Paul Hewson shooting star

i'm in the sunshine

A mate of mine produces a monthly songwriter newsletter which goes out to a hundred or so mainly Sydney-based members. The roster's probably listing less than a hundred members now, and I keep meaning to ask him how many he's currently got on the roster and who's on it but since he's always so busy I'm reticent to ask.

Anyway, he likes receiving articles to assist him with the newsletter. Sometimes I provide something for him and those articles find a place on this blog site - for instance, the recent Paul Weller Opera House concert review. And more recently I've written something about New Zealand songwriter and Dragon member, Paul Hewson. He's a recent discovery for me and so I was quite pleased to come up with something from a songwriting perspective, ignoring as much as possible the legend and the hearsay.

Before writing I read Glen Moffatt's excellent serialised online essays about Paul Hewson, along with other articles and watching YouTube videos with Dragon members discussing their time in the band in the 1970s. I herewith acknowledge these sources.

The songs themselves are my best source. I think by now I've managed to listen to every Paul Hewson song appearing on Dragon albums, B-sides or singles in the case of 'Konkaroo' or 'Ramona', along with 'Get up and dance' which is featured on the live album Dragon in the 70s, and can be listened to on YouTube. Almost all of Paul Hewson's studio recorded songs from when he joined the band in 1975 through to 1978 - Dragon's 'classic' period - have been included in a compilation double-CD called Essential Dragon (2006), part of the 'Essentials' series. The songs on this compilation have been digitally remastered and selected by Dragon's producer from those early days, Richard Dawkins, the man who according to Glen Moffat cited Paul Hewson as a "compositional genius". The only Hewson song that's missing is 'Civilization' from O Zambezi (1978) which is a pity because it’s a damn fine song and fantastic Dragon track. The point is that all of Hewson's songs with Dragon are available to be sourced in some format or other.

Paul Hewson reminds me a lot of the late, great Jaco Pastorius, the electric bass equivalent of Jimi Hendrix. Both spent years working hard on their craft before giving in to drugs and alcohol when coming into the public eye, so that the worm of addiction was making its way into their lives and careers at the first bloom of success. They both sired children and had families from a relatively young age. They had big egos with a propensity to taunt and antagonise. One was afflicted with bipolar disorder and the other with arthritis and scoliosis. They flourished at or around the beginning of their careers and spent the last few years of their short lives dealing with the consequences of their addictions. And both died in tragic although unsurprising circumstances in their early to mid-thirties: Jaco at 35 and Hewson at 32.

One doubts that Dragon would have maintained their enduring appeal as a great Antipodeon rock band had Paul Hewson decided against crossing the Tasman sea to join the band in Sydney in the winter of 1975. Every Paul Hewson song I’ve heard is a gem. And it’s not just the songs – Paul Hewson is probably the best white rock piano player I’ve heard.  Admittedly I don’t like too many white rock/pop piano players; there’s a fine line between taste and expression - and shallowness and fruitiness - in rock or pop piano. But Hewson’s playing is expressive and accomplished with none of that shallowness or bland fruitiness. I’d always loved Don Walker from Cold Chisel’s playing, but now that I’ve studied the songs of Dragon I actually prefer Hewson’s playing: tasteful, expressive, warm, lively and “conversational”. His phrasing is akin to dialogue and, like his songwriting, there is a dramatic flair, it “speaks” to the listener. The same could be said in a way for Don Walker, but Walker’s playing is more inward in approach, often cerebral or “mathematical”, whereby Paul Hewson’s playing is an unfettered and welcoming mix of rock, rock’n’roll and blues, with a faint classical element. Come to think of it, keyboardist Eddie Rayner from Split Enz was quite the man too.

My good friend Brigette met Paul Hewson sometime in 1983. Brigette was married to a music guy back then and came into contact with Dragon at a barbecue somewhere around Sydney Harbour. I remember Brigette telling me that Marc Hunter came up to her and told her, quite convincingly, “You have the most beautiful eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen”. Only recently in a general chat about Paul Hewson did she tell me that she met the keyboard player at that same event. She said they got on well, sparking off one another, describing him as amiable, but “schizoid”, a damaged, drug kind of guy. She told me:

“He [Hewson] got onto a chartered boat with the rest of the band. As he was boarding he turned back to me, waving and calling out “See you in the next life Brigette, see you in the next life!”, and he was dead three weeks later!”

I reminded Brigette that she was with her ex-husband at the time and they separated in 1983 so it wasn’t possible for Hewson to die three weeks later, and on closer inspection she realised this all happened not long before she separated from her ex-husband, and so would’ve been 1983.

Brigette’s told me some great stories about the 1980s – she’s a fine raconteur – as I was too young to immerse myself in the decade until around the end of it.

I was six, seven, eight when Dragon were at their dastardly best in those most licentious and OzRock years of 1976, 1977 and 1978. It was a time of anything goes, and one of the great bands had to do it – so it was Dragon. I wasn’t old enough (‘ahem’) to pick up on what was going on but I suspect that experimenting with heroin may have felt like the ‘right’ thing to do during the late seventies, part of the spirit of the times, matching copious supply. I was stuck at a boring little Catholic school not far from the Bondi Lifesavers and other legendary rock venues, most of which have since disappeared. In a way I’m glad I slept through it all.

And so, below is what I wrote for my mate’s little newsletter.

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Everything happens for a reason. Or does it? I certainly didn’t think so when at the height of summer I was struck down with a nasty chest virus whilst on holiday. I was sprawled out on the bed in a cabin surrounded by lush bush with a river down below the nearby escarpment, the summery sounds of cicadas and birds, and I couldn’t enjoy any of it. I came back to the big city feeling depressed and a little ripped off and I wished for the remainder of the year to fly quickly so that I could go back and enjoy that little piece of summer paradise again, without the sickness.

But this piece of misfortune led to a surprising musical discovery, just as I believed I’d never again be interested in discovering any new music, least of all any of the OzRock variety.

So this is what happened: we got back into the city on the Friday evening. I remained unwell over the weekend, and by Monday was still too feeble to do my weekly kilometre swim at the local club pool as is my routine. Instead I lay on the couch, turned on the television to ABC 2, and watched one of those Countdown retrospective compilation episodes, this one themed to 1978. The last item on this episode featured Dragon performing ‘Are you old enough’, by which point I would ordinarily have been out the door and on my way to the swimming pool. I knew the song, along with the other major Dragon hit of the seventies, ‘April sun in Cuba’, and perhaps for my illness I found myself glued to the television, listening to this perfect pop song with a concentrated intensity and enjoyment. I especially zeroed in on Paul Hewson the keyboard player whenever the camera focussed on him. He had longish dark hair with blonde streaks on either side covering his ears and wore a yellow jacket or shirt. Miming his part over the studio grand piano he looked careworn and unwell. All that I’d known about Paul Hewson up till that point was his name and that he died of some sort of overdose in 1985. I also heard he had the reputation of having been a great songwriter. Suddenly, I wanted to find out more about Paul Hewson, and so began my investigation into the music of Dragon and the discovery of a great collection of songs that had somehow escaped my attention for all these years.

Not much appears to have been written about Paul Hewson, but in 2014 writer Glen Moffatt published an excellent serialised online essay about Paul Hewson in the Audio Culture NZ website. Glen covers Paul’s upbringing through to his time as a jobbing muso in Auckland, his heady ride with Dragon, and finally his return to New Zealand and subsequent passing. Moffatt has also written other essays about Dragon, all of which can be read online.

Paul Hewson appears to be a man of vastly disparate character traits, with a noticeable wedge between his quirky intellect and hedonistic streak. He was an accomplished pianist and known guitarist, a keyboard playing songwriter, and a serious chess player with an openness to philosophical and self-help ideologies such as “primal scream”. He was also a 70s rock star who looked and dressed the part: slightly androgynous yet bullishly masculine with an addictive personality and a streak of reckless abandon. Maybe his hedonism was a reaction to having grown up with Mormonism, but who would know?

Apart from the two or three hits that Dragon had in the 70s I didn’t really know any of their other songs. And so, slowly recovering from that rotten virus, I looked their songs up on YouTube. The album Sunshine (1977) appeared and the first track I listened to was the title track ‘Sunshine’. The album had been uploaded onto YouTube from the original vinyl – you could hear the scratching of the vinyl for those two seconds before the song commenced – and suddenly, in glorious original pre-remaster, came this wondrous burst of harmony and melody. I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The song struck me immediately as a Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder prototype with a discernible “Aussie sun” feel to it, amidst the lush ‘opiate’ influence in those soporific chorus harmonies. And I had strange sense of de-ja vu in believing that I’d heard the song a few days before when I’d arrived back from holiday. I was in the bath sick and mentally discombobulated, believing that the tepid water could revivify me from my ailments. The early evening high summer sun was shooting through the bathroom window at its sharp westerly angle. I felt horrible and I felt like that song. Energies past present or future converge, a quantum moment.

‘Sunshine’ could be Paul Hewson’s best song. He wrote it for his bandmate the late Dragon drummer Neil Storey who overdosed in September 1976. ‘Sunshine’ with its gorgeous melodies and harmonies is passionate and exultant, ripe with feeling and longing and a sense of wonder at the afterlife.

Dragon’s producer, Richard Dawkins, is quoted by Moffatt as saying that Hewson was a “compositional genius”.  Indeed, the early songs that Hewson brought to the band and which appeared on both the Sunshine album and B-sides demonstrate a masterful understanding of form and structure, such as the intricate ‘Help Danny across the water’ and ‘Same old blues’. In interviews ‘Get that jive’ is dismissed by surviving members of Dragon as something of a lightweight, but in truth it’s a three-minute piece of 70s do-wop pop perfection. Hewson had the gift for stirring chord progressions, in this instance the diminished chord leading into chorus with “…oh she’s gonna break your heart…” is quite brilliant. You can hear the magic Hewson touch in the band’s breakthrough single of 1976, ‘This time’, which is credited to all band members but with Hewson’s name first and Neil Storey’s second; Storey passed away two weeks after the single was released and was replaced by fellow New Zealander Kerry Jacobson. This “classic” Dragon line-up of Hunter-Taylor-Hewson-Hunter-Jacobsen lasted right through to the beginning of 1979, and then again from 1982 to 1984.

A song like ‘Same old blues’ is indicative of the OzRock sound of the time, with its 70s-style major 7th cadences and cruisy blues-pop sound, a bit like Little River Band’s ‘Reminiscing’. The difference lies in that element of talent or genius that possessed Paul Hewson. All of Hewson’s recorded work with Dragon has that tight sense of form, melody and harmony, observational and crafty lyrics, along with a distinct dramatic element, verve, a spark of timelessness, so that the songs continue to sound fresh and new some forty years after they were recorded.

Dragon were a great band too. They formed in New Zealand in the early seventies and recorded two prog-rock albums before moving to Australia in 1975. Paul Hewson was introduced to and met the band on the night before the band relocated, and made the decision to move over to Australia to join the band a few months later in July 1975, leaving a heavily pregnant wife and son in New Zealand. The young family reunited with Paul in Australia after the birth of their daughter, but the marriage didn’t last.

It would have been difficult to hold a young family together in the midst of a maelstrom of success-hungry young rockers with rock star habits. Hewson was already fond of the drink, and unfortunately Dragon’s coming to licentious mid-70’s Sydney coincided with other New Zealanders keen to branch out of the isles and onto the Antipodean (and beyond) mainland. Dragon’s then manager knew and had “dealt” with fellow-Kiwi Greg Ollard who’d just moved to Australia. As a rookie in what was to become the Mr Asia Drug Syndicate, Ollard ingratiated himself to the young rockers by offering them free smack. Three Dragon members didn’t resist, and so had to face the dreadful impacts of addiction that led, in varying degrees, to their untimely deaths. Neil Storey was the first to go. Paul Hewson and Marc Hunter lived on, for a while.

Up until I discovered and listened closely to Dragon I believed that the only truly excellent OzRock to come out of the mid-to-late seventies was Cold Chisel. But Dragon too were an excellent band and listening to a song like ‘The dreaded Moroczy bind’ with its fluid, linear rock you realise what great musicians they actually were. Cold Chisel had similar songs like ‘Teenage love affair’ which they recorded as a demo prior to their debut album, and together these songs demostrate how expansive rock can be when you have a rocking keyboard player mixing it with the guitar, bass and drums.

It’s probably a little-known fact that Dragon’s jam-along pub-rock-classic cover-band’s-dream smash hit ‘April sun in Cuba’ had its genesis with Hewson’s obsession with chess. The initial inspiration for the song came from a quote taken from one of Paul’s chess books whereby in 1921 a major tournament contender complained that the heat of the April sun in Cuba was affecting his performance. Written mostly by Hewson with some of Marc Hunter’s lyrics in the verses, Dragon produced their best-loved hit that reached #2 in the charts behind McCartney’s irremovable ‘Mull of Kintyre’ at #1.

Hewson’s songs brought to Dragon’s repertoire a varied mix of musical styles. Even on his relatively straight-out rockers like ‘Konkaroo’ or ‘Any fool can tell you’ those sharp melodies and memorable chord changes ring through. ‘New Machine’ sounds like an outtake from the Stones’ Exile on Main Street, funky and alive. On the Running Free (1977) album, Hewson delivered a couple of reflective and passionate songs which revealed a new vulnerability, even loneliness. ‘Shooting stars’ was a gospel-tinged torch ballad with soft verses contrasting with the fuller choruses, and flavoured with Hewson’s own unique chordal touch, that subtle ‘Kiwi’ flavour. Magnificent in scope, ‘Since you changed your mind’ is Beach Boys-like in its sound and delivery; the intro and “ohh ohh” sections have that Brian Wilson touch, with the remainder of the song - Hewson’s raw, confessional lyrics and Marc Hunter’s impassioned, almost hoarse vocal – being more comparable with the style of Brian’s brother, Dennis Wilson.

The O Zambezi album of 1978 featured Dragon’s first and only number one hit, ‘Are you old enough’. The song showcases Dragon and Paul Hewson the songwriter at their synergistic peak. It’s a sophisticated AOR track which captures the sound of 1978: amidst the sumptuous arrangements, melodies and stadium sing-along chorus is a composition borne out of pure talent and craftsmanship, and as such is deserved of a number one chart spot. The song also captures the faint trace of a plaintive “New Zealand” sound in those chord progressions, similar in feel to Neil Finn’s ‘One step ahead’ of the same period.

A top thirty hit soon followed, the soul-tapping and more American-sounding ‘I’m still in love with you’. Closely resembling the sound and style of Billy Joel, ‘I’m still in love with you’ was by any standards deserved of international acclaim. But Marc Hunter and Paul Hewson weren’t looking too well in the Countdown episode they appeared in to promote the single. Hunter was gaunt and wore dark glasses, while Hewson was pinned: his eyes were shadowed over and his whites were glazed ice-blue. The lyrics to ‘Midnight Groovies’, also appearing on O Zambezi, were portentous in the light of Paul Hewson’s untimely death in January 1985: “…we’re going out to kill the night, midnight groovies…”. Perhaps he summed himself up best in ‘Shooting stars’ when he writes “…I’m on a fast train, looks like I’m never gonna change…”.

All members of Dragon contributed some excellent and important songs, most notably guitarist Robert Taylor who wrote both on his own and with the other members. His style covered catchy glam-style rock with the 1976 single ‘Wait until tomorrow’ to more funk/blues numbers such as the iconic ‘Blacktown Boogie’, and ‘O Zambezi’. Songs such as ‘Blacktown Boogie’ and ‘On the Beachhead’ from Sunshine evoked the flavour and feel of Australian suburbia in the seventies. Taylor even wrote a charting single ‘Magic’ for the band for their comeback album Body and the Beat (1984) before he departed the band later in that year. Marc and Todd Hunter also wrote, and the impact of their songwriting particularly Todd’s, would reveal itself more noticeably in the 1980s.

Marc Hunter was an amazing vocalist and front man. He had this unique ability to sing anything and make it sound like it was truly his own. As such he was the perfect conduit for Paul Hewson’s songs. Unfortunately, Marc Hunter and Hewson couldn’t maintain their hard living lifestyles for long without impacting on the band, and so by the end of 1978 the band fell apart on their first America tour which had held out so much promise for them. Apparently, Marc Hunter had been taking so much heroin and vomiting up that he lost his voice during the tour, finally being booed off stage in Texas.

Dragon continued on throughout 1979 and recorded the album Power Play featuring two new members: a replacement lead singer in Billy Rogers, and violinist Richard Lee. The album featured a variety of songwriters and styles, with Hewson’s own songs being heavily influenced by Richard Manuel and the Band; these maintained their typical Hewson liveliness and character, despite his own health issues and continuing substance dependencies.

Dragon split up at the end of 1979 and so Hewson spent some time out and playing with other bands. Most notable of these were the Pink Flamingos who were led by Dave McArtney from New Zealand band, Hello Sailor.  Hewson’s look transformed in the 80s too.  His bullish, androgynous 70s look gave way to the emaciated, scarecrow, ‘New Romantic’ look that for Hewson was a genuine manifestation of his own lifestyle.

Dragon reconvened for a tour in 1982, ostensibly to pay off old debts, and to resurge their career as a band. Hewson and Marc Hunter continued their partying, with Hewson taking extra medication for pain attributed to scoliosis and arthritis. A new single called ‘Ramona’ came out. This was Hewson’s last single release for Dragon. And typical of Hewson’s greatness this remains one of Dragon’s best songs with a snaky, soulful melody, a seductive ‘Sade-like’ progression and exciting build-up into the instrumental choruses, sonically segueing the 70s into the 1980s. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a hit.

Dragon were now poised for their second chance at chart success. Bassist Todd Hunter had always been the crucial steadying influence in the band, and now it was his turn to take over more of the songwriting responsibilities. With Johanna Pigott as co-writer, they came up with one of the standout OzRock classics of the 1980s, ‘Rain’. The song exploded and Dragon were suddenly a hot ticket item again. This was the first major Dragon hit that was not a Paul Hewson song. ‘Rain’ is the sound of a new era, anthemic with a strong beat, driving bass, and powerful chorus. The fluid melodies and sparky aliveness that characterised Hewson’s songwriting appeared to be of a bygone era. Hewson himself looks quite bad in the promotional video for ‘Rain’, emaciated and a shadow of his former self – and as the chart success proved, he was no longer unexpendable. The accompanying album to ‘Rain’, Body and the Beat, was a major hit, peaking at #5 in the Australian music charts. Their successful nationwide tour culminated in Sydney’s Entertainment Centre.

The band adapted well to 80s sound and production. The band’s new producer, Alan Mansfield, joined Dragon on keyboards and second guitar. Kerry Jacobsen left the band and so did an increasingly unhappy Robert Taylor. In October 1984 Paul Hewson went back to New Zealand for a visit and, although not officially having left the band, he would never return to Australia. The Dragon that carried on throughout the 80s featured only Todd and Marc Hunter from their original line-up.

Back home in New Zealand, Hewson joined a touring All-Stars band (featuring Wilco Johnson on guitar) with no evidence to suggest he was willing to lay off the alcohol despite his severely weakened liver and having suffered seizures over the past few months. Hewson went back to being a jobbing piano player; no songs of his appeared on Body and the Beat (except for one group credit) and it was apparent that the years of prodigious substance abuse had impacted on his creativity. By the end of 1984 Hewson had a residency as pianist with the main band at Auckland’s premier nightspot, The Gluepot.

It was after a day’s rehearsal at the Gluepot on 9 January 1985 that Hewson made the decision to leave Dragon and remain in New Zealand. He made lots of phone calls including one to Dragon’s manager in Australia to inform him of the decision. A lot of alcohol was consumed that night, and Hewson cajoled one mate into driving him over to a house where he knew he could try something new. Heroin, apparently, in its purer form was non-existent in New Zealand at that time and the alternative concoction going around was an opiate derivative known as “homebake”, cooked with pharmaceutical remedies such as codeine and other caking agents. With his weakened body, the alcohol and the poison he’d just ingested, he appeared to die in his sleep in the car his mate had driven him in. When his mate woke up in the back seat it didn’t register immediately to him that Hewson’s cold frame in the front seat was likely a sign of end-state. When an ambulance was finally called, Paul Hewson was pronounced dead at around 8am in the morning.

One wonders what Hewson could have achieved had he stayed healthy all along. There’s no doubt that for the time Dragon was a perfect portal for his songwriting, yet there’s so much more that he could’ve achieved. His music is suggestive of someone with a talent for composing musicals, or writing songs for other artists along with any other bands he might’ve been involved with. Sadly, his was a short life and career. The man was flawed, as demonstrated in the treatment of his family and of his own body. But Paul Hewson stands without question as one of New Zealand’s most gifted songwriters, and probably the very best.