous reality of having a massive selling single in Australia

Toy Love had an enormous effect on everybody — even on the cover bands. I mean the cover bands in Christchurch would all be saying 'oh that's s**t mate' ... But Toy Love had such a good stage show and, you know, so much passion and vitality, and the people who followed Toy Love would do anything for them.

– One-time rock promoter Jim Wilson on band Toy Love

Well the Australian experience allowed us in one fell swoop to forget completely about recording in 24 track automated studios, to forget about hiring engineers with long red hair and beards, to forget about ever having anything to do with the mainstream music industry, and to forget about needing success...needing mainstream success. It just blew all those out of the water.

– Chris Knox on what he learnt after Toy Love recorded in Australia

It was definitely a feeling we were up against it — even here in Dunedin. You know we were generally despised: it's generally what we felt, and even when we made records you know, especially from radio people or people that knew about music ... 'They can't sing, and they're out of tune, and the songs are just two chords...'

– David Kilgour from The Clean on the band's many detractors

...the music scene needed a good kick in the ass, and that movement came along and kind of did that a bit. And also I never thought I'd see the end of the flare, and the flare ended there for a while, but it's come back again.

– Des Struction from The Scavengers on the effect of punk on music and fashion

It was just the most fabulous gig of my life really, and afterwards we stayed up all night, just talking about how we were the most fabulous band in the world, and just from there on it was just like 'yeah, this is what we do with our lives, fantastic'.

– Chris Knox recalls his first gig with The Enemy in Dunedin, in 1978

The first gig we ever played we played at Zwines, and I don't think some of the punters knew what to make of it because a) they had a keyboard player suddenly, and b) I was a girl I suppose as well which was all sort of a bit odd. But immediately we started playing then things started happening ... the whole thing just took on a life of its own.

– Toy Love keyboard player Jane Walker on her first gig with the band

Phil [Judd] had this one song called 'Counting the Beat', and it seemed like a natural hit. So it was recorded, and the song was absolute[ly] one of the greatest one hit wonders of all time.

– Mushroom Records boss Michael Gudinski on Swingers track 'Counting the Beat'