Hello Sailor have never wanted for an identity. It was identity itself, or specifically, the need for identity, which essentially brought this band into existence, nearly 40 years ago, and to this day, a band which still consists of the same founding members.

It is ironic that the founding trio of Graham, Dave, and Harry came from diverse sides- of – the- track, one the son a of a socialist union man, the other two, sons of a banker and a Navy weapons engineer, respectively. But the music instinctively created a class of its own.

In the early 1970’s, in the chest of Auckland City, there was a heart beating to the strains of an early form of indigenous Kiwi Rock. That heart was Ponsonby, home to student drop- outs, artists, and a newly arrived Polynesian diaspora. This fresh musical identity was a kind of south pacific punk, all de-buttoned hibiscus flowered shirts and decadent silk regalia. A sub-culture hard to describe in its entirety, however, viewed against the backdrop of a post- colonial Johnny Walker, potato chip and corrugated iron enclave, in the heart of Auckland city, you get the picture – defiant, rollicking, and raunchy, ever-conscious of that sweet beat and its gently swaying South pacific soul.

Rock critic and journalist Nick Bollinger observed that, “No Kiwi rock ’n’ roll band before had projected such a complete sense of the landscape they inhabited. Split Enz? Maybe, but Sailor’s world wasn’t a place where you made mental notes. It was an unlit backstreet you walked down at night if you dared. The songs are strewn with cops and arrests, pushers and hookers, pharmacies and robberies, sex and drugs. It was as though the New York that Lou Reed had written about with the Velvet Underground, or the London of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, had seeped up through the streets of Ponsonby.”

“Even the name meant business”, notes Bollinger, “playfully camp connotations creating an image of ship boys on shore leave, catching whistles from the bar girls”.

Any genre was fair game and worthwile appropriating – Carribean Ska, Calypso, Rhythm and Blues, Country Honk – and turned into what Graham would call Art Naïve. The boys painted, and sang, and swapped acoustic guitars for les Pauls and Fender Strats, thus completing the stylistic, somewhat rolling, loose corrugated iron sound, and they called it Ponsonby Reggae.

Chronology:

1975….. The band starts playing summer garden parties, then progress to organising their own Deca Dances ( 10 X the fun ), Double deca Dances (20 X the fun) at obscure venues such as Bobby Dunlop’s boxing gym in Grey Lynn, and the Classic cinema in Queen St. (now the Comedy Store).
1976, June 6…….Hello Sailor first gig on the pub circuit, at The Trees tavern, in Tokoroa.
1977……Release of first album, Hello Sailor Top ten hits, Gutter Black, Latin Lover, Blue Lady, Lying in the Sand.
1978……Hello Sailor win best group at NZ Recording Industry awards.
Band moves to Los Angeles, releases second album, Pacifica Amour.
Demos recorded for new album, with Earl Slick (David Bowie) and live performances including cameo appearance from Ray Manzarek ( The Doors)
1979……Band returns for NZ tour, then relocates to Sydney, Australia.
1980……Band disbands, after 6 months touring Australia.
1981……McArtney forms Pink Flamingos with Dragon’s Paul Hewson. Hits include
Virginia, Pink Flamingo, Remember the Alamo, Is that the Way. Album Dave McArtney & The Pink Flamingos wins awards, Male Vocalist, BestAlbum, Best Group, Best produced Album, Best Engineered Album
at the RIANZ music awards.
1982……Brazier forms Legionnaires, and releases solo album, the critically
acclaimed Inside Out. Hits include Billy Bold, and album Live at Mainstreet
a double release with label mates The Dance Exponents.
1984……McArtney releases solo album The Catch. Includes hit I’m in Heaven.
Receives Best Producer award at Music Awards for The Narcs, Heart and Soul
1986……Hello Sailor reform and record new album Shipshape and Bristol Fashion with Willy M of London Beat, producing. Mixed in New York by Harvey
Weinberg, musical director of The David Letterman Show.
Winning Ticket and Fugitive for Love are the singles.
1988……McArtney tours The US with Shona Laing, then moves to London and
finally settles in the Bavarian Alps.
1990…… Last Chance to Dance EP featuring the best of Hello Sailor and Th’Dudes, from both bands’ first albums on the ‘Key’ label.
1993……The Legionnaires reform for one-off tour to promote Brazier’s Inside Out.
1994……Hello Sailor record The Album at York St. studios with keyboard player
Stuart Pearce producing. Singles include New Tattoo and the APRA Silver
Scroll nominated, Never Fade Away.
1995……The Sailor Story, a digitally re-mastered double CD of the best of / and previously unreleased tracks is released.
2000……Brazier and McArtney concentrate on solo recording. Both songwriters put out albums, Hook (McArtney) in 2003, and East of Eden ( Brazier) in 2004.

2006 … Hello Sailor take a retrospective approach and record When Your Lights Are Out, an album of purely acoustic retrospective covers of all previous hits, recorded at Uptown studios and produced by Ben King of Goldenhorse. Just in time for Radio Hauraki’s 40th anniversary sponsored tour, with Th’Dudes, in October of that year.

2012…….This latest release, the band’s 7th, Surrey Crescent Moon, is an acknowledgment of their city and the central urban area they grew up in. A new generation of picaresque anti-heroes are marching down old ‘K’ Rd, under the mournful lustre of a Surrey Crescent moon.

And what does Graham say?

“These tunes reflect a lifetime of grasping at a 2 dollar poker table, hoping for a Royal Flush, but all too often arriving with two sevens. But today, I feel we have 5 Aces.”