Gutter Black: A Kiwi music icon

PAIRING: McArtney and Brazier were a formidable duo.

Take a look at the cover of Gutter Black and from that one glance you can tell that the man this book is about was a master of his art.

The craggy-faced man on the cover, collar turned up concentrating deeply on the guitar he is playing, is the legendary Dave McArtney, founder of Hello Sailor and Pink Flamingos, a musician whose impact on the Kiwi music scene is arguably unparalleled.

McArtney penned Gutter Black himself, a task he only just managed to complete before cancer claimed his life in April last year aged 62, and it will feature in the Yarns in Barns festival in Masterton on Saturday.

Publisher and broadcaster Finlay MacDonald, in tandem with musician Graham Brazier a contemporary of McArtney's will host the event in Aratoi Wesley Wing at 7.30pm, as a celebration of McArtney's life and music.

Gutter Black is a memoir that takes readers through the stages of this extraordinary mans life, right from his earliest memory in his hometown Oamaru balancing on the back of his "old man's bicycle" cradling a sack of spuds on the journey home from a market garden.

It travels through his early life, his days of cruising the highways of the North Island in a modified 1938 Hudson Terraplane, seeking out the best waves to fulfil his passion for surfing.

As would be expected, Gutter Black has its fair share of drugs, sex and rock n rock. Readers will re-acquaint themselves with the residents of Mandrax Mansion, home of Hello Sailor in the band's earliest days.

McArtney describes them as looking somewhat iconic in torn bell-bottomed jeans and crumpled silk shirts, lounging around by day and becoming animated at night, helped along by booze and joints. The band's first album, titled Hello Sailor, featuring McArtney and Harry Lyons on guitar, Lisle Kinney (bass), Ricky Ball (drums) and vocalist Brazier, became the first New Zealand album to be certified gold.

One track, Gutter Black, written and sung by McArtney, later became the title music for the television hit series Outrageous Fortune.

For readers, Gutter Black will be something of a walk down memory lane, especially those once familiar with Auckland's Peter Pan Cabaret and rock venue The Gluepot in Ponsonby.

Hello Sailor not only became the biggest band in the land but took their music to the world, and McArtney writes at length about their days in the US.

Although officially disbanded in 1980, Hello Sailor regularly reunited and played at gigs from one end of the country to the other. McArtney's next big musical venture was forming Pink Flamingos, a band that also became hugely successful, especially on Auckland's North Shore, with the Esplanade Hotel at Devonport being their home away from home.

Perhaps the most remarkable chapters of Gutter Black are not those historically relating to the magic of McArtney's music but to the final days of his life.

His vivid description of his feelings when he was diagnosed with liver cancer, and the honesty and bravery he shows as he approaches his final days and signs off Gutter Black, is touching.