Don McGlashan doesn't feel like 'a colourful enough specimen' for new doco

Legendary New Zealand singer and songwriter Don McGlashan reckons there are far more interesting people than him to focus a documentary on.

“I do feel that I'm not kind of a colourful enough specimen to go under the microscope, there's other specimens out there that might be more interesting to look at,” McGlashan tells RNZ's On the Air.

Despite that, he had been approached half a dozen times to do a story on his life, but nothing ever came to fruition.

"They generally have a meeting and then they'd go away," he says.

“And then a few months later, they'd come back and say, 'well, no, we can't get funding or there's something, we can't get a broadcaster for it, and it probably won't happen'.

"So, I must admit when Shirley Horrocks got in touch with me, I didn't really think it was gonna happen. But I had underestimated her persistence and her professionalism.”

Horrocks' Anchor Me: the Don McGlashan Story will screen around New Zealand from this week.

McGlashan has written or co-written some of New Zealand's most famous songs, including 'Dominion Road', 'Anchor Me', 'There is No Depression in New Zealand' and 'Bathe in the River'. He was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2023.

He founded post-punk band Blam Blam Blam in the early 80s, the influential The Front Lawn and the Mutton Birds in the 1990s.

McGlashan says theAnchor Me documentary is like a "time capsule".

“I liked the fact that it was a kind of time capsule of all the energy that was going on in music around that time in Auckland and around Aotearoa. You know, just this sort of bursting out of energy because it was a bit of a grey old time.

“When I was starting off in music, it was the tail end of the Muldoon era. You know, the whole of Parliament was guys in grey suits, it was a different kind of time.”

McGlashan divides his time between homes in Vancouver and Auckland, and is back in town for the release of the film - but he will also make time for some much-loved sailing.

“I'm getting ready for a regatta, which is in Paihia in about a week's time. So, I'm going up there and I have to say I'm not very good. My enthusiasm is tragically out of step with my abilities, but I love it, show me a fleet and I'll be somewhere in the middle of it.”

He is as busy creatively as ever, he says, continuing to work with long-time collaborator Harry Sinclair.

“There's Kiri and Lou, which is the animated TV series with Jermaine Clement and Liv Tennant. And that's been going for, I don't know, six, seven years. It's out on Nickelodeon. And we're just working on a feature film version of that.

"But Harry's got this other crazy idea of a different kind of animated story for kids. It's about a dad frog who lives with a daughter frog. It's called Tra La La…it's very frog-centric.”

Theirs is a long-distance partnership these days, he says.

“He, like me, he lives most of the time in New Zealand and has blocks of time in other countries. So quite often we're just collaborating across distance. You know, I'll send him some stuff and he'll be in a different time zone.

“We're learning that that can be really good because it means that you don't immediately respond with your first, oh, that sounds pretty shite. I don't like that. You kind of wait a little bit and then think about it and let the ideas seep in.”

It’s also a more harmonious songwriting relationship than it was at times during their Front Lawn days, he says.

“When we were just driving around in a Holden station wagon, driving around New Zealand on the way to Front Lawn gigs, we'd have lots of arguments.

"We're actually more productive now and have fewer arguments because we're quite often in different time zones, not in the same Holden station wagon.”