The Horse Rock Back

Rip It Up, Issue 8, 1 February 1978, Page 9

The Horse Rock Back

John Malloy

There’s a tendency on these islands to become insulated in your own little town, so that you never know what the hell is going down at the other end of the country. Which is one reason why I hadn't heard much about R.Horse for a month or ten. One of New Zealand’s veteran bands, Rockinghorse have been making some of the best music around here for years, enjoying varying degrees of favour with an audience that sometimes didn't quite know how lucky they were. They have had two albums released, and at one stage had a deal for three U.S. releases, which never quite got off the ground. The band have since left their recording company, EMI. Apparently, the deal with EMI was for management, booking, and recording. The management side was the first to slip, and then the booking, and finally, the band were left to their own devices. I asked bass

player Clinton Brown what happened to their American deal.

"The whole thing wasn’t handled very well by anyone. They wanted both albums and the rights to all our songs, as well as a third album. Ray Columbus got a really good thing happening, and put the idea to EMI". Wayne Mason continues, "The Nashville company was a production company, and they would have had to sell us to a record company. They were going to take 3 1 /2%, so we would have got 3 1 /2%, and EMI hassled over that. In the end there was no money in it for anybody."

The band have been working around New Zealand over the last year, and recently acquired a new manager, ex-EMI man Danny Ryan. They plan to record some demo tapes in Auckland early in 1978, using mainly new material, but also some that they have played live in the past. For the last six months they have had Barry Saunders, a Christchurch musician recently returned from Britain, adding his vocal might, as well as second guitar. Clinton Brown; "Since Barry’s come in the band's got a lot more forward, more outgoing. It's another direction for the band, and it’s one we re all happy with.” Wayne Mason agrees; "Probably our biggest problem in the past has been softsell. We used to think that all you had to do was turn out good songs. We used to do more diverse material, and I think you can overdo it. We used to get things like the publican coming up to us and saying, Unless you can play something more well known, you’re out!, and now that same stuff is considered middle-of-the-road. Musical tastes have broadened”.

Yet despite the more open nature of the rock audience, Rockinghorse play less original material onstage these days than when they were about the only group in NZ who did any. Wayne feels that the new approach is justified. "When our second album came out, about three quarters of our live numbers were original. But a lot of our stuff is not suitable for pubs, so wedo a lot of covers. We re hoping to change that gradually. It's a lot easier when you have an album out.”

With NZ bands such as Dragon and Split Enz hitting it off in Oz (and even further afield), and NZ producers Peter Dawkins and Alan Galbraith pulling good jobs over there, not to mention New Austrlians Mark Williams and Brent Parlane (the list goes on and on), it’s surprising that any bands stay here at all. Clinton Brown; “There seems to be even fewer bands around than there was a few years ago. I think the whole scene has gone backwards. If you relate it to costs for example, travel costs have trebled the pay has stayed the same or gone down. The reason is that no-one belongs to the union. If all the musicians joined, the union would get the strength to act. Look at Australia. The proof is there. The union over there is so strong." They must like it here.