Remembering Graham Brazier

Graham Brazier. Damn. RIP Graham.

I realise it's been more than a week and everyone knows that Graham died, but it just seems wrong not to say a few words about someone who was so integral to the development of New Zealand music. And a helluva nice guy to boot.

I guess pretty much everyone who's kicked around the rock music world and is of a certain age – say between 50 and 70 – has a Graham story and saw him perform, whether on one of those nights where he stalked the stage and stomped the terra like
the reincarnation of everything exciting and dangerous about rock ‘n' roll, or a substance-effected show where he rambled, forgot lyrics or worse.

Graham was New Zealand's first real frontman of the rock era. Before him everyone was a cabaret singer; after him everyone got it.

Music speaks
I didn't know Graham at all well, but I was a fan. I reckon his ‘Inside Out' album is about as good a piece of work as has ever come out of New Zealand, filled with rich cinematic songs (‘Billy Bold' being only one of the best), great musicianship – give that Mr Dobbyn a prize for his guitar playing – and Graham's unassailable singing. It should be in every home, yet remains largely and criminally unknown.

Of course, when I went to a gig on the tour promoting the album, which I'd immediately loved, it was a night when Graham was pissed as a chook and it was a disaster. But then that was the deal – you took the crunchy with the smooth.

And even at his most inconsistent Graham retained a sweetness and charm that made him impossible not to like and forgive. He was an extraordinary combination of self-confidence and vulnerability, together with a fierce inquisitive intelligence and a remarkably broad knowledge of music and literature. He recited poetry; he ran a second-hand bookshop.

Stories, dives and rock ‘n' roll
First occasion I spent any real time with him he recited a lot of poetry. Then the next morning I got kicked out of my hotel. It was the early 1980s and I was living briefly at the St Amand on the Strand, which around that time became something like Tauranga's Chelsea Hotel for homeless musicians.

Ritchie Pickett stayed on and off and Maurice Greer of Human Instinct, along with Blerta's Corban Simpson and several others.

Graham did a great gig there and a few of us partied well into the night.

He was stuck on The Pogues' current song ‘Dirty Old Town' and waxed eloquent about the lyric mentioning a 'bishop's axe”. Apparently that's a double-headed axe shaped like the special ceremonial hats bishops wear. Graham told a long hilarious story about it that lasted nearly an hour, taking diversions into a wealth of Irish and other poetry along the way. It was a fantastic night.

Wake-up call
Next morning the manager kicked us all out.

It turned out that Tauranga's newest cop had just arrived in town and was staying in the room next door. Oops. That was the end of living at the St Amand.

Funny thing was, I found out later that everything in Graham's story was a put-on. Everything. There's actually no such thing as a bishop's axe.

No axes are connected to bishop's mitres. And on closer examination there's not even a 'bishop's axe” in the song: the lyric says 'good sharp axe”.

Graham made it all up.

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