Biography
Peter Gutteridge stands among the overlooked figures in New Zealand music history, having co-founded multiple key groups while helping shape the distinctive approach later labeled the Dunedin Sound, even as his own recordings drew scant attention. Uncertainty surrounds the precise date of his birth, though accounts place it in 1961, and his upbringing took place in Dunedin, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island. At age 17 he received an invitation from schoolmates David Kilgour and Hamish Kilgour to join their newly formed band on guitar; that group became the Clean. Shortly afterward the Christchurch-based independent label Flying Nun Records agreed to issue a single, and the resulting “Tally Ho!” b/w “Platypus” climbed to number 19 on the national charts, followed months later by the five-track EP Boodle Boodle Boodle. Although Gutteridge contributed the track “Point That Thing Somewhere Else” to the EP, he had already departed the Clean by its release and had instead joined the original lineup of the Chills under Martin Phillipps. His tenure there proved brief, ending after only a few months. In 1982 he entered the Cartilege Family alongside Shayne Carter, who would go on to form Straitjacket Fits, and the following year he rejoined David and Hamish Kilgour for the Great Unwashed, an experimental offshoot of the Clean. Discontent with the bright, jangly style common among many Dunedin acts led him to tell one interviewer, “I just got tired of a guitar sound that wasn’t thought about. I had my own personal style.” During the late 1980s he issued his sole solo effort, the cassette-only album Pure, and assembled Snapper, whose heavier, drone-based aesthetic set the group apart from its regional peers. Snapper cultivated a devoted following and delivered two Flying Nun albums, 1991’s Shotgun Blossom and 1996’s ADM, before winding down toward the close of the decade. Gutteridge spoke openly about his substance use, which curtailed his output throughout the 2000s, yet in 2012 Snapper reconvened for concerts in Dunedin. After 540 Records reissued Pure on vinyl in 2013, he traveled to the United States in August 2014 for his first American performances. Those dates proved among his final appearances; he died by suicide in Auckland, New Zealand, on September 15, 2014.
Albums