Shihad are set to open for Australian hard rock icons AC/DC at Wellington’s Westpac Stadium this Saturday, but as they recently revealed to Stuff.co.nz, Acca Dacca got the veteran New Zealand rockers suspended from high school back in the day.
In the mid-1980s, Shihad frontman Jon Toogood and drummer Tom Larkin were teenage metalheads attending Wellington High School. It was the night of their Year 11 formal and they didn’t have anyone to dance with. What they did have was a spray paint can and a love of AC/DC.
“If you’re a loser and you don’t have any girls to dance with, why not spraypaint the f…ing toilets?” Larkin told Stuff. “It was an expression of rebellion, however pathetic and ineffectual.”
Naturally, the two were caught by one of the school’s teachers spray painting ‘AC/DC RULES’ on the toilet wall. Principal Patricia McKelvey didn’t share the boys’ love of hard rock and promptly suspended Larkin and Toogood.
Things were even worse for Toogood as his father had recently nabbed a job as a building inspector for the Wellington education department. When Toogood was marched into the principal’s office, Toogood Sr was there, apologising profusely for his son’s conduct.
The two of them, father and son, then spent the weekend cleaning up the graffiti. “It wasn’t bonding, he was f…ing p…ed off at me,” said Toogood. “All you think at the time is AC/DC Rules – and they do, so it wasn’t a lie – but you’re not supposed to spray it on the walls.”
But just before you brand the pubescent Larkin and Toogood as adolescent badasses, Toogood insists the pair weren’t at all cool at school. “We were total dweebs, we were the nerds that got beaten up and found solace in heavy metal,” he said.
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The two would spend most of the time in the music room and were even given the keys to they could use it on weekends. “That’s where we learnt to be a band – it had amps and a guitar and a drum-kit – that’s what kept us at school,” he said.
Thirty years later, Shihad are one of the most successful bands ever to come out of New Zealand and this Saturday will mark the third time that they’ve opened for AC/DC. In an ironic twist, they’re even on Wellington High School’s Wall of Fame.
“When we were at school they used to point at us and say ‘Kids don’t be like these guys’, and now they point and say ‘Be more like these guys’.” Toogood explained. “It shows that it doesn’t mean, if you drop out, that you’re a failure,” added Larkin.
