It's been an amazing ride.
We never thought we'd come this far.
* We have a Belgian Fan Club.
Granted, it's small (hullo, Ingrid + Elsie).
* Sales figures turned up the other day for Brazil
and we didn't even know we'd been released there.
* A lot of people have bought our records.
* "Mutton" is now the 8th favorite baby boy's name
in the English-speaking world...
Don McGlashan 2002
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Keith Ballantyne and mixed by Nick Morgan at Link Studios, Auckland - 1992
I wrote this song in 1990, around the time I first called guitarist David Long to talk about starting a band. We used it to audition drummers through the beginning of 1991, in our practice room in Maidstone St., Newton. One played so quietly we couldn't tell whether he was any good, and one was an older guy who had taught stick-tossing and twirling to drum-solo championship hopefuls in Las Vegas. He could play the timbales with his tongue. We were impressed, but decided, reluctantly, to keep looking. He borrowed my bass drum pedal on the way out, and i'm still waiting for him to give it back.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Keith Ballantyne and mixed by Nick Morgan at Link Studios, Auckland - 1992
Fear of failing off the edge - of what's just outside the lights of the town - has always been something i've felt like writing about. I guess it comes from growing up in a fairly safe, quiet suburb in Auckland and spending so much time driving up and down the countrry in bands in my teens and early twenties. Not so much in awe of the beauty of the land - more rattled by the sheer emptiness of it. This was our first euphonium song. The euphonium says what the narrator doesn't know enough to say.
(Wayne Mason - EMI Music)
Recorded by Keith Ballantyne and mixed by Nick Morgan at Link Studios, Auckland - 1992
Ross Burge agreed to come back from New York and play drums with us. He arrived in May 1991, with his own bass drum pedal. Early on we started playing ths song. I'd always loved it, and Ross had played in a band with Wayne Mason, who wrote it. At this stage we weren't called The Mutton Birds. Other contenders were The Springs, The Hot Springs, The Black Robins, The Boxing Days, and The Unmade Bedouins. These songs ended up on our debut album, "The Mutton Birds", released in New Zealand in early 1992, on our own label. "Nature" became our first radio hit in New Zealand, thanks to a Wellington DJ who trashed it even though it wasn't a single.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by the band in the practice room, Maidstone St., Auckland. Mixed by Nick Morgan at Link Studios, Auckland - 1991
The bass riff for this song arrived after a Blam Blam Blam sound check in 1981 - and i put it away until the right story came along. It started with a dream i had about being taken to some sort of outdoor festival in the country - like a cross between a a rock concert and an A&P show - but i wasn't told what my role was. A spectator? A performer? A hostage? Along the way, the song picked up echoes of those news reports, where descriptions of clues are repeated over days, weeks, years - eventually turining into talismans, evil magic charms - where before they'd just been ordinary objects (an orange Datsun station wagon, a blue cardigan, a pink matinee jacket). The character of the driver isn't really threatening, either. He may also be a kind of saviour "..you can count yourself lucky - not many people know this way..."
(Words: Don McGlashan, Music: Burge, Gregg, Long, McGlashan - Warner/Mana/Control)
Recorded by Keith Ballantyne and mixed by Nick Morgan at Link Studios, Auckland - 1992
We were a four piece by now. Alan Gregg had joined on bass. David, Al and Ross had written the riff, and were playing it around and around as i walked in late to a practice one day. I had some words i was working one, wrote a chorus for it - and it all fell together. It'a about the first time you move away from your parents, and you go out and buy some dumb second-hand object that you need for your flat - and the act of doing that seems to be an irreversible hand-shake between you and an older, more mythical, more dangerous world.
(J.Harris - Control)
Recorded at Link recording (Feb. 1992) by The Mutton Birds and Keith Ballantyne.
Mixed by Nick Morgan
One of the first songs that The Mutton Birds ever played. At this stage (mid 1991) the band was a three piece with Don McGlashan on bass guitar, Ross Burge on drums, and David Long on guitar, and they would use this song to warm up or as the first song at a gig. Don says "I saw Jody Harris play this song with his band The Raybeats in New York in 1983, and I thought then that one day I'd love to have a band that could play something that cool."
Previously released as a B side to "The Heater" in New Zealand only.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Mark Ingram assisted by Sam Gibson at Shortland St./Revolver, Auckland. Mixed at 301 by Tchad Blake, Sydney - 1993
We recorded our second album "Salty" in late 1993 in Auckland. Again, we produced it ourselves, although it was mixed by long-time friend Tchad Blake - and also by now we'd signed to EMI Australia; we had a manager, Daniel Keighley, and an office with a water cooler and a fake fern. "Salty" was realesed in April 1994 in New Zealand - the first single, "The Heater" debuting at No. 1.
(Alan Gregg - EMI Music)
Recorded by Mark Ingram assisted by Sam Gibson at Shortland St./Revolver, Auckland. Mixed at 301 by Tchad Blake, Sydney - 1993
Whle we were recording "Salty" in the derelict TV studio on Shortland St., Auckland, Alan brought me some songs he'd done on his cassette four-track. I had to swear never to mention them to anyone if i didn't think they were any good. They were all good - and "Wellington", "Esther" and "There's A Limit" ended up on the record.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Mark Ingram assisted by Sam Gibson at Shortland St./Revolver, Auckland. Mixed at 301 by Tchad Blake, Sydney - 1993
We were rehearsing on the top floor above a pub and a hairdressers in Vulcan Lane, Auckland. I remember bringing in the verse and bridge, but not having much of an idea of the chorus, so i just made it up as i played it to the other guys, saying: "this is too simple for the chorus - i'll get something better", and Alan said. "No you won't; it sounds like it's finished".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Mark Ingram assisted by Sam Gibson at Shortland St./Revolver, Auckland. Mixed at 301 by Tchad Blake, Sydney - 1993
The main character in "The Queen's English" is a real-life Texas senator that my brother-in-law saw on an American talk show. This guy was so stupid that he really thought that Jesus spoke English. The song imagines him raving behind a forest of microphones, invoking historical figures to back him up.
Around this time we were touring all over Australasia on our own; and supporting other bands - including The Indigo Girls, The Violent Femmes, and huge noisy shows with Aussie icons Hunters And Collectors. We went through periods of really enjoying playing this one live - sometimes it went on forever.
In 1999, we did this one with the New Zealand National Symphony, with David Long, (who had, by then, left the band) guesting on Theremin. We'll get around to mixing the multitracks of that one day.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded and mixed at Revolver Studios, Auckland, by Mark Ingram - Spring 1993
This rousing singalong number about murder and unnatural love was originally written for The Eric Glandy Memorial Big Band, a psycho country outfit that Don was a member of for a while in the early eighties. Our version was done in one take late one night during demo sessions for "Salty". Also a B side for NZ single "The Heater".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded Spring 1993 - same session as "Kelvin"
On this song the band was the experimenting with new arrangement ideas and different instruments leading up to the recording of "Salty". The euphonium, electric piano, guitar and drums provide a haunting backdrop to a song about those beloved pop perennials, alienation and self-loathing. Also a B side for NZ single "The Heater", and later added to the UK single "She's Been Talking".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded and mixed by Mark Ingram at Shortland Street, Auckland - November 1993
Never let it be said that The Mutton Birds don't write radio friendly pop anthems. We just don't put them on the albums. Out-take from the "Salty" sessions. Previously unreleased.
(Alan Gregg - EMI Music)
Same session as "Three Minutes"
One of Alan's first attempts at songwriting, and contender for the World Record for most cliches in one song. Previously unreleased.
(Words: Don McGlashan, Music: Burge, Gregg, Long, McGlashan - Warner/Mana/Control)
Recorded and arranged by David Long. Mixed by Mark Austin and David Long at Flowerchild, Auckland - Winter 94
Before Don did the vocal for "The Heater" during the "Salty" sessions, he was warming up in the studio, singing into an old Green Bullet mike which made his voice sound spooky. Little did he know he was being secretly recorded. David took the tape back to his secret laboratory and the results showed up on the B-side of the New-Zealand single "Anchor Me".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded Nov/Dec 1993 by Mark Ingram, Rehash by David Long at Flowerchild, Auckland - Winter 94
Once again David Long destroys what was otherwise a perfectly good song. Released in New-Zealand as the B-side of "Ngaire".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded and mixed by Sam Gibson at Revolver Studios, Jan 95
In 1995 The British Film Institute commissioned films from all over the world celebrating one hundred years of cinema. New Zealand's contribution was directed by actor Sam Neill (The Piano, Jurassiv Park etc.) and Judy Rymer. They approached Don to write the score, and the band recorded this piece. Here is an edit of the opening and closing credits, both of which play over big empty landscape sequences in the film. Previously unreleased.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Hugh Jones and mixed by Hugh Jones and Helen Woodward at Rockfield Studios, Wales - 1996
We toured Scotland a lot around this time, and got a big audience there. "Tartan Noir" thriller writer Christopher Brookmyre became a fan, and his book "Not The End of the World", he had one of his characters rave about this song, before failing asleep.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Hugh Jones and mixed by Hugh Jones and Helen Woodward at Rockfield Studios, Wales - 1996
We'd started this song just before we left NZ, but eventually finished it in the first few months of touring the UK and Europe.
The first festival we were booked for was in a little town in Gernany with an unpronounceable name. To New Zealanders, all the towns were impossibly beautiful - like Richard Scarry drawings; narrow roads snaking along beside the Rhine; Disneyesque castles on high wooded bluffs... We were so engrossed in the scenery that we went to the wrong town - and found ourselves on the wrong side of the Rhine, stuck behind thousands of festival goers queueing for the ferry. We missed the gig, and in doing so got a reputation for rock and roll unreliability that German promoters are still happy to remind us of.
Other experiences weren't so bad. At Roskilde, in Denmark, we were met off the bus by a line of beautiful Nordic women. They were facing us, but bent over, straightlegged - with their pants around their ankles - smiling and waving at us as we walked past carrying our instruments. Some kind of welcoming ritual? What should we do in reply? Then we saw that they were all pissing into the hedge at the side of the path.
(Alan Gregg - EMI Music)
Recorded by Hugh Jones and mixed by Hugh Jones and Helen Woodward at Rockfield Studios, Wales - 1996
We planned a world tour in 1995. By the time we arrived in England after a few months touring Canada, Virgun U.K. had agreed to release a compilation of our first two albums. We rented two flats in Action, West London, where you could visit the Broken Biscuit factory, and buy a paper bag of broken biscuits for the price of three course dinner back home. What's more, you could home beside a canal full of floating prams and supermarket trolleys. Every so often a big black chauffeur-driven Jaguar, ordered because of a mix-up about which department of the record company was paying - would pick us up to take us to an interview. The whole street would turn out to see and we'd glide slowly away to the toothless cheers of our new neighbours.
Alan turned up with this song - written back in Kingsland, Auckland. It was to be our biggest radio hit in the UK.
(D. Roeser - 1976 B O'Cult Songs Inc.)
Recorded and mixed by Paul Tipler at Blackwing Studios, London - March 1996
Back in London in the autumn of 1995, we demo-ed "Like This Train", "She's Been Talking", "April", "Another Morning", and "Come around". Virgin liked what they heard and decided to sign us up for an album. More big black cars took us to interviews. Stylists took us Camden and Covent Garden and attempted to buy us clothes.
We were working at Blackwing, near the Borough Tube in South London, with engineer Paul Tipler. We got a call from Peter Jackson asking us to do a version of "The Blue Oyster Cult" song for his film "The Frighteners". We recorded it, and it became our biggest radio hit in Australia of all places.
Kiwi director Peter Jackson asked The Mutton Birds to record a version of The Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper" for his film "The Frighteners". Our version went on to become a minor hit in Australia and was included on "Envy Of Angels" in Australia and Canada. This is an earlier, more raucous version than the one that appeared on the closing credits of the movie. Previously released on NZ single "She's Been Talking".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Hugh Jones and mixed by Hugh Jones and Helen Woodward at Rockfield Studios, Wales - 1996
A year after we'd arrived in Britain, we were in a residential studio in rural Wales - having meals cooked for us by a staff of incomprehensible Welsh women - and there was my whisky bottle sitting on the lid of the piano that had been thumped, at different times, by Freddie Mercury, the Gallagher brothers and the Pogues. Album 3, "Envy Of Angels", was the result. It made the UK Sunday Times ten best records list for 1997.
The gigs were big and exciting too by then. South By Southwest in Austib, Texas; a huge amount of European touring; more festivals, including a flight to Estonia in an airforce bomber with a gun turret.
This song was one of the last to go on the album. Another looking, thinking song, and in some ways an answer to "A Thing Well Made".
(Words: Don McGlashan, Music: David Long/Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana/Control)
Recorded and mixed by Paul Tipler at Blackwing Studios, London - March 1996
Mutton meets Morricone. In Australasia a Ranchslider is an aluminium sliding door, usually leading out onto a patio. This song is a paean to suburban Auckland. Previously unreleased.
(David Long - Control)
Same sessions as "Ranchslider"
David Long takes the lead vocal on his Velvet Underground-dos-Bossa-Nova ode to his answering machine This is a different version to the one that shows up on the B-side to the New Zealand single "Come Around". Previously unreleased.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded at Alaska St. Studios, May 96
Not a song about Ash Wednesday at all, but rather an elaborate excuse to rhyme the words 'sandwiches' and 'languages'. This song was demo-ed for "Envy Of Angels". Previously unreleased.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded at Rockfield Studios, Wales by Hugh Jones, July/August 1996. Mixed by Hugh Jones and Helen Woodward.
Don began this song in a hotel in Vancouver after meeting a wino who lived in the basement. It was recorded during the sessions for "Envy Of Angels" at Rockfield Studios in Wales, and was one of the more controversial omissions from the final album. Released as a B-side to "Come Around" in the UK, and "Don't Fear The Reaper" in Australia.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Same sessions as "Face In The Paper"
A song which began its life as an attempt to rewrite "Paperback Writer", and then took on a life of its own. Released as the B-side of the UK single "She's Been Talking".
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Same sessions as "Face In The Paper"
This song is actually track 10 on the New Zealand edition of "Envy Of Angels", but was not included on the international version of the album, largely due to an A&R person's lack of enthusiasm about the song. However, the audience reaction every time the song is played shows how wrong he was. This is a different mix to that on the album (and on the UK "Come Around" single), with no fade at the end. Previously unreleased.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Sam Gibson at Blackwing Studios, London. Mixed by Matt Tait at Metropolis Studios, London - 1997
This actually began during the Rockfield sessions for "Envy Of Angels". I wasn't cut out for Hugh Jones' pointillistic approach to recording. One day i'd been watching him and Helen Woodward spend 4 hours programming minute volume changes into a first verse vocal - and i felt like chewing the furniture, so i went to my room and scribbled down pages of words about watching the Edgeware train leaving the platform at Camden.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded by Matt Tait at Metropolis Studios, London. Mixed by Sam Gibson at Blackwing Studios, London - 1997
I wrote this on a tour back home in New Zealand in early 1998 - in a borrowed bach at Piha beach. I'd gotten sickof songs that asked for help - i wanted to make a record that was like a gift to the people listening to it. This was my first try. Not exactly "Lean On Me", but a start.
(Don McGlashan - Warner/Mana)
Recorded and mixed by Sam Gibson at Blackwing Studios, London - 1997
We began to receive our first Friendly Reminder notices on the Price Of Fame when, in the space of just a year, David Long had left, and eventually, so too had our manager, and our bassist Alan Gregg. Not deterred, we auditioned for remplacements and continued touring and building our audience. Chris Sheehan, a UK-based New Zealander, formerly of the Exponents (and his own UK band The Starlings) joined on lead guitar from '97 to '99. When Alan left, we recruited our first non-New Zealander: bass player, TV journalist, and pint-swilling northern scum, Tony Fisher.
In 1997, during a Canadian tour with The Tragically Hip, Wilco, and Sheryl Crow, we found out that we'd "parted company with" Virgin. Our new manager, Steve Hedges, started his own independent label for us; and launched a website and a fan-club/mailing list which has now grown to several thousand people worldwide. We did a national tour with Billy Bragg, lots more European and UK shows, recorded our fourth album, "Rain, Steam & Speed", in London and released it in early 1999. "Q" gave it 4 stars and called it a minor masterpiece. Another Scottish thriller writer, Ia Rankin, decided to name his new book after our song "The Falls".
(Bannister/Durrant - Flying Nun Music)
Recorded by Tom Miskin at Lab Studios, Auckland. Recorded by Alan Gregg, London. Recorded at Plan 9, Wellington. Recorded by Luke Tomes at Revolver, Auckland. Mixed by Luke Tomes, David Long and Don McGlashan - 2002
I moved back to NZ with my family in 1999. We toured in that year in NZ and Australia, adding Matthew Bannister on guitar, and then toured the UK in 2000, this time recruiting ex-Garageland guitarist Andrew "Clanger" Claridge. Ross and David now live in New Zealand. Alan has stayed in London, as has Tony. Chris, we believe, is living in Spain.
This is a song by the unsung Flying Nun band Sneaky Feelings, from Dunedin, written by Matthew Bannister and Martin Durrant. In September 2002, Ross, Matthew and I did the rhythm track in Auckland, sent it to David in Wellington, and to Alan, Tony and Andrew in London. We mixed it in Auckland. Like "Nature", it's a cover of a big, old New Zealand song. Unlike "Nature", it's not about being alone in the bush, it's about wanting to join the world of people - some sort of progression of ideas in twelve years, if you like.
On the 7th of July (Ringo Starr's birthday) 1997, The Mutton Birds played an acoustic (don't say 'unplugged') show at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Place, London.
The band played and recorded two shows. The recording of the first show featured an over-refreshed woman in the front row, 'singing' along to the songs in a loud and tuneless manner and hassling Don for drinking from a bottle of Australian wine. Anybody in the audience at that show will remember her exuberance and enthusiasm with great fondness.
Thankfully she was not there for the second show. The band had warmed up and played a stormer, now compiled onto this CD for the listening pleasure of discerning birdbrains.
The 12 Bar Club is the sort of venue for which the word 'intimate' was invented. On a stage barely large enough to swing a cat, on stools perched precariously close to the side of the stage The Mutton Birds belted out a selection of their songs.
It was one of those magical nights when the audience would call out the title of a song and the band would play it if it came up next on the set-list. It was one of those mystical nights where in years to come everyone will claim to have been there. It was the night when the 'Envy of Angels' became 'The Angle of Entry'.
The Mutton Birds
Ross Burge
Alan Gregg
Don McGlashan
Chris Sheehan
B Sides and Bastards
It is a little known fact that in almost the decade that The Mutton Birds have been going, the band has recorded over five million songs. And yet even the most devoted fan can only possibly have heard about forty-five of these tunes, the ones released on the albums "The Mutton Birds", "Salty" and "Envy Of Angels".
What determines which songs will make a Mutton Birds album and which will be left off? Track listings are debated for days, sometimes weeks after recording sessions are completed. Band members, management, A&R people, producers, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, children, even pets can affect the final list.
But there are always songs which for one reason or other get left off an album, causing one or other of us to sulk for about two weeks. So when we were going through the vaults at MuttonCorp recently, we realised that we had enough of these forgotten gems to actually put together an album of out-takes, rarities and unreleased material. Old wounds were re-opened, old arguments re-started but finally the track listing for "Too Hard Basket" was agreed upon.
These songs have been chosen for an overall sense of spontaneity, adventure and playfulness. Together ther reveal a side of The Mutton Birds only hinted at on "proper" Mutton Birds albums. Presented here for the first time, in chronological order, they give new insights into the band's creative processes - the hits and the misses, the might-have-beens and the should-have-beens, the B-sides and the bastards.
You can never rally be there with a live album. Put in on while you're doing the dishes, and you might as well be in the alley outside the pub, peering in through the air-conditioning grate; distracted by the fear that someone might lurch past and piss on you at any moment. That said, songs can sprout new limbs and antennae in the course of a tour - or even in the course of a night. Unbearable beauty can come rushing in unexpectedly from the smell of a stranger's hair; the reflections in the mirror behind the bar; the sound of a broken fuzz-box. Where were we on the night in question? Well, my voice is going through its mid-tour rough patch - but Ross, Tony and Chris play like men possessed and there's quite a few things here that are better than any studio we've made.
The pub was Band On The Wall in Manchester. The gig was Sunday, February 14, 1999. Front of House sound was the great Joe Campbell. The tapes were mixed by Sam the man Gibson in Neil Finn's basement, Auckland, NZ a few months later, compiled/ e.q'd by Mark Austin, and mastered by Wayne Laird. We haven't added or re-recorded anything. Leave the dishes, turn off all the lights and play it loud.
Don McGlashan October 2000
The band: Don McGlashan Voice, Guitars, Euphonium
Ross Burge Drums
Tony Fisher Bass, Voice
Chris Sheehan Lead Guitar
February 1st 1999 will see the release of the Mutton Birds new studio album, entitled "Rain Steam & Speed". It is their strongest-ever collection of songs, combining their acclaimed melodicism with more lyrical wit and musical diversity than most of what clogs up the nation's airwaves and music magazines. The album's release will be trailed by this single, "Pulled Along By Love" and will be supported by a twelve-date UK tour along with a radio tour of interviews and acoustic sessions.
The superb fourth album from The Mutton Birds. Eleven all new tracks featuring the single "Pulled Along By Love".
The Mutton Birds will be playing live in January and February in the following cities: Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cambridge, London (Sound Republic & Sheperds Bush Empire), Aberdeen, Cardiff, Derby.
"The Mutton Birds are an undervalued New Zealand jewel" Paul Sexton - The Times
"The Mutton Birds are a very important band" Colin Greenwood - Radiohead
"More melody and harmonic reverberation than more and less anyone" David Hepworth - Mojo