Homegrown legends The Datsuns are coming to Hamilton for Homegrown. Makes sense.

Max Johns talks with Datsuns guitarist, Christian Livingstone, ahead of their first NZ tour since 2018.

If you’re old enough to remember back when The Datsuns launched like a rock n’ roll missile out of Cambridge and onto top tens and magazine covers around the world, you’ve had a couple of decades to let your attention drift elsewhere. 

So before we get chatting with lead guitarist Christian, let’s get a couple of things out of the way: Yes, The Datsuns are coming home to New Zealand for the first time in eight years. But no, it’s not a reunion. In fact, they're looking forward to showing us what they’ve been up to since the last time they were here, which included a stonking set at the Meteor that closed HUP’s very own Future City Festival in 2018.

They’ve toured Europe three times in four years and released a single, Ugly Leather, in 2023. There’s plenty more new material where that came from, but recording sessions are a bit of a logistical headache for a band split across three continents. Patience will be rewarded on that front, and in the meantime it’s much more important that you find your way to one of the six shows they have booked here next month. I humbly suggest that you consider their slot at Homegrown, the kick-ass NZ music festival that’s relocating to Kirikiriroa on March 14. Claudelands will be the centre of the nation’s music scene that day.

On a Zoom from Tokyo, Christian says, “The great thing about New Zealand is that when we come back, not only do I get to come and play but I also get to see a lot of friends and family. So it's a really nice combo and I genuinely look forward to it. Back in the day I would have said I look forward to getting a pie, but now I'm vegetarian.”

As well as being a homecoming for the three-quarters of the band who met as Cambridge schoolkids, this tour is also going to be a gathering from around the globe. As Christian puts it, “we really like to make it as difficult as possible to be in a band together.”

Guitarist Phil Somervell is from Thames these days, so he’ll have the shortest trip. Christian will fly in from Japan, which has been home for the last four years after twenty-odd years in England. Dolf de Borst (vocals, bass) and new-ish drummer Adam Lindmark will set out from Sweden.

They’ll hit the ground with two or three days to say g’day and rehearse, and then they're onstage. 

Christian says, “We have to get in and get out quickly, have maximum fun in that window of time and then disperse again. The band’s been together for 30 years, and there’s some sort of inbuilt chemistry that can help overcome the lengthy times apart that we experience these days. Also, we spent like a decade, basically the entire 2000s, relentlessly on tour. That was years and years and years on end, we were homeless for extended periods of time! So there’s something inbuilt there, in the sports phrase it’s muscle memory or something that helps us when we get back together.”

A recent show in France. Photo shamelessly pinched off Facebook.

“It’s going to be fun and I’m looking forward to it because I don’t get back as much these days. New Zealand’s quite far away from the rest of the world. I wish we could pick it up and put it somewhere closer.”

How will the band approach their shows for a less familiar audience here?
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“We’ve got an extensive catalogue now, and probably to be honest people want to hear old stuff more than new stuff. The first hint of a conversation about setlists popped up last night, so I don’t know yet,” Christian says. But he gives the impression that some newer songs will probably make the cut. This isn’t a nostalgia act.

Small town souls

​None of this is to say that the band has forgotten where they started. Take Scott Newth, who is such a stalwart of Hamilton’s music scene that we just linked every letter in his name, including the space and a comma, to different HUP articles that mention him. He was working with the band long before they first toured overseas, let alone recorded their first album. And long after, too. As Christian says, “We stole him for a good decade and took him all over the world, which was fantastic because he’s a great guy and an awesome sound man.”

Your correspondent, who flatly rejects any suggestions that he is a hopeless hoarder, is pleased to present this signed “2002 Euro Tour Edition” EP that he bought off a merch table in Dunedin in 2003. Scott was on sound that night, of course.

And it’s not just Scott. “Our manager, Tom, is the same guy from Hamilton who started managing us in the late '90s. We started working with people we liked and knew, and then when things kind of exploded and we went bigger it just seemed like it made sense. We got offers from bigger people in the industry but it was like, ‘oh, but this guy's our friend and we'll feel stink if we get somebody else in.’ 

“I guess it's because we all come from the same small town so there’s a sense of loyalty and community that's kind of built into you. That may be a bit different from a band of strangers who get together in a big city purely to try and find success or fame. We never thought that anything like that was going to happen for four guys from Cambridge. We just played music with our friends because it’s fun.”

“I think we would not have survived for as long as we have if we didn't all know each other so well beforehand. Because over the years it's been a bit of a rollercoaster, in terms of business and personal things. You know, life just takes over, and also there's been lengthy gaps. The thing that's held it together is the fact that we all came from the same small town and played together. That makes the personal relationships survive things that perhaps other bands wouldn't have.”

Future City Festival 2018, the Datsun’s last Hamilton appearance. Photo shamelessly pinched off...Hamilton Underground Press?

But what about the new guy?

Drummer Adam Lindmark is the one guy in the group who wasn’t there at high school. As important as long-term connections have been for The Datsuns, Adam’s found his groove as well. 

“We've done three European tours with him—the first one was 2022—and he's been great. He's really nice, a fun guy, speaks many different languages, and runs quite a cool Mexican bar in Stockholm as well. He can make really great drinks. Good sense of humour, too. One of the best things about finding someone new to work with is when you can sit in a tour van with him and get along outside of the shows. In some ways that's almost more important than musical skills, because you have to spend 24 hours a day with this person and Adam’s really great to hang out with. Everyone gets along with him and he just slotted in really well immediately.”

And musically?

“It's really great working with him because he's a really musical guy. Some people only think about their instrument, but he thinks about the whole song. I'm not trying to give drummers a hard time because there’s fantastic drummers who are great musicians, but some drummers won't know the difference between the verse and the chorus. He knows, and he remembers all the guitar parts that I'm playing. So when we're working on a song, you don't have to explain to him what section we’re in, he's just like, ‘oh, when you go from the A to the G,’ which makes him quite easy to work with musically.”
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2023 and all that

It’s worth mentioning that, actually, The Datsuns were meant to play New Zealand in 2023, not too long after 7th album Eye To Eye came out with its psychedelic take on the band’s sound. But they didn’t. Blame Christian.

He says, “unfortunately I caused that all to be cancelled. A few months before we were supposed to come over, I was playing the guitar a little bit too much and I got tendonitis all down my left arm and wrist. I went to the doctor because I didn't know what it was, and they said, ‘you've got tendonitis’. But they're very thorough here in Japan. They ran some tests and found a bone tumour in my left wrist, which is a really bad place for a guitar player to get a bone tumour.

“I had to have surgery right before the tour, so we had to cancel. I was supposed to only take a couple months to recover but it took me the whole of 2024 because of complications from the surgery. I couldn't play guitar for almost a year, which really sucked. Having played guitar for 30-something years, not being able to do it anymore was hard work.”

Netflix and Apple TV got him through the enforced down time, which ended near the end of 2024.

“In March and April last year we did a tour of Europe and I was only able to start playing three months beforehand. I had to get ready from basically zero guitar skills to doing a tour, which was really, really intense. I didn't know if I could do it, but I pulled it off and nobody noticed! It went really well, which was a huge relief.

“Obviously I live in a different country from everybody else in the band, and the last time they’d seen me I was fine. On this next tour everyone was like, ‘oh you sound fine, I don't know what the big deal was’. Yeah, but they didn't see the bit in the middle! It took a lot of effort to get back to that.

“I've got a whole stretching exercise regime that I have to keep up now, because I still have on-and-off problems with tendonitis. My wrist isn't quite as flexible as it was before. I still sound the same but it took a lot of adapting to get back to the way I was before.”

It’s just another bit of unseen effort that Aotearoa’s rock fans will finally get to appreciate when The Datsuns bring it all back home next month.

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The Datsuns upcoming tour includes Mt Mauganui on Friday 13 March and Homegrown at Claudelands, Hamilton, on Saturday 14. Details and ticket links on thedatsuns.com.