Hello Sailor - Give It A Whirl Interview

Interview – 2022

Dave McArtney, Harry Lyon and Graham Brazier, the three founding members of Hall of Fame band Hello Sailor, sat down to discuss making music in Aotearoa.

In this interview recorded for 2003 television series Give It A Whirl, the trio covered many topics, including:

Their first impressions of, and involvement in, the music industry
Meeting each other, moving into Mandrax Mansion and messing around in Auckland (12 minutes in)
Who the band were reacting against (22 minutes in)
Writing individually, and performing together (28 minutes in)
The differences between playing live and recording (35 minutes)
From home to America, to Australia, then back home again (40 minutes)
Completing Graham Brazier's classic solo album Inside Out on an extremely tight time frame (65 minutes)
Band development and more touring (83 minutes)
The influence of British and American music on New Zealand music (91 minutes)

Harry Lyon writes about the birth of Hello Sailor in this special collection devoted to the band. Watch Hello Sailor documentary Sailor's Voyage here.

Read more about Hello Sailor, Graham Brazier, Harry Lyon and Dave McArtney at AudioCulture (NZ On Screen's sister website)

This interview was recorded for the 2003 season of TV series Give it a Whirl. All audiovisual content is copyright to Visionary Film & TV, and may not be reproduced.

...we were very careful to not lose sight of that visual thing. The songs that came with it created the tension, because the songs were delicate little vignettes about people, and about life, and also sort of acid trippy type of scenarios and odd things — negative things, dark things…there’s a bit of film noir in there, a bit of everything. And yet you had this rock'n'roll… this pub rock. So it had the tension of being this artistic thing plus being pub rock.
– Dave McCartney on Hello Sailor (30 minutes into this interview)