Hair, Hysteria and Havoc: Remembering Push Push, New Zealand’s Glammiest 90s Metal Band

Newly reformed glam metal band Push Push are sprawled in the sound studio of the Depot, the landmark art space that has played a part in Auckland's North Shore music scene since the mid 90s.

Bassist Steve Abplanalp, guitarists Andy Kane and Shayne Silver, drummer Scott Cortese, and mile-a-minute frontman Mikey Havoc lounge across couches as they scramble to put together a setlist. The five 40-somethings, who haven't been in a room together for 20 years, are reuniting for a run of shows with English novelty rockers The Darkness and tomorrow, they'll play a warm-up show to press and family. It will be their first gig in 24 years and a lifetime since their short run at the top.

The hard hyper-rock quintet were still circling their late teens in 1991 when their hallucinatory anthem "Trippin'" struck; a revelatory bout of hair metal landing on the Kiwi charts at a time when local music was widely ignored. "Trippin'" spent six weeks at number one, first wiping out The Righteous Brothers' sop-romp "Unchained Melody", then returning to dethrone The Steve Miller Band's "The Joker" for a month.

Mikey Havoc remembers being inside a service station on the way to Invercargill for an instore appearance when he heard the news that the band had knocked off Steve Miller for the number one spot. 900 people ended up storming the instore, causing the windows to bulge and the band to take shelter on the shop counter. "Trippin'" would spend 26 weeks in the Top 50. The next rock track to reach number one would be "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Just over one year and a platinum-selling album later, the band was done, burned out and scattered across the Tasman.

Four of Push Push's founding members met at Rangitoto College in the early 80s; bonding over a shared love of Iron Maiden and Metallica - mix-tapes passed around the back of accounting class. Soon-to-be guitarist Shayne Silver was 15 minutes around the corner at Northcote College, a school renowned for Flying Nun exports like Darcy Clay, The Scones, and The 3Ds' David Mitchell.

They began as Armageddon, the Viking Metal-inspired band notable only for the genesis of Mikey's rock and roll pseudonym; Mikey Havoc, scrawled on a piece of paper, evolved from 'Mickey Havoc' and still worn by the 46-year-old. Then they were Saboteur; dressed to the nines and "glam as all shit".

Push Push's early days were an incubator of burgeoning Auckland rock clubs, '5 Bands for 5 Dollars' nights at The Powerstation, and an emerging local scene giving birth to the DIY bands of Flying Nun; it was collegial, but it was eclectic.

"We'd run into each other all the time", says Andy Kane, "We'd see (then Wildside Records wunderkind) Otis Frizzell, and bump into Grant Fell from the Chooks (Headless Chickens). Even if our styles were different we were all trying to achieve the same end."

Still, in a scene where rock giants like Shihad were barely formed, Push Push's brand of histrionic hair jams were a strange fit.

"In the past, you were either a metaller, or a punk, or a fucking trendy dance clubber," explains Mikey. "You sat in one camp, you didn't blur the lines, but in our era it all started to blur nicely; that tribal compartmentalising of social groups was starting to disappear."

Not that it was an easy transition. Havoc recalls a rocky first gig with Kiwi punk rockers The Warners. "We shared a bill with them at the Brown's Bay Recreation Centre at some afternoon charity free gig. We played and then we had a massive fist fight. They thought we were just a bunch of fags; we thought they were skinhead wankers - we had this massive brawl…not long after that they recorded a cover of "Trippin'"

1992's A Trillion Shades of Happy launched the band into the upper echelon of New Zealand music – as upper as New Zealand would allow -as they twice ran the length of the country, supporting AC/DC, Poison and Def Leppard; just kids in a perfect storm of the coming of age, loss of innocence and an unexpected dream run.

They were there for the early inception of The Mushroom Ball, the iconic, unhinged gatherings that capitalised on Taranaki's reputation as the drug fungus capitol of New Zealand. Mikey recalls being bombed on mushrooms in the foyer of his hotel, perched on a couch with a pair of cardboard 3D glasses, strangely entranced by a sparkler. The Powerstation's in-house sound guy, a veteran of the local rock scene once proclaimed to Andy; "I've done a lot of tours, but you guys fucking break all the records."

But by 1993, after circumnavigating the country and giving Australia a few nudges, the fun was gone. "It was starting to feel more like an obligation than something I wanted to do", explains Mikey.

"I remember feeling so tired coming off the last Australian tour," Steve chips in, "I was driven, but part of me felt like 'fuck, you know what? I feel like a change.'" He shifted to Sydney, landing a job as a dishwasher in Green Park Diner, a renowned gay restaurant in Tyler Square. "It felt so good," he recounts, "I enjoyed being anonymous, thinking, 'all I have to do is fucking dishes today.'"

Havoc shifted left in the limelight, becoming an icon of student radio and guerrilla television.

Huddled on the couch at Depot two decades later, the middle-aged rockers discuss the state of the music industry today. Some are parents with children who have little idea of their fathers' past lives as rock royalty. Mikey took his girlfriend's six-year old daughter to see Kiss late last year; she left, disinterested after a few songs, missing Gene Simmons' blood-spitting routine by minutes.

"I do look at some of these millennials in rock bands and I think, "Have you ever had fucking sex in your life?", Mikey laughs.

"I think Lorde is a bonafide fucking genius though", he continues to a chorus of amens from his bandmates. "Years ago, just before she blew up, I was thinking 'wow, pop music is so shallow and pointless and dumb and Kardashian'", then she comes along – she's a great ad for reading books you know?"

Andy interrupts: "What are we a great ad for?"

"Don't die before you're 40" Mikey says.

Push Push's new EP 'Talk2me' is available now.

Images: Push Push Facebook