Q&A: Nick Bollinger

Wellington-based music writer and cultural historian Nick Bollinger’s latest book is Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s the story of beards and bombs, freaks and firebrands, self-destruction and self-realisation, during a turbulent period in New Zealand’s history and culture, the sixties and seventies. He answers our quick Q&A.

1. How are you and what have you been up to lately?

I’ve been staying home a lot, trying to keep dry and dodge Covid, writing about a few semi-forgotten local heroes for the AudioCulture website, watching labyrinthine Korean dramas (Pachinko, Stranger), listening to Silvana Estrada, Arooj Aftab and Orville Peck, and wearing an extra layer..

2. If you were working in a bookshop, how would you hand-sell your book to customers? What would you say to convince them to buy and read it?

To a millennial I’d say, read this - it might help you understand your parents! But really I hope it will be of interest to anyone who’s curious about the cultural tensions of the 60s and 70s, and wants to read about some of the characters in this country who were in the thick of it.

3. What books (or other art/media) influenced you while working on this book, or generally in your life?

When I was starting work on Jumping Sundays I read a lot of memoirs of the period, from different parts of the world. Great books like Jenny Diski’s The Sixties and Sheila Rowbotham’s Promise of A Dream helped me identify the themes and the questions I would ask. When it came to structuring the book, I think I was quite influenced by the records I’ve listened to over the years. To me a book is a bit like an album - it needs good hooks, variations in tempo, lighter and darker tracks, and so on. I hope I achieved some of that.

4. What good books have you read lately?

Luc Sante’s Maybe the People Would Be the Times is a beautiful collection of essays about art and life; Eric Weisbard’s Songbooks is an audacious attempt to chronicle the entire history of literature on American popular music, and an amazing tome to dip in and out of. And in preparation for my next project I’ve been re-reading Musicking by Christopher Small, a teacher and musicologist, originally from Levin, who had some strikingly original ideas about the ritual roles that music has in our lives.

Buy Jumping Sundays (Auckland University Press), $50