Sir Dave Dobbyn on grief, growing older and early regrets: ‘It was a very weird time in New Zealand’

Sunday, 7 September 2025

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Nestled underneath a nīkau tree in his Grey Lynn backyard, Sir Dave Dobbyn’s home studio is flush with Aotearoa’s musical history. Acoustic and electric guitars hang from exposed brick and awards for his best-selling records are framed beneath a stained glass window, above the upright piano where, every day, Dobbyn improvises, scribbles in his journal, writes and records.

Lying next to the piano is the set-list from Dobbyn’s Auckland Town Hall show in June, revealing a rich collection of deep cuts alongside his bring-the-house-down bangers, like You Oughta Be in Love and Slice of Heaven. Part of the Live Nation Auckland Winter Series, the show was a sellout success, and Dobbyn is now taking the Selected Songs tour to five iconic theatres around the country, starting in Ahuriri, Napier, and ending in Ōtautahi, Christchurch.

“I’m a good ticket again!” says Dobbyn, breaking into an infectious, staccato laugh. Despite being one of New Zealand’s most recognisable and decorated songwriters, a twice-inductee in the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame (once solo, once with Th’ Dudes), and a four-time Silver Scroll winner (five, if you count his Lifetime Achievement Award) – Dobbyn still didn’t expect the rapturous reception. “I was pleasantly surprised; I look out in the audience, and sure enough, people are singing every word,” he says. “It was such a joy backstage, because we just thought, ‘Wow, what was that?’.”

Born in Glen Innes in 1957, Dobbyn is the third of five children. He was the only sibling who didn’t receive piano lessons, or as he puts it, “didn’t have the scary nuns whacking them over the fingers”. None of his siblings continued, and Dobbyn picked everything up by ear, improvising with his guitar and playing along to David Bowie and Rolling Stones songs on the radio.

Even a musical titan gets insecure: “I’m hopeless at reading music,” he says. “You kind of beat up on yourself for not having studied or learned technique and theory and all that, so you just clumsily stumble upon it. I didn’t even know about the circle of fifths until a couple of years back, and that was a revelation; a whole bunch of new songs and chord sequences!”

As a student at Sacred Heart College, Dobbyn formed Th’ Dudes with Ian Morris, Peter Urlich and Peter Coleman in 1976. He then founded DD Smash in 1980, before embarking on his unparalleled solo career from 1986. Nearly 40 years on, his music holds a spellbinding nostalgia for generations of New Zealanders, arguably being one of the last homegrown artists with such a unifying presence in Aotearoa.

Dobbyn, however, is optimistic about the fragmented nature of the streaming era. “It’s competitive, and competitive is always good because it’s a tough business.” The mediums are different, but the role of the artist in society is unchanged, he says. “There has to be a synchronicity with the way you work, live, the way you communicate, how you use social media, how to build an audience.

“People are in it for different reasons, and the worst reason is just for fame or money,” he says. “You couldn’t get worse than that, because they definitely get in the way. It’s not about that. It’s about community, and being a cog in the wheel of making community.”

Dobbyn’s own community suffered a colossal loss earlier this year, with the passing of Lorraine Barry, his manager of 21 years. Originally from Northern Ireland, Barry was “very sharp, very intelligent and had a great wit”, says Dobbyn, and “wonderfully” passionate about New Zealand music.

“We lost a beauty there,” he says. “She really cared about people being able to make their way in music, and having the tools to do it. She was just constantly mentoring people, young bands, young singers, young up-and-comers.

“It’s such a great loss; I don’t think we’ll be able to finish counting how much of a loss, because of what she’s done for us,” he continues. “All of us who were close to her are still saying, ‘What would Lorraine think?’, every time we encounter anything during the day. That’s a sure sign of grief.”

Dobbyn is counting his blessings that he had a chance to say goodbye, and that Barry was able to watch a stream of his town hall show from her hospital bed. “I’ll always miss her – she’d be side-of-stage and I’d be able to just perceive that she was there somewhere,” he says. “I’d look over and sure enough, there she was, giving me hand signals like, ‘play longer’, or ‘drop a song’. She’d bring out the enthusiasm in people, which is a very precious quality,” he says. “I’ll miss her terribly.”

Community was at the forefront of Dobbyn’s mind when he wrote his indelible anthem Welcome Home, inspired by anti-racism protesters in Christchurch he saw on the news. Twenty years on, Dobbyn soberly agrees that the song is relevant as ever.

“There were people demanding, just by protesting quietly, that people would confront racism and go, ‘no, we’re not having it’.” He was struck that police were having to separate neo-nazis from the protesters, “and I just thought, ‘no, not in my country’.”

The song ran away by itself, he says. “Songs can do that. They have their own energy and their own purpose.” He released a te reo Māori version in 2017 with assistance from translator Te Haumihiata Mason, which was “very difficult, but I’m glad we did it”, he says. “I did one for Slice of Heaven as well. I can’t commit things to memory very well these days. I blame it on Parkinson’s, but it probably means I’m just 68, you know. Like an old dog, new tricks and all that. I think I’m in the old dog stage.”

Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss of nerve cells that produce dopamine in the brain, with common symptoms including tremors, stiffness and slowness. Dobbyn shared his diagnosis on social media in 2022, writing at the time that it had given him a “wider appreciation of life”, and that despite a small tremor in his hand, it was “business as usual and on with the show”. That remains true to the ebullient man I’ve met today in his studio, who seems active as ever – and excited about the next chapter.

His career is crowded with milestones, but there’s one moment he’s less proud of. In 1984, a free DD Smash concert in Aotea Square, thrown to celebrate the end of the academic year, devolved into the infamous Queen St riot. A power outage, heavy drinking, men pissing off buildings and a lack of security were just some of the components of the perfect storm, but it was what Dobbyn said into the microphone – “I wish those riot squad guys would stop wanking and put their little batons away” – that landed him in court, held responsible for inciting the chaos.

“In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have said what I said, but then, at the time, all I saw was people being attacked from behind,” he says.

“Everyone’s got a different story of what happened, but I know that it cost me a lot of time and money to clear my name, as it were.”

The concert happened shortly after the Springbok tour, which fostered the febrile atmosphere on the day, Dobbyn suggests.

“I still recall a shudder of fear that swept through everybody when it was in full flight,” he says. “It was a very weird time in New Zealand. Muldoon was on the way out, Lange was freshly in – actually, he was on his way to a Split Enz breakup party across town. He never made it, because he got stuck in the riot.”

Dobbyn was eventually cleared of all charges. “I think I’ve forgiven myself,” he laughs. “I think I put a dampener on the Split Enz party. They can accuse me of that.”

Dobbyn still works on his music every day; he and wife Anneliesje have a bach in Mangawhai, where he draws inspiration from the sand and the ocean. “Just walking that beach, up to where the rocks are, and then back again; by the time you get back to the piano, something’s going on.”

Following the tour, Dobbyn wants to release new music, and he may have a book or two up his sleeve, he says. Despite being knighted in 2021, Dobbyn won’t be resting on his laurels; if anything, that honour is an impetus to pay it forward. “I’ve been mentored and it’s like a river. It needs to flow,” he says. “All through your life, you’ve got to be mentored, and you need a mentor. As soon as you start learning anything, then you should be mentoring other people.”

For now, it’s the Selected Songs tour. He points at the long, rich and dynamic set-list by the piano; every single song has its own unique history, like time capsules from Dobbyn’s past lives.

“When you pass 60 – I’m 68 now – a lot of your time is spent cleaning up the mess of your creativity, just trying to consolidate things,” he says. “A lot of mine hadn’t been played live before, and there are always sleepers on a record, you know? So it opens up the records a bit more.

“It’s an important thing to me that I’ve got the ability and the competence to put on a really good show, with great players and a great choice of songs,” he says. “It’s quite a delve into the past, but it feels new.”

Sir Dave Dobbyn’s Selected Songs tour travels to Wellington, Napier, Palmerston North, Dunedin and Christchurch from October 31-November 9.

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