With 40 years of rock music under their belts, DRAGON are on their celebration tour around Aus. With classics like ‘April Sun in Cuba’ and ‘Are You Old Enough’, they’re hard to forget. COURTNEY LAURA had the chance to talk with TODD HUNTER about how he and the band are feeling and what the last 40 years have meant to them.
How is the anniversary tour going so far?
Well, we had a great time doing the New Zealand anniversary tour back in November. We did 17 shows and had an absolute ball. This one has been good so far where we did the Opera House and on the central coast. They have been great crowds, and great singing with us. It’s just something that is really fun to do and celebrate.
Describe what the difference is between the New Zealand and Australian crowds?
Go to google and type in dragon rain rhythm and vines, and you will see, that’s what it is like to play over there. They were all singing the songs with us which was amazing. Then you have the theatre shows where you’re playing to an older crowd, we play to a huge range of people. The good thing is everyone knows the songs from radio so you can just go and play. You can never second guess who is going to turn up, the tour has been really good.
What is it about the music, that has sustained it throughout the last 40 years and found a new generation of fans?
They aren’t linked to a certain time. The songs are melodic and sing-able, they belong to everybody, they are part of the background and wallpaper, they are just apart of their lives. Our job is to play the songs and let the crowd sing and have a good time with us.
How will you incorporate the new tracks into your set list?
We always do two to three, and we rotate them around, the audience comes to a show to hear stuff they know. So we just play a couple and it is so gratifying when you play a new song and it generates a big yell of approval.
When you write, do you find that the music or the lyrics come first?
I have always been a music first guy, and the lyrics come later. The chorus is usually first and then it’s good to get a story in there and something underneath so it’s not just one meaning to the song.
Do you find anything in particular that inspires you, or is it a very naturally inspired process to write and create your music?
It happens naturally. The hardest thing as you get older is to get the time to do it. There is so much going on and you’re booked six months ahead and organising all that stuff with shows that it is challenging to stop and let it flow. However, if you get loose enough and you have time put aside just to goof around, it’s like fishing, you’re at the piano just finding sounds and something will catch and it grows into an idea. You just have to put the time in, not everything that comes to you will be great. If anyone knew how to write a hit song they would do it all the time. Songs like ‘Somebody that I Used to Know’ is great, in that it proves that a great song actually matters.
Describe how the culture surrounding music has changed over the years from when you started, to now.
Back in the really early days, it was like going across the wild west in covered wagons, there was just nothing there. A lot of pubs we went into had never had a band before. It took ages to record and it was much harder to travel, you had to have a huge truck load of crap, like the big black boxes.
All that is gone now. You just turn up with your guitar and play, which is so much better, but back then if you did get on Countdown, suddenly you were really well known, where as now you need to get a viral youtube thing happening.
What are some of your favourite venues?
We love the Lizotte’s world tour with the three venues, that is great. The big thing now is the huge difference in venues, you’re playing a festival one day and a tiny pub the next night. We have a tour coming up in New Zealand in churches which is acoustic, you can find yourself doing that, to standing on the field playing to the all blacks crowd, it’s a phenomenal range of stuff and it all works with our music. We are lucky we don’t need the big synthesizers or anything like that, you can sing them in any way.
Have you found your songs have had their original meanings grow and change over the years? How?
Yeah absolutely. ‘Are You Old Enough’ has changed – rather than the salacious story of young girls, you play it at the end of the night and it’s a collection of everything people have been through over the last 30 years. Great songs just last the test of time.
Describe the feeling in 2008 being recognised by the industry and becoming inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
Before they came up I hadn’t thought about it for one second. It’s not something you even think about. When they rang up and asked ‘how about it?’ I simply said ‘ok’, it was unbelievable how emotional it was on the night. There was a range of people inducted that night, including Russell Morris. It was great. It is recognition Dragon never really had before. When I was doing soundtrack work for 10 years, the band never existed, we weren’t on the internet and we were never on the top 100 lists, we were just never there. Which was sort of good, but in the end I thought I needed to pull it all together to get a coherent image for us happening to be able to keep going.
What are some of the other significant milestones in your career that you have reached with the band?
We’re just about to do our 500th show since we reformed which is something special, that’s a lot of playing. The great thing about being a Dragon is you never have to look back and think ‘those were the great days’ because they weren’t, they were crap. I hated being in the ’70s, it was too dangerous, too mad. The ’80s were better but still pretty wild. I am not much of a party guy, which is why I am still here. I am always looking forward to the next six months of shows we have booked.
Describe what you feel when you step out to a stage of a full audience
It’s about getting a sense of your environment, and as soon as you know it’s alright and the crowd are happy, you can relax. It is exciting and you get caught up in the crowd’s energy. You can travel all day, get up at 5am, drive, fly, drive again get on stage thinking ‘oh my god’ and then by the end of one and a half hours you just feel fantastic and it’s incredibly therapeutic. I could recommend it for anyone, and it’s just from the energy coming back at you from the crowd.
What do you all do to come down from the adrenaline of a show?
Well, boringly, I read a lot. I have never really needed the whole roaming around at night not being able to come down from a show. Being a bass player you’re in the background and it’s much more of a trade, and well being up the front it’s you that they’re judging and you have to put yourself on the line and get in touch with the crowd, but concentrating on playing in the background as the bass player, it is much more sustainable. It’s important to be a working musician rather than ‘celebrity’. There was a brief period when we were really well known and it was horrible, it was a nightmare. Anonymity, you can’t beat it.
In playing all the music so often, how do you keep things fresh?
You change the songs around and play them in different ways; you’ve got to be pretty churlish to get stale when the crowd reactions are really good. I guess the bottom line is that it is an honour to be able to do it at the age of 60, its incredible. Bands are supposed to last 2 years and blow up and break up, under acrimonious circumstances, but we didn’t. We were so damn pig headed that we just kept on playing. The support of venues, such as Brian Lizotte’s places goes a long, long way.
What are some of the things you have learnt being in the industry for 40 years?
Musicians have to face the facts that we live in a country with hardly any people in it, so you can’t have a niche market to play to, you have to make do with whatever crowds you can get. Always feel like an amateur, when you start to feel ‘you can do this’ the freshness will leave the music. And never give up.
Don’t become a professional, always have the beginner’s state of mind.
Write your own songs, find your own voice, even if no one is interested. You just keep doing it. To hell with it, and if at some stage a crowd comes along and finds you, then great.
Do you have any pre-show rituals? What happens back stage before a performance?
Bruce [Reid, guitar] is always on his guitar, Pete [Drummond, drums] disappears into his computer or he is doing soundtrack work, Mark [Williams, vocals] does singing scales, and I am usually sitting in the corner reading a book and that’s about as interesting as it gets. It’s pretty quiet. We’re almost onto our 500th show so we’re all really used to each other.
Anything I haven’t asked that you would like to add?
We’d just love to see as many people as possible at our shows to come and celebrate with us.