Is there a German word for the feeling you get when someone famous dies who created glorious, uplifting art, or music or oratory or cover drives but whom you never met but wished you had? Wished and hoped and prayed even though you would have had no idea how to get across how important their talent was to you?

Whatever the word is, it applies to me with Martin Crowe, Bob Hawke, and Andrew Brough, whose tragic death was reported yesterday morning.

Brough deserves to be better remembered than I suspect he will be; he should be recorded as one of our finest singer-songwriters. With Straitjacket Fits, he crafted some of our most beloved songs. With Bike, he made a stirring, unappreciated album (Take in the Sun) full of soaring wall-of-sound summery guitars and clever lyrics. It’s a cracker of a record, probably gloriously discordant with the milieu of the era; but utterly brilliant, a forgotten gem.

All the best pop songs – the ones that make you feel something every time they come on the radio or Spotify or whatever – the ones that you associate memories with, good and bad – I reckon have a small moment in them that you wait for and search for in the song.

I love Dominion Road by the Muttonbirds. The bit of the song that gets me every time is in the first verse, after the first stanza. There’s that familiar guitar refrain that opens and anchors the song, and then the second guitar comes in over the top, jangling away. It’s the bit where McGlashan sings “Jane had reached the point when she knew / What he meant before he'd opened his mouth / He couldn't say the same / Or he'd have guessed she was moving south / With one of his friends.”

It’s hard to explain what’s special about it. But it gets me every time.

In Bitter by Shihad, another of my favourite songs, there’s this twenty second segment just after the second chorus. One key change and the song just kicks into top gear (“I collect the poison as it spills from your mouth”). Melts my guts every time.

Save My Life by Bike is just a perfect, beautiful, pop song. And it’s got one of those moments. The song hits you straight out of the gate with those chiming guitars and that gorgeous voice. “Up and down there seems to be a day of reason” sings Brough, at an easy tempo.

The song continues, “Wrap me round your little finger”, before it’s almost as if Brough decides he needs to get to the next phrase quickly, so the line “this time I don't mind” to finish the phrase crams in three chord changes where only one is needed. I’m expressing it poorly (School C music only here folks) but the effect, I think, is transcendental. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment; but what a moment.

Most people don’t remember the first time they hear a song – good songs just tend to seep into our lives, and soon we’re whistling along. But I do with Save My Life. A group of us were on a road-trip from Wellington to Dunedin (it seems appropriate really, now) in mid-2003 for, of all things, a university debating tournament. The Scarfies soundtrack was one of the CDs lying around the car. I had control of the stereo (this is not usually an honour accorded to me). I popped it in, and out blared Save My Life, which as many will recall, plays in the movie as the students originally arrive in Dunedin. I was transfixed.

It should be on the APRA Top 100, alongside Down in Splendour, Brough’s lilting ballad that was his best contribution to Straitjacket Fits.

The Fits. I first got into them when I was at school. I grew up in the era of the renaissance of New Zealand music on pop and rock radio. All my friends and I listened to at school was Channel Z. Sunday nights with Bomber (Bradbury) and Clarke (Gayford) were a must-listen. For those wondering, Bomber hated National back then just as much as he does now – I recall the campaign to “Sink the Ship(ley)”. Led by the irrepressible James Coleman and Olivia (her last name was never revealed), Channel Z provided the soundtrack to my generation.

One thing Z did well was play New Zealand music, and lots of it. Shihad, Fur Patrol, Weta, Breathe, Letterbox Lambs, more. By the late 1990s I was a typical angry teenager, and I loved angry NZ guitar bands. I was also a sitter for a good hook. Enter Messrs Carter and Brough and Straitjacket Fits, who’d broken up years before. I bought their best-of in the Real Groovy Wellington (RIP) second-hand section, and never looked back

(Years later I finally got to see them play live – sans Brough – at Meow in Wellington, and they were just as chaotically noisy and brilliant as I hoped and thought they would be.

I remember two things about the gig: Grant Robertson jumping up and down beside me, and my wife turning to me halfway through “Dialling a Prayer” with a shocked look on her face, and shouting: “What is THIS song? This is AMAZING.”)

Eventually years later, around the time of the university road-trip to Dunedin, I got into Bike. Save My Life was my entrée, and it’s the best song on the album, but the whole thing is definitely worth a listen if you can find it (I lost my CD version once; I was a very happy man when my wife found a copy somewhere – I still don’t know where or how – and gifted it to me for a birthday). Think swirling, reverb-drenched guitars, soaring vocals floating above the noise.

If you love Brough’s stuff in the Fits (Down in Splendour, Sparkle that Shines) then you’ll love Bike. It’s like his Fits’ stuff on speed, the amp cranked to 11 (Brough once said Bike was about “powerful pop songs…you take a song, you’ve got three and a half minutes, and the idea of that song is you blow people away”). It’s Brough making his music, unshackled from being relegated to the second tier as he was (or perceived to be) in the Fits.

I was surprised by how hard news of his death hit me yesterday. I’ve been thinking about him and his music ever since. For years, I’ve often pondered, “what happened to Andrew Brough?” There’s nothing much about him on the internet, just that he apparently lived in Dunedin, allegedly living off royalties from Save My Life, which used to be played constantly on Home and Away. Hardly anyone talks about Bike anymore; nobody even really knows them. He hasn’t joined the Fits for any tours. No new music was ever released. Post-Bike, he just disappeared. And now he’s gone forever, and I am devastated.

It seems appropriate to finish with these words, from the beautiful, melancholic Don’t Cry, a b-side to the Save My Life single.

Why did you have to go? / Guess we’d all like to know

And so young
And so cool
And so crazed
So crazed
How can you be so unsure?

Don’t cry