The Clean

The definitive story of The Clean in their own words.

Now, you said it was yesterday,yesterday's another day

Heading round in make believe,I don't know if it's you or If it's me oh,

I don't know, I don't know

Tally ho, tally ho!

In 1978 in Dunedin , New Zealand, the Kilgour brothers, Hamish and David, and their schoolfriend Peter Gutteridge, got together to form a band called The Clean. When Robert Scott joined in 1980, the band found a combination that endured for nearly forty years.

The Clean profoundly changed alternative music: hitting the New Zealand charts for months with a single made for $50, 'Tally Ho!'; helping establish Flying Nun and a music scene independent of the big labels; pioneering a low-fi, do-it-yourself approach to rock music; and touring internationally to influence bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.

Raw and immediate, this is the story as told by members of The Clean and their inner circle fellow musicians such as Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps, Graeme Downes and Ira Kaplan, friends and family, pub promoters and sound engineers, and their good friend, Richard Langston. From teenagers in a Dunedin practice room to New York City on 9/11 this is the band's history as it unfolds.