‘THE LEGEND LIVES ON………!

 

New Zealand being a young country and still keen to prove itself, a word like “legendary” gets thrown around a bit too often. A country pub, a rugby game, a guy you went to school with, or a little-known writer can all be accorded “legendary” status.

 

But let’s reclaim the word -- which implies something historically important and about which stories are told -- for a group of musicians thoroughly deserving of the description.

 

Hello Sailor are, in every sense of the word, “legendary” on their home turf NZ.

 

They say legends are born not made, and if that’s true then Hello Sailor who emerged in the mid 70s seemed to become famous overnight: their gigs put them immediately into the frontline of great Kiwi rock bands. It was Hello Sailor who, through 1978, single-handedly made the Gluepot the great Kiwi rock venue -- legendary, in fact -- that it became.

 

They had style and energy, attitude and the look, and great songs. Legendary now. And famous then.

 

Of course the flipside of famous is notorious, and Hello Sailor were also certainly that -- which only added to their allure.

 

Both here and overseas -- notably in Los Angeles where they indulged in the excesses of the rock’n’roll lifestyle -- they consolidated their reputation for bad behaviour. They lived out other people’s rock dreams -- and sometimes paid the price.

 

But as so often happens with musicians, the salacious stories -- often passed on by journalists anxious to associate themselves with the dangers and decadence of the lifestyle -- get in the way of what they actually do in this world.

 

Hello Sailor were always -- then and now -- terrific musicians and it is their songs, more than their lives, which have become legendary. That is what makes this new album When Your Lights Are Out so important: it is those great Sailor songs stripped back and allowed to shine once more.

 

Like the Beatles and the Stones, the Clash and U2, songs by “the Sailor boys” -- as everyone knew them in matey familiarity -- actually meant something to people.

 

They wrote great pub-rocking songs like Gutter Black and Blue Lady, they seduced summertime radio and backyard barbecues with Latin Lover and Lying in The Sand.

 

They wrote of our place (listen to the opening lines of New Tattoo laid bare here: “state house back in Blockhouse Bay”), and made music of daring originality yet grounded in the great tradition of rock.

 

Sailor songs had emotional depth and you always sensed this was something they had lived, believed and sang because they had no choice but to.

 

And that is what makes this new album of their older material such an important event in their long career.

 

Here you may hear Dave McArtney, Graham Brazier and Harry Lyon reconsidering those great songs from their back-catalogue -- and some like Billy Bold and Six Piece Chamber associated with Graham’s solo years -- and bring them to life in a new, stripped back way. Songs which rocked pubs now breathe a little more easily, are emphasised slightly differently, and come up shining again.

 

Now Latin Lover is given a polished and sultry Cuban-style shuffle, there are touches of country guitars in some places, New Tattoo is more melancholy and reflective of its lyrics, this Pasifika version of Lying in the Sand deserves to be in your soundtrack to the coming summer . . .

 

Any way you cut it, these are classic songs from a great Kiwi band.

 

There’s a word for Hello Sailor. I think you know what it is.