Rhymes Of An Ancient Mariner

Hello Sailor founding member Harry Lyon’s solo debut is a raw, relevant rocker.

- James Belfield

The central verse to the opening title track of Harry Lyon’s debut album, To the Sea, conjures up the glorious rock’n’roll excesses of his early Hello Sailor days, rocketing across Australia fuelled by booze and blow.

It might have taken him the best part of four decades to commit these memories to an album, but this punchy, raw rocker is exactly what you’d expect from the last surviving founding member of the Auckland band, following the deaths in recent years of Graham Brazier and Dave McArtney.

Heck, this was a man whose group helped cause a lunchtime riot at Epsom Girls’ Grammar, managed to score a product-and-cash booze-sponsorship deal for a national tour and attempted an aural assault on Los Angeles in 1978, then Australia, before returning home, defeated.