Gig Review: Jon Toogood @ The Hannah, Wellington – 26/09/2026

A sea of black tees – the majority of them worn by middle-aged men, some daintily carrying multiple copies of Jon Toogood’s bestselling book Home Again in plastic bags – tests the brutalist entry system of the Hannah Playhouse at the Verb Writers and Readers Festival on Saturday night. Inside the sold-out theatre, one of the nation’s favourite sons of rock, Jon Toogood, quickly pops on a pair of reading glasses to read his pepeha: “Because I’m at a writers festival, the real me comes out” he jokes, before abandoning them to talk off the cuff.

Interviewer Nick Bollinger opens, saying he first saw Toogood play at the long-shuttered Clarendon Tavern circa 1988/89, not a kilometre from where we sit. We later hear the venue was the first place Toogood really knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life; i.e. be onstage, rocking out. 

Bollinger dials Toogood back to the two-year-old little brother of two older siblings, for whom the lolly jar and the family all-in-one stereo system were the centre of his world. Toogood describes flipping through a file book of seven-inch singles that might reveal his Dad’s favourite Tom Jones single It’s Not Unusual one minute, and his own beloved The Laughing Gnome (“basically a story”) the next. While there is one stalwart fan of the latter in the house, Toogood lets us know he’s moved on, and no longer considers it one of David Bowie’s finest moments. He’s passed his love of vinyl on to his kids, and now they fill his airwaves with the kind of random deejaying he did as a child. 

His sister encouraged a wide taste in music, but warned taking the metal road would lead to abandonment (hers of him). Luckily for us, he says this was like a red rag to a bull. The Shihad story we all know begins when Jon met “classic bogan” Tom Larkin at Wellington High School, reminding those present that – although Jon’s visiting tonight – he cut his teeth on this town. Larkin introduced Toogood to Manowar’s All Men Play on 10 album, which almost had the latter thinking maybe his sister had a point. Luckily, AC/DC’s Back in Black was the next lesson taught, and Metallica’s Master of Puppets sealed the deal. 

“Metal was our tribe,” Toogood declares.

The fellowship that formed and grew to the mighty power of four – including Phil Knight on guitar and synths, and Karl Kippenberger on bass – plus their story that followed, has become legend. Bollinger points out Home Again tells a very different story to the Shihad feature documentary Beautiful Machine. The autobiography has recently been extensively reviewed in Muzic.NZ, and many fans have lived the stories alongside him, so I won’t retell the plot points here. 

Bollinger does an excellent job of shaping the kōrero. One of the greatest music writers of our time – Toogood is a big fan – Bollinger guides his subject through a chronological series of talking points. There is also room for explanatory conversation to precede each of the three songs that punctuate the talking. This is one of the real pleasures of Verb Readers and Writers Festival, seeing the sparks thrown up when creatives talk together about areas of shared interest. 

Bollinger brings up cowriter Karl Puschmann first, and it’s good to have the absent ghostwriter’s contribution detailed. Toogood describes himself more than once as “a creature of the moment” who is “always looking forward”. He says working with Puschmann gave him the chance to look back, and see what made him tick. Two-and-a-half months of intense interviewing delivered a manuscript with exactly 999 usages of the word “fuck”, which got edited down to “27 really solid fucks” – e.g. the chapter titled Fucking Nerds. Tonight, it’s still one of Toogood’s most-used words (in a variety of versatile ways).

As for the tunes, Toogood sings, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, doing thrilling things with his vocal parts. He explains how the classic Run (from the Pacifier Album) – recorded at the peak of Shihad’s powers, a time of which Toogood says, “If it wasn’t on fire it wasn’t enough” – preceded a six month mental breakdown for its songwriter. Bollinger sums up Toogood’s personal seclusion from the music industry for that period as being akin to developing an allergy. Ironically, it was the mindfulness enabled by making music that led him out of the hole, and back to creating. Toogood keeps his eyes closed for the entire performance of the song. 

Lost in My Hometown, from Toogood’s solo album Last of the Lonely Gods, is exactly what it says on the packet, a song about getting lost in the very town we are sitting in, over Island Bay way. He unpacks a few choice details, about wandering “the streets I used to steal cars on”, and “smash milk bottles on”, the place where he had his “first pash”. Bollinger describes the solo album as “a big warm hug”, and we hear from Toogood how he really needed that for himself, following the deaths of his mother and brother-in-law. With regards to the former goodbye, which he had to deliver from overseas during a Covid lockdown, he says: “Watching it over a phone is fucked, and it really fucked me.”

He closes with Home Again, the lyrics “put your clock back for the winter” throwing confusion on the already dreaded stroke of Daylight Savings many festival goers know will steal a much-needed hour at 2AM. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard it performed without the audience picking up the vocals… but perhaps they are simply too overwhelmed by the confluence of relevance. 

We are left with the comforting knowledge that Toogood still practices guitar for about 90 minutes a day, and upholds his fatherly duty when it comes to making the school lunches. In a festival noted for its politics, we hear a “shout-out to Chloe [Swarbrick], coz she’s awesome” (which gets a cheer), and one fuck reserved to be used as an imperative verb in front of Brian Tamaki’s name. 

“I fucking love humans, and I hate being disappointed by them when they behave badly,” Toogood says. He would have been proud of the gathered faithful for their book-loving behaviour this evening, making history as the most rock and roll Verb event of the festival (unless you count Fever! A Poetry Gala on the Friday night, because it’s no secret that poets are the real rockstars of book festivals).

Photo Credit: Andy Russell for Muzic.NZ
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