Verlaine Alone

(from NZ Musician magazine)

A bit of Verlaines history. Original source unknown.

"On stage the band presents a mixture of contorted agitation and passive soundmaking. This strange combination throws out an ear aching canopy of noise that one minute blisters with punkish abandon the next climbs through slow layers of tension and then ebbs away to quietness, before surging back."

Alistair Agnew review: ODT


The Verlaines started playing together in 1980 and founding member Graeme Downes recalls an extended period when the band '..was half formed for about 18 months' while it tried to find a drummer and more importantly, a name. After trying out a lot of alternatives, somehow the name of a French symbolist poet cropped up. The band liked the sound of it and so it was The Verlaines.

'It just started out of the punk thing really of being prepared to have a go at it and it being a very easy accessible vehicle for expression essentially which also allowed you to write.'

A five piece at the beginning with Graeme Downes, guitarist Craig Easton, keyboards Anita Pillai, bassist Philip Higham and drummer Greg Kerr, the band dropped down to three after seeing how well the Clean were doing with a simple lineup. Early reviews of the band described a ragged and energetic mix of Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground. The Verlaines were featured on the Flying Nun landmark Dunedin Double EP alongside the Chills, Stones and Sneaky Feelings but the conditions for recording were anything but ideal.

'It was a pretty grotty little flat it and it was all strung up. One room was the studio and the next room was the control room....Katherine was playing a tambourine as well but every take we did, the tambourine was so bloody loud that they couldn't get it low enough in the mix because it was all pretty much being recorded acoustically so they ended up burying her under a mattress in the corner of the room. It was absolutely primitive.We were just wallowing in inexperience all over the place really. It was a pretty crazy thing to be doing.'

A North Island tour with the Sneaky Feelings followed in August 82 and the band's next single ' Death and the Maiden ' was entered in NZ Music Awards. The Auckland based magazine Rip It Up readers' poll voted 'Death and the Maiden' as the year's best single and the band as number two but the popularity of 'Death and the Maiden' became something of a millstone while on tour.

'If you're going to an out of the way place in Austria and a real fan is going to want to see you then they're going to want to see you play that song so you're really honour bound in that situation. We played it every night we were in the States the first time but the second time around we just said 'tough'.'

Hampered by Flying Nun's shaky financial state in the late '80s and Graeme Downes' university studies, the band still managed a high profile, touring Australia and North America. The much delayed album 'Bird Dog' was released in 1988 and Mike Stoodley joined the band in the same year.

'It was a tough time for the band. It was a tough time looking at things in Dunedin and starting to see circles of people that had stayed here and the people that had gone... There was a certain amount of frustration for me personally because I was still anchored to the university stuff I was doing and hadn't done the traditional band thing of making the move to Auckland and there is a sense in that line in the song 'On the road to the North filled with people getting out'. There was a sense of frustration at being stuck here and not being able to do enough things with the band.'