Daniel Bolton is best remembered by his stage name, Darcy Clay, and Darcy Clay is best known for his debut 1997 single, ‘Jesus I Was Evil’. It was an unlikely breakthrough hit: a chaotic, riff-heavy song recorded to a 4-track tape machine in his Auckland flat. But the people who first heard it knew it was something special.
Darcy Clay. Photo: screen grab
It’s been 20 years since Daniel took his own life, and this month sees both Darcy Clay EPs re-packaged and released on vinyl and CD. His very brief, but very bright musical career got its start at Auckland student station 95bFM.
Bill Kerton, who in the mid-nineties was working as Programme Director at bFM, added ‘Jesus I Was Evil’ to the station’s playlist as soon as he heard it.
“I remember walking along Jervois Rd with it on my little Walkman, and thinking 'it’s got to be a cover'," he tells me. “It just seemed so effortless. It was so succinct and tidy, but so rough.
“It became a hit very quickly. We put it on the radio and people took to it straight away. This was before you could dial it up on Spotify or anything, so if you wanted to hear that song you had to ring up bFM and request it. People were ringing up all the time. It went through the roof.”
Later, the song went to number five in the national charts.
“I felt a little disappointed it didn’t get to number one,” says Bill.
“I thought ‘for goodness sake, come on New Zealand!’. It was the most original, catchy, bizarre, totally New Zealand song in existence.
“It is a spiky, rough kind of sound though, I guess it’s not everyone’s cup of tea”.
Tim Moon is the person who, along with Trevor Reekie, signed Darcy Clay to Antenna Records.
“I heard ‘Jesus I Was Evil’ on bFM and immediately fell in love with it. I wondered ‘who the hell is this artist?’
“Then Sheryl Morris, who was involved with Pagan Records, invited me to her house for a party, and said ‘you’ve got to meet this guy’. It was Darcy.
“He definitely didn’t have an ego, but he had an alter-ego. He wanted to project something that was not him. He was a true eccentric. When he signed his contract he was wearing bright red lipstick and his Martini racing overalls.
“He only did two TV interviews. In one he wore a wig and called himself ‘Wad Channing’.”
“He didn’t like people interfering with his creative process. We’re really proud that the majority of the first EP was recorded in his bedroom. We shot the music video for $250 and a bottle of scotch!”
Joel Tobeck was already an established actor in the late nineties, but he preferred to hang out with musicians. His friendship with bFM’s then-Creative Director Bob Kerrigan let to him playing guitar in Darcy’s band.
“We were all friends up at the station, and Bob suggested I come and play. Initially, I think Darcy said ‘I’ll see how he goes’. Luckily it worked out.
“He had some interest from the States. We were all getting a little bit excited: ‘maybe he’ll take us away to America’.”
We all used to sit up at Santos Cafe on Ponsonby Rd. The last time I saw him was there. He had this tatty old brown folder. So old. And inside it were some contracts he needed to sign. I think it was something for America. I said to him ‘Daniel man, you need to get a proper ring-binder, ‘cause if you lose that stuff you’re in trouble’.”
A year after 'Jesus I Was Evil' cracked the charts and he supported Blur, Daniel Bolton killed himself. Darcy was booked to play a suicide prevention event the following month.
He posthumously won Most Promising Male Vocalist at the New Zealand Music Awards. Years later Chris Knox released a song called ‘I Wanna Look Like Darcy Clay’.
In 2009 bFM held a public vote to determine their listener’s favourite songs. Over a decade after its release, ‘Jesus I Was Evil’ easily took the top spot.
Of his legacy, Tim Moon says “we lost Darcy. And he was a wonderful man. What’s beautiful is that in a way he survived himself”.
