It has been 26 years since New Zealand band Zed released their biggest hit Renegade Fighter in 2000, which threw them into stardom and helped secure them a record label in their early 20s.
Now in their 40s, Ben Campbell, Adrian Palmer, Nathan King and Andy Lynch have gone back to the studio after a 15-year hiatus and will accompany Joan Jett and Iggy Pop at this month’s Summer Concert in Wanaka.
Band lead Nathan King, 47, said this time around things were a lot easier as there was less riding on their music careers.
"It is such an incredible honour and experience to get in front of a big crowd.
"Still to this day you get energy from the crowd when you step on stage and play a song that everyone knows and they are singing it with you and it’s like this is a song I wrote as a teenager.
"We can step into our former selves and relive that fun and exciting part of our lives again.
"And appreciate it for what it is rather than being on a rollercoaster and having no control over it."
King was just 21 when he and the band wrote their top single.
This came after their other big hit Glorafilia.
They signed a record label and headed for the United States where they had reasonable success under manager Ray Columbus.
"It was a whirlwind and we really didn’t appreciate how lucky we were and how fortunate we were to have that opportunity," King said.
"A bunch of things just fell into place for us in a way that is almost impossible to replicate."
Music took them to Europe and back to the US.
It was in 2005 when cracks began to show, not in their talent, but among the band.
While there were no internal rifts, bass player Campbell’s father died which hit them all very hard.
King said the joy started to fade for the music and things became too hard.
"We had a few things happen internally in the band, long story short, it felt like it was the end of the chapter with the band and we felt like we had to put the instruments down.
"It felt like the fun had left the building and it became how many units we can shift.
"We tasted the upwards trajectory and the buzz and we also tasted the hard yards, the grit and when it is too hard to keep going."
In 2017, the band received a phone call asking them if they would play their hits for entertainment in front of a packed Eden Park for the All Blacks versus Lions test series.
"We thought why not, we have never played to a full house at Eden Park and we thought we probably never will as they’re not going to come and see us.
"That whetted the appetite fractionally and it got us talking again. After the show we were like ‘that was really fun why don’t we instigate it again’.
"Fortunately the magic was still there and when we started rehearsing properly, we realised we enjoyed making music together again."
King said he felt for artists trying to break through the "noise" now, as the game had changed remarkably since they started as teenagers in 2006.
"Nowadays there is so much more music coming out, cutting through the noise is so much more difficult, I feel for bands now as they don’t have the gatekeepers — the record labels.
"Where as now you can be in your bedroom with a laptop and next thing you can put your single on Spotify and it is another track in the noise."
The band was looking forward to opening for big acts such as Joan Jett and Iggy Pop in Wanaka in a week’s time.
