A brief career retrospective of all Shihad’s achievements would feature support and co-billing for many of the biggest names in rock; a ton of awards; a blizzard of festivals; and an endless tour itinerary across the US, Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Australia and Aotearoa. Miles of newsprint column inches and scores of online wikis detail the clean swathe they have smashed through rock history. Almost as much has been written about the many tragedies and disappointments the band has endured.
Shihad: New Year's Eve 1996 party, Dux de Lux, Christchurch Arts Centre. - Photo by Murray Cammick
It has never been easy for them to live in thrall to what their sometime-producer Jaz Coleman helped them understand to be “the power of four”. It was an undeniable force that, in its early days, seemed capable of conquering (and devouring) worlds. As an early fan and young journalist – on many nights out, dodging stage divers, and endless neighbour-bothering sessions between my stereo speakers – it consumed large parts of mine. This tale of Shihad’s 90s is not definitive, but it’s how it happened for me.
It’s likely Shihad first came to my attention, if by name only, when they played Auckland’s Gluepot, my local, in May 1990: a gig I didn’t attend. A teenage girl paying her own way has to be very selective about her action, and my diary shows I chose to drop my barely existent dollars on the Skeptics’ final gig at the Gluepot that month. Word was going around the club that singer David D’Ath was dying. I fell asleep on a chair near the stage, with my head in the speaker cones, bereft at the suggestion I might never be drawn into the mechanics of a machine as beautiful as their second-to-last song – ‘Mamouth’ – again.
“No! No more love!” singer David D’Ath prophesied for the song’s only recording, captured that night. He died on September 4, and I began planning a move to Wellington, the home of Shihad, who were big Skeptics fans too (which they would prove with ‘Deb’s Night Out’ in 1995).
Shihad’s first official release was the tour-guest B-side track ‘Down Dance’, on the massive Angels single ‘Dogs Are Talking’ (1990). Fellow tour mates, Auckland band Nine Livez, featured too. During the year I spent checking out whether Wellington was a goer for me, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into that song, or The Angels’ Beyond Salvation. The size of the company Shihad was keeping would have made it hard for me to avoid them even if I wanted to, and I didn’t.
Shihad in 1990: Jon Toogood, Phil Knight, Tom Larkin, Hamish Laing
Recorded in 1990, Shihad’s Devolve EP was released, and a cassette copy went into high-rotation at my house. It reached the Top 20 on the New Zealand albums chart, and marked bassist Hamish Laing’s last recording for the band. Karl Kippenberger, not quite 18 years old, joined singer-guitarist Jon Toogood, drummer Tom Larkin, and guitar and synthesiser player Phil Knight, to complete the definitive Shihad line-up. (Geoff Duncan and Geoff Daniels were also early bass components.)
Shihad manager Gerald Dwyer. - Void Ossuary collection
Former Flesh D-Vice singer Gerald Dwyer was an early audience member “blown away” by Shihad; it was his most frequently used, highest term of endearment. He soon became friends with this band of keen metalheads too young to drink in the venues they were playing, and went on to manage them.
“I could see they had the potential to be ripped off really easily,” Gerald told me when I interviewed him later for Capital Times. “I decided to get them into professional mode fast. It didn’t take long. They’re intelligent guys.”
The very first Wildside Shihad publicity shot
Intelligent guys about whom, with the help of a number of high-profile support slots, the word was spreading like Marmite. Faith No More’s ‘Epic’ was No.2 on the singles charts the July 1990 weekend they played Auckland, and Shihad was supporting. Faith No More’s album The Real Thing was on every stereo, and Shihad’s performance was ringing in the ears of anyone who’d made it to the gig.
Newly installed in Wellington, my first side hustle in the city was working at a boutique called Maida, a couple of doors up from the Lido Café. I’d often see Jon, who worked and cultivated a keen fanbase at nearby Tandys record store, formerly known as Chelsea Records. He would take his breaks on the park bench across Bond Street with his partner Ronise. These shabby streets seemed paved with rock and roll romance to me, even if my first gig in town was Aucklanders Push Push, playing Carpark.
Jon Toogood. - Photo by Murray Cammick
My partner saw Shihad support AC/DC in Wellington in November, cementing an enduring fanhood that would subject him to multiple mosh pit injuries throughout the coming decade. I don’t remember being invited to join the gaggle of supermarket night-crew workers taking the night off to attend, and I don’t remember asking to be. Nor do I know who remained to stack the beans at Foodtown Lower Hutt that night.
I had moved into entertainment reporting by the beginning of 1991, which is where the Capital Times gig came in. The weekly paper was a huge supporter of Shihad and their compadres Head Like A Hole, and barely an issue passed without some news of one or both bands. They weren’t local, but eventual labelmates Dead Flowers got keen coverage too.
I remember running into Jon when we were both walking to the premiere of the grunge-loving Cameron Crowe movie Singles, one mild July evening in 1992. “This is like the Saturday Night Fever for our generation,” he suggested excitedly, as we approached the backdoor of the Manners Mall Regent. It wasn’t, but – in that moment – we were united by the possibility it might be.
Jaz Coleman, Karl Kippenberger, Malcolm Welsford at the Churn sessions at York Street Recording Studio. - Photo by Murray Cammick
Churn was recorded with Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman at York Street Recording Studios in Parnell, in February 1993. It was released on Rip It Up editor/cofounder Murray Cammick’s Wildside label. With the stakes increased, Jon found that the experience of working in a record store that sold his band’s record stressful, and himself unable to stop worrying about how well it would perform.
“I hate selling it,” he told me, when I interviewed him for Capital Times. “It’s really nice if people come in and buy it off me, and I always say, ‘Thanks a lot’, but you’re just sitting there waiting for someone to come and buy it. It’s nail-biting stuff.”
Shihad on the cover of Rip It Up No.192, July 1993. The story was by Donna Yuzwalk.
Running the numbers with regards to the album’s first single, ‘I Only Said’, suggested he needn’t be worrying, that he was really in the best position to attract sales from fans keen to meet a member of Wellington’s finest band.
“We’re getting a lot of different people coming in and buying it, and a lot more younger people who weren’t even around the music scene when we first started.”
At not quite 22, he struggled with the perception he felt people had that he was “lucky”. “It was so hard to change from being a 16-year-old to being a 21-year-old,” he said. “I was having trouble finding out who the fuck I was. That made me wonder, why? Why haven’t I got the freedom to find out who I am? What is the problem here? Why are there emotional restraints on me?”
While acknowledging the dark streak Churn mined, Jon also felt a sense of relief at having worked it out of his system. “It is quite a gothic recording, quite a depressing one. But it is a positive energy,” he said.
The band was nominated at the 1993 Wellington Live Music Awards that year. I made a complete faff of presenting an award for an absent Annie Crummer to a helpful Jackie Clarke. Later, I caught up with Shihad in the audience. Jon was very excited to show me an incredibly rock and roll pair of new boots he was sporting.
“My manager bought them for me,” he said, proudly. He seemed like the happiest guy on earth in that moment: a gorgeous young man in an award-winning band that fucking rocked, wearing a pair of kick-ass boots someone with an unfathomably cool punk pedigree had cared enough to buy him.
Bee Trudgeon at Mountain Rock 1994 - Bee Trudgeon Collection
Shihad played Mountain Rock in January 1994, in a line-up that included Dead Flowers, The Exponents, Shona Laing, Midge Marsden, and Head Like a Hole. My partner and I fitted our 1982 Toyota Corolla lift-back with cardboard window covers and – being wary of typically awful festival food – a hamper full of vegetarian muffins to sustain us for the long haul.
We cruised through slightly concerning, non-existent security checks, to give it our best shot on the Friday night, catching Jean-Paul Sartre Experience and the Brainchilds, and survived the epic can-throwing response to Dave Dobbyn and the Stone People on the Saturday afternoon.
But we were literally washed out before Shihad took the stage in the wee hours of Sunday. We felt certain nothing could beat seeing Straitjacket Fits risk electrocution by ‘Dial[ling] a Prayer’ into the face of torrential, sideways rain. It’s some consolation to me that, as far as the Fits went, we were right.
Phil Knight, Tom Larkin, Karl Kippenberger, Jon Toogood. - Photo by Martin Romeis
Tickets went on sale at Tandys for a gig called Noise Machine at the Student Union Hall at Victoria University, the week before Christmas. PR promised the show would be “a finely honed, sonic scream device, set to purge your senses and strip away your realities.” Given Shihad would play with Head Like a Hole, Loves Ugly Children and Premature Autopsy, that seemed pretty likely. My diary entry from late the night before reads: “I am SICK. I HAVE to keep working and tomorrow night is Noise Machine. I have to be WELL.” A rumour had been going around that Tom had turned down eight months travelling with Killing Joke to play the gig, but he’d actually done that because there was an American record deal on the band’s horizon.
Shihad being constantly mentioned in the Capital Times “Bass Notes” column was evidence of a (usually late on deadline night) open phone-line situation that had developed between myself and Rip It Up magazine, which eventually lead to me moving back to Auckland to work as the magazine’s sub-editor. It was a cool position from which to keep an eye on my favourite Wellington band, as they spread their sound across the country and the world.
They toured Europe, and signed to Noise Records in Germany. At Pop Komm music industry festival in Cologne, they were impressed to discover their record company’s promotional items included joints with the Shihad logo printed on them.
Killjoy was released in 1995, produced by the band and Malcolm Welsford. It was a move that would lead Jaz Coleman to sue them for $5000 they didn’t have. Coleman and the band remained on sweary terms for over a decade, but would reunite for the album FVEY in 2014.
At the 1995 Big Day Out in Auckland, Shihad was billed between headliners Hole and Primal Scream, and managed to make mincemeat of the trepidation which might mark such a high-profile slot.
“Jon Toogood looks a lot more comfortable in front of a crowd these days and well he should, being at the helm of the heaviest and strangle-tightest band in the country,” I wrote for Rip It Up. “I can register nothing other than a stunned disbelief at the cold-steel perfection which encased every component of the band.” I singled out “man-or-machine drummer Tom Larkin” for hammering the whole shebang home. If I sit quietly, at a distance of almost 30 years gone, I swear, I can still feel those mighty beats smashing into me.
Shihad embarked on a 20-date European tour with Faith No More, which they followed with a 30-club tour with Head Like a Hole. Faith No More were big fans of Shihad. “The first time we came to New Zealand, they opened for us,” Puffy told Shirley Charles from Rip It Up. “They’re a great band. There’s a few bands like that I’ve noticed that have really made an impact on me. One was Primus, one was Soundgarden, and the other was Shihad. I think they’re amazing. I love ’em, and I’ll be happy to hear them every night.”
A fax from Shihad manager Gerald Dwyer in Berlin to Wildside Records boss Murray Cammick, 1995. - Murray Cammick Collection
Gerald sent Murray Cammick a fax from Berlin detailing various success indicators from the road, including international publishing deals, a luxurious – but nonetheless stinky – band bus, throngs of young fans, and Faith No More’s admiration. There was also a lot of winter sickness, and a tour-bus robbery in Glasgow to contend with. Gerald noted the band were “living on $20 NZ a day”.
When in Auckland visiting Murray, various members would turn up at the Rip It Up offices/unofficial Wildside HQ. Jon gave me a friendly hug, on discovering me transplanted from one of his neighbourhoods and contexts into another. I recall him being very clear about the fact they didn’t have a cent in their pockets (like most – and not only most Wildside – bands I knew), and demanding Murray take them to SPQR in Ponsonby for Eggs Benedict immediately. Jon looked hungry. Visiting at one point during a holiday season, he told me he enjoyed spending time laying low with Ronise and his stepdaughter, back in Wellington.
“If the Nixons play before midnight, I will have seen them five times this year, Shihad three times, Head Like a Hole twice.”
My diary entry for 31 December 1995 reads: “We are going to the Pakiri Surf and Rock festival today, and are taking muffins, fruit, special biscuits, beer, and a tent. Shihad, the Nixons, and Head Like a Hole are the best bands playing. If the Nixons play before midnight, I will have seen them five times this year, Shihad three times, Head Like a Hole twice.”
The Nixons were on the verge of changing their name to Eye TV, a similar price Shihad would pay after 9/11 when they briefly adopting the name Pacifier in an attempt to break America.
Later that baking day, I said hi to Tom Larkin strolling up from the beach. The closest I’d come to him again would be falling asleep in my tent to the sound of Shihad hitting the stage at 1.30am, amid the chaos of a festival that was falling apart as the new year rolled in. As the Nixons were preparing to take the stage around midnight, the bread-sausage-tomato sauce vendors had abandoned cash transacting in favour of spreading their wares out on the table for everyone to help themselves to, and running for their lives. I threw in my notebook soon after.
In the tent village, belters like ‘Bitter’, ‘Gimme Gimme’, ‘Derail’, and ‘Screwtop’, were punctuated by the sounds of people alternately tripping over tent ropes, and the surprised shouts of those whose tents were collapsing on them, not to mention the indelicate sploshing of people wading through – and occasionally falling in – a river of piss behind the tents.
“I fucking enjoyed that, thank you very much!,” Jon Toogood told the Mountain Rock 1996 audience a couple of weeks later, before leaving the stage. But – behind the scenes, and out in the fields, car park and camping grounds – things weren’t strictly enjoyable. The typical menaces of counterfeit tickets, gang violence, flooding, poor security, and a bounced cheque for the band laid a dark vibe over the Shihad camp.
Jon Toogood, Big Day Out 1995. - Photo by Murray Cammick
A week later, they slayed on the main stage at the “wet” Big Day Out 1996. As messy as those festivals could be for performer and fans alike, they were infinitely better organised than the smaller music festivals New Zealand had such a scattershot reputation for attempting. Two memories I have from that day are an inadvertent live sex show – easily observable by all in the bleachers – and a girl who spent enough time asleep in a puddle of vomit to become a reliable landmark. But neither involved me, so despite intermittent heavy rain, the day was generally a blazer. Fellow Capital Times and Rip It Up contributor Donald Reid (aka Jesse Garon) was staying at my flat in Herne Bay, and we carried on festivities that began, for me, at Porno for Pyros’ pre-Big Day Out gig at the Powerstation, and continued throughout the weekend.
Arriving at the Rip It Up offices the following Monday morning, excited to hear what each reporter had seen that the others hadn’t, no one was equipped to deal with the news Murray and staff reporter/Shihad tattoo-sporting John Russell had been nursing for the weekend.
Gerald Dwyer and Shihad's Jon Toogood at the 1995 Big Day Out. - Photo by Murray Cammick
I didn’t have a phone at home and we were largely operating in a pre-internet world, so it was a complete surprise to be told by the magazine’s designer, Ryan Henderson, that Shihad’s manager Gerald Dwyer had been found dead in his room at the Talofa Motel in Grey Lynn on Friday.
There had been a desperate scuffle to administer CPR, but a paramedic said Gerald had checked out hours earlier. “Clean and serene” at Mountain Rock the week before, Shihad’s biggest champion had succumbed to a fatal morphine overdose.
I remembered catching the wrong bus home, and being dropped in the neighbourhood of the motel late on that Friday night, being frightened by loud voices, and running through an unlit Cox’s Bay Reserve towards my flat. Retrospectively, I imagine a struggle, as Taramainuku, combing the Earth for the day’s recently deceased souls, caught a flaming one, not ready to leave, in his net.
Inexplicably, my companions and I were further startled by a flat, inflatable alien, which – don’t ask me why we were looking – we found lying in the bottom of a skip on the other side of darkness. Although I’d spent Saturday drinking tequila at the Mexican Cafe, and my oblivious Sunday distracted by the urgently required, financially motivated, record collection culling the night before had prompted, all those ominous signs of a disturbance in the force would come rushing back to me Monday morning.
It was clear to me that this was the sort of disaster that knocked edges off people.
Murray came and went from his Rip It Up office cubicle in Brookfields House silently. It would be a month before he (albeit briefly) acknowledged the loss to me. I was emotionally immature but it was clear to me that this was the sort of disaster that knocked edges off people. I knew friends of Gerald’s from Noise Records in Germany were visiting, and imagined Murray stepping in to fill the role of host.
He travelled to Maraeroa Marae in Porirua to attend Gerald’s tangi with the band, later telling me how moved he was. Tom also said it was the one of the best funerals he’d ever attended, praising the emotional sophistication of how Māori say goodbye. “It’s actually the right way to do it,” he said. When it came time to exchange waiata at the marae, Jon played ‘Ace of Spades’ on acoustic guitar.
Tom Larkin would step into the role of temporary manager. To his credit, the band managed to return to the Big Day Out tour in Australia. In an act of professionalism Gerald would have demanded, they only missed one show.
In May, they played a furious take on ‘Ghost of the Past’ to a steaming Powerstation audience, amongst whom at least one nose was broken. Jon greeted the cheers with, “So, you like new stuff? That means we can play lots, yeah?” Although he would elsewhere identify the song’s subject as an old school mate who’d gone off the rails, in light of recent events, it was impossible for lyrics like “Ain’t no way to bring you back now” not to summon up Gerald.
Of their minder since 1990, Karl Kippenberger told John Russell later in the year: “What do you do when someone like Gerald dies? Do you go, ‘Oh, fuck, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore?’ Or do we make sure it happens, because Gerald would want it to happen? No one in the band had any thought of quitting. Anyway, if we did quit, I’m sure he’d be kicking our asses in our sleep.”
There would be another loss to mourn later in the year. One of the band’s first roadies, Michael “Titch” Colgan, died on December 12 when the PA truck he was driving plunged into Lake Taupō on State Highway One. Tom said at the time: “We all respected his down to earth manner, his lack of bullshit and his hard work. We will miss him as he was a pivotal character in the Wellington scene.”
Wellington Town Hall, General Electric Tour 1999. - Photo by Murray Cammick
The self-titled/fan-titled “Fish” album was released in 1996, marking a new evolution in the band’s sound that would surely prove irresistible to a broad range of rockers. While my favourite albums would remain the first two, increasing sophistication would turn them into giants. Jon felt certain Gerald would have approved, telling John Russell, “This is the album he would have put on and gone, ‘Wicked, boys, it rocks,’ and he could play it in his big car stereo in his Charger … really loud.”
Cleaning up at the New Zealand Music Awards that year, with wins in every category they were nominated for, Shihad remembered Gerald from the podium. In a massive touring year, I – again – decided to skip their AC/DC gig. Reports suggested it was a shame to miss seeing them play ‘Hate Boys’ to an ungrateful audience it could have been written about. Fair play to “The Shihads” – as a Radio Hauraki DJ called them – they went, in Jon’s words, “‘one, two, three, four’ and rocked”.
By 1998 the band had made Melbourne their base, and negotiated a contract with Warner Music Australia. My little family and I were also making plans to cross the ditch in their noisy wake. As the decade began and ended with me opting not to see Shihad with an AC/DC crowd, it also ended with me unable to see them at a gig supporting You Am I in Townsville, Queensland, where we now lived. I was at home with a new baby; my moshing days were, temporarily, over. My partner represented for both of us, and was appropriately jazzed upon his wobbly turn home. He’d even been won over by You Am I, in spite of being sure Shihad would wipe the floor with them. Nevertheless, we’d had enough of Australia by the end of the year.
I vividly remember seeing the new video for ‘The General Electric’ on the TV screens at the airport when we left to come back to Aotearoa in early 2000. Leaving a state that didn’t recognise daylight saving, I yearned to be “home again”, where we eventually would be able to “put our clocks back for the winter,” which we’ve continued to do ever since.
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Summer, 2025: Shihad is on the road for the last time with Loud Forever – The Final Tour. The band is performing at a circuit of summer festivals, culminating in shows in the Red Zone in Christchurch, and at Auckland’s Spark Arena. Singer Jon Toogood, now 53, has just released Last of the Lonely Gods: a solo album that couldn’t sound more different from the band he’s spent his entire adult life with.