I’m wary when people say a particular band’s music saved their life. It’s not that I don’t believe them, just that I don’t want to imagine circumstances where a person’s wellbeing was beyond, say, human kindness and modern medicine.

The Go-Betweens didn’t make the greatest record ever – that would be Pet Sounds – but they are the thing I adore most beyond, say, human kindness and modern medicine.

Their lyrics spoke to me as a young man (“I recall a schoolboy coming home, through fields of cane, to a house of tin and timber” – from Cattle and Cane). They still speak to me in middle age (“When I hear you saying that we stood no chance, I’ll dive for your memory, we stood that chance” – from Dive For Your Memory).

Their melodies are bounteous gifts, up there not only with contemporaries such as Neil Finn, but worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as Lennon and McCartney, Brian Wilson and Alex Chilton. I have bonded with people, including one of my best friends, over little more than a shared understanding of why the Go-Betweens are the greatest band ever.

It wasn’t love at first listen, though.

In 1989, after friends telling me I’d love them, I went to my local record shop and bought the only Go-Betweens tape they had, the Metal and Shells compilation. I hated it. It was too discordant and not what I had expected, and I soon sold it. Decades later I would pay a lot of money to buy this tape again. It is not discordant.

The love affair began in 1990 when a friend bought the Go-Betweens’s post-break-up double vinyl compilation 1978 to 1990 and made me a copy. It is a perfect distillation of their first incarnation and it was a long time before any other tape saw the inside of my Walkman.

I first met Robert Forster – who co-founded the Go-Betweens with Grant McLennan in 1977 – on the morning of 17 October 1996. I was to interview him at 10am in a pub in Dublin. I was excited and arrived early. I went to the toilet. There was nothing to dry my hands on. I reasoned they would be dry before Robert arrived.

I emerged from the toilets to see Robert, 6’5” and wearing a canary yellow suit, standing in front of me.

There was no avoiding it. “Hi Robert, I’m Pádraig, I’m here to interview you.” “Oh, hi,” he said, smiling and doing exactly what I hoped he wouldn’t do – sticking his hand out to shake mine.

I wiped my hands on the sides of my jumper before sticking my right hand out. “My hands are a bit wet,” I muttered, turning red.

The smile left his face, but he still shook my hand. It was a bit of a wet fish shake though. Quite wet.

He did a TV interview straight after mine and I knew the TV guy so I hung around and Robert played some songs for an audience of four – me, the presenter, the cameraman and soundman. It was magical, as was his gig the following night, but it was a forceful reminder that I’d never seen the Go-Betweens live.

Six months later, it was announced Robert and Grant would play some shows as the Go-Betweens, including two in Dublin. It would have been great if drummer Lindy Morrison and violinist Amanda Brown were also part of the reformation, but I’d take what I could get.

Seeing them for the first time was probably as close as I’ll ever get to a religious experience. Seeing them again a night later ran it close. They seemed blown away by the reception they got, particularly Grant, who after the third song said, almost as if to convince himself, “We’re the Go-Betweens.”

A couple of years later they moved to a proper reformation and made three more great records to add to the six they’d released in the 80s.

In 2002 I moved to Sydney and saw the Go-Betweens many times, up to 16 January 2006. I almost didn’t get to that one. On the morning of the gig I was practically deaf. I had done so much swimming over the summer my ears were almost completely blocked with wax. I went to a doctor, who was unable to shift it. The pain was excruciating when he tried. He made at least a dozen calls to specialists, but everyone was on holidays.

He said he’d make one last call and if that wasn’t successful I had to go immediately to hospital. That specialist was on holidays too, but just happened to be in the office to pick something up. He could see me if I could get to his office, 20km away, within an hour. I made it. Using a drilling machine that looked like something from a psychedelic horror film, it took a few minutes and $300 to restore my hearing. I made the gig.

It was the last ever Go-Betweens show. Grant McLennan died four months later, aged 48.

I went to Brisbane for the funeral. Everyone was given a single white rose on the way into the church. Afterwards I wondered if you are allowed to bring flowers interstate, but then saw some people were leaving their flowers on the coffin, so I did too. I touched the coffin slightly and thought how small it was. How could something so small contain such a worldly genius?

Back in Sydney I was making lunch for my then four-year-old daughter and put on Oceans Apart, the final Go-Betweens album. As soon as the beautiful Finding You came on she said “I can hear the Go-Betweens singing in heaven”. I almost burst out crying, but gave her a big hug instead. She knew why I was sad.

The Go-Betweens should have been huge. They might yet be. I just heard their first single, Lee Remick, on the radio. They are having a serious moment in the sun when their 40-year-old debut single is now finally being played.

• A band featuring former Go-Betweens members Lindy Morrison, Amanda Brown and John Willsteed will perform the band’s classic 1988 album 16 Lovers Lane as part of the Sydney festival on 18 January

• Do you have a story about the moment of discovery when a pastime became a passion? Send your essay of no more than 800 words to cif.australia@theguardian.com