“Having to put some effort into songs you wouldn’t normally sing was great. I did James Brown – and I realised I can sing James Brown. Hooooly shit,” he says with a whistle, still surprised at his own efforts.
“And I walked out of that whole experience going, that was ridiculous – no one watched it anyway – but at the same time, if I could sing every day I would be so happy.”
No one watched it … I would be so happy…
The good with the bad. The positive with the negative. The optimistic with the cynical.
What’s that Winston Churchill quote again?
That’s right: Mikey Havoc is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
The man born Michael Roberts has an unmistakable energy. A level of chaos and playfulness and occasional earnestness that was unleashed on New Zealand in the 1990s and hasn’t really let up. He’s a ball of energy. Like a bee caught in a sock, desperate to find a release. The 55-year-old’s nails are bitten to the quick and his famous hair is as wild as ever, streaked with silver – like tinsel.
Havoc was a DJ on University of Auckland’s bFM (three separate times at last count) and later Hauraki, before his grasp on a generation tightened with a move to TV, alongside bFM co-worker Newsboy (the now Seven Sharp suit-wearing and Hauraki presenter Jeremy Wells).
The pair took their two-man-band of naughtiness all over the country, for better or worse. It’s still the stuff of legend (we’re looking at you, Gore).
But before any of it, he was a rock star. The baby-faced frontman of Push Push, the voice that’s belted out “I was trippin’ out on you” more times than anyone can count.
They first topped the charts in 1992, and this September the band received $11,000 of New Zealand on Air funding to release a new single. Havoc says they will actually release four, and play some live shows over the summer while they’re at it.
“I’m not really down with music videos but if we do, it has to be silly. I’m the only one with hair, but I’m bigger than the other guys, so I don’t know,” he says of the band’s new fortunes.
“But a new single, 34 years after Trippin’ came out. Isn’t that crazy?”
The Push Push resurrection began around the same time as his stint as a TV dog. A couple of his now-Australia-based bandmates came home and suggested they have a jam, maybe write some new songs.
“Firstly, you’re lucky to get me along to the practice, but sure we’ll write some songs,” he remembers telling them, indicating an unusual level of sarcasm for a man who very clearly wears his heart on his sleeve. (Today, it was going to be the sleeve of a Motorhead T-shirt, until he realised it needed a wash and we were going to make him have his photo taken.)
It turns out, making music in your 50s is completely different to sitting around after school at Rangitoto College – and a lot of time has passed since he was tripping on anyone. Havoc loves good songwriting. It means he gets “hyper critical” about his own.
“One of my biggest problems is I am so proud of the stuff I have done, that I don’t want anything new that I do to somehow affect people’s [opinion of that]. Even though that’s a stupid way to think, I think it’s a pretty solid anxiety.”
But he did turn up to practice and they did write some new songs.
“Which is really quite bizarre to do at this end of a career, when it’s not something we’ve been doing the whole time. At one stage, we hadn’t all been in the same room together for 20 years,” Havoc says.
“But I think they are really good … As it turns out, my voice, I think, sounds better than it’s ever sounded in my life. What used to be I had to put a lot of effort into singing, is now effortless.”
It’s not to say Havoc isn’t trying. In fact, he’s been trying lots of things that make him a little uncomfortable.
If you picture the larger-than-life broadcaster, it’s hard to imagine him feeling awkward or out of place. He’s Mikey Havoc! He rules every room he enters! Right? Maybe. Sometimes. Not always.
“Like doing something where it’s, ‘okay, let’s go hang out at the Mt Albert church hall once a week, with 80 or 90 people – and I know five or six of them – on a Monday, which is not my best day, and sing proper music … that’s a little bit nerve-racking.”
The Stimmung Choir is a non-audition Auckland choral group that practices in that church hall, operates on a koha system (often in the form of packets of biscuits) and performs simply beautiful arrangements of rock songs by The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age and more. On November 14, the choir will celebrate 10 years together with a performance at Auckland’s Town Hall.
Havoc’s soloing on Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. He can’t stop thinking about it.
“I’m not great with lyrics and even though there are only about 16 lines I have to sing, they are 16 lines you don’t want to f*** up. So I’m lying in bed, at 2 in the morning, with my son asleep next to me, and I’m going: ‘Death and hatred to mankind / poisoning their brainwashed minds’,” he sings wildly in the middle of Cornwall Park.
“And if I’m not singing that, then I’ve got stupid Radiohead [in my head]: ‘the panic, the vomit / the panic, the vomit’.”
Havoc only discovered the choir in April, spotting a poster slapped on a central Auckland wall.
Recently, he’s found himself craving community and connection. He hates that today, I have to order our coffees via an app, rather than a person. He doesn’t flinch when a group of tourists sit at the table alongside us. And he believes strongly in talking to people – especially people you don’t already know.
He gets that with his choir, and the group’s founder Robin Kelly says Havoc gives something special back, too.
“Mikey brings that real-world, hair-metal rock world of Push Push, and the experience of being around and involved in music his whole life. A bit of rock cred.
“But he also brings what everyone who comes along has – a love of singing, and getting a kick out of doing it with other people.”
Watch: Stimmung Choir sings Radiohead’s Lucky with Paul McLaney
Havoc used to get nervous about singing. Not so much these days. He reckons it’s made his voice better, being less stressed about it all. Or maybe he’s taken on board the advice of his one-time “tolerant” singing teacher: to sing through your vagina.
“I knew what she meant,” he assures me.
No, these days, he worries more about letting people down.
“In 2003, I did Rocky Horror Picture Show, and [this concert] is a similar situation to that – it’s a great time, quite relaxed, really, and you get to showcase who you are. But at the same time, [you need to] turn up at the right time. And there’s a lot of people counting on you doing your little bit that makes the whole thing work.”
Does that structured living come naturally to him?
“You know the answer to that!” (He acknowledges stories about his time-keeping skills are now the stuff of urban legend. But it should be noted, he arrived early to this interview. Old dog, new tricks?)
When he’s not singing or preparing with the band, he’s going to gigs and clubs. People still want him to DJ parties and judge hobby horse competitions. But Havoc dreams about being back on radio. He still adores it. He has an idea for a podcast that keeps bouncing around his head – one where he does interviews, because “I miss doing that, and I think I’m good at that”, but he hasn’t found the right opportunity.
“Ideas come and go, and projects come and go, but I don’t feel like [my career has] hit a dead end,” he says.
“The spots for all-round family entertainers in the country at the moment are just a little bit light.
“But I would love a job. I’m poor and I’m sick of it.”
He does have a job though, as a hands-on co-parent to his son Kyuss, who is 9, and has non-verbal autism.
“That is intense, really intense … but I kind of drag the chain looking for work because I don’t want to lose any time with him. He’s beautiful, he’s cool and he surprises me every day with something that makes me rethink everything. Being his dad is the complete opposite of everything I was expecting, and it’s been so great for me.”
Havoc recently explained to his nieces and nephew that for Kyuss, everything is “twice as loud, twice as quiet, twice as dark, twice as bright, twice as fast, twice as slow, twice as scary, twice as hilarious”.
“I’m proud of him, I’m proud, in a weird way, that I’m pulling it off… I love him more than anything I’ve ever loved in my whole life.”
Like many kids, Kyuss isn’t too fussed by his dad’s work.
“Can you imagine what it’s like being, like I say, an all-round family entertainer, and your son couldn’t give two shits about your form of family entertaining? Not a jot…” Havoc lets out a hearty, meaty laugh.
“You ask about my ego? That’s great for keeping me in check.”
He stops mid-sentence, and points at a dachshund playing on the grass nearby. Without malice, he suggests they are “the stupidest dogs in the world”, all tiny and wee.
Then, minutes later he stops talking again, this time beckoning the dog’s owner towards us. Would the pooch like a fresh drink of water, he asks, filling a nearby dog bowl from his chilled water jug.
Under his breath, talking to himself, or maybe the animal, he says that if one dog walks away happy today, he’s doing his job.
Mikey Havoc: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. And always a shaggy sheep dog.
Stimmung Choir – A Decade of Noise, November 14 at Auckland’s Town Hall. Visit stimmung.co.nz for tickets and details
Bridget Jones joined the New Zealand Herald in 2025. She has been a lifestyle and entertainment journalist and editor for more than 15 years.
