Jeff Apter - Chasing the Dragon: The Life and Death of Marc Hunter

Other books by the author

A Little Bird Told Me (with Kasey Chambers)
A Pure Drop: The life of Jeff Buckley
Fortunate Son: The unlikely rise of Keith Urban
Together Alone: The story of the Finn brothers
A New Tomorrow: The Silverchair story

www.jeffapter.com.au

Published in 2011 by Hardie Grant Books

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)
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www.hardiegrant.com.au

Hardie Grant Books (UK)
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright Jeff Apter

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Apter, Jeff, 1961

Chasing the dragon : the life and death of Marc Hunter / Jeff Apter.

EISBN: 9781742736983

Hunter, Marc, 1953-1998.

Dragon (Musical group)

rock musiciansAustraliaBiography

Rock groupsAustralia.

781.66092

Cover design by Nada Backovic Design
Text design by Patrick Cannon
Typeset in 11/18 Sabon by Cannon Typesetting

For Boo, my main man

Contents

He had it allthe heroin chic thingbefore it was chic, the scars, theswagger, an incredible stage presence. He was a really intelligent, funny,talented man who enjoyed life andthought it was there to be enjoyed. He chose to take big bites.

JAMES REYNE

T IMING, AS ANY sportsman, musician or junk bond trader will tell you, is everything. So, surely it wasnt some random coincidence that within days of my beginning work on this book, a newspaper report asked the curly question: Who will be the next Michael Hutchence?

Although the elegantly wasted INXS frontman was more than a decade dead, the general response seemed to be that since his unfortunate demise wed lost the ability to produce sexy, dangerous rockers. Tim Rogers? Never crossed into the mainstream. Daniel Johns? Too arty. Bernard Fanning? Too grounded. Dan Sultan? Too early to telland anyone who saw him in action at the 2010 NRL grand final, belting out the Stones Brown sugar while dressed like an accountant, would question whether he had the devil inside.

Yet there, deep into the article written by The Sydney MorningHeralds Bernard Zuel, was an observation from Robert Forster, former member of Brisbane indie pop band the Go-Betweens. Was Hutchence even the correct benchmark for antipodean rock-and-roll swagger? Hadnt we forgotten someone?

Marc Hunter [was] the full deal, noted Forster. The strutting rooster, the glint in the eye, reckless, camp and selling a lot of records he had a bit of a smirk on the mouth, great clothes, great body, voice. And the other thing about Marc Hunter is he enjoyed it. You could see that look on his face all the time and that is important.

While some might question Robert Forsters take on Hunters great clothesthe pirate look of the late 1970s and early 80s, predating Captain Jack Sparrow by some years, remains a fashion crimethere is no doubting his insight. Michael Hutchence may have sold more records, bedded more supermodels and recorded more No 1s than Marc Hunter, but nobody seemed to relish their time in the spotlight with quite the same zeal as the Dragon singer, sometimes known, for better or worse, as Marc Cunter. That smirk never left his face, even as the curtain quickly fell on not just his career, but also his life.

Theres no disputing that Marc Hunter required some seriously high maintenance during his forty-four yearsaccording to his big brother, Todd, who knew him as well as anyone, he was a contradictory character who felt there was a veil separating him and the rest of the world.

During the research for this book, I was related stories of a family man given to lengthy benders, and of a great singer who was reluctant to enter the studio. Marc had the incredible ability to create a parallel reality, a friend of his told me. It always came as something of a shock to him when people would shake their heads and say, Boy, you really fucked that up.

For much of Hunters life, he seemed torn between the hedonistic lure of the pop world and the stark realisation that he was trapped in an often facile, remarkably shallow business. Perhaps this cynical, well-read and eloquent man was a little too smart for rock-and-roll. He could see straight through the facade of celebrity and stardom, yet he loved the spotlight. Marc was the kind of person who could readily negotiate his way through a debate on the merits of free will versus chaos theory while comfortably wading in the gutter of [seedy Sydney venue] the Manzil Room, in the words (and sometimes company) of writer Anthony OGrady. He once became involved with a scheme to float zeppelins over Mexico City in an attempt to clean up the ozone, yet he smoked like a chimney. Was he conflicted? You bet.

Mike Caen, a guitarist in Dragons final tour of duty, wasnt the only person to note that Hunter reminded him of legendary louche actor Peter OToole. Marcs wonderful side was very good and his bad side was pretty bad. When he was in a bad mood he could be a real prick. Such as the occasion during a 1988 tour, when Hunters band mates looked on aghast as Marc emptied a bottle of beer over the head of an over-zealous female fanneither the first nor last time hed do such a thing.

Hunter would sometimes regard press interviews as verbal warfare. You expect me to answer that? he would snarl at some under-prepared journo. What kind of question is that? Then hed flash a smile and all was forgivenand forgotten.

Marc was the real deal, said Ed St John, former head of Warner Music Australia. Ed first encountered the singer while on assignment for Rolling Stone in the mid 1970s, Hunter casually crushing mandrax tablets into powder as they spoke. Scary, sexy, threatening, deeply intelligentand really, on occasion, a perfectly charming fellow. But, man, he had a tongue like a viper.

He had it all, singer James Reyne told me. The heroin chic before it was chic, before anyone had heard of Nick Cave and those other guys. He had the scars, he had the swagger, an incredible stage presence. He was a really intelligent, funny, talented man who enjoyed life and thought it was there to be enjoyed. He chose to take big bites. The Marc I knew was never malicious or mean-spiritedunless someone was an idiot and then they deserved what they got.

Others believed there were two distinctly different sides to the man. In the words of Keith Walker, who knew Hunter for more than twenty years and worked closely on his 1990 album Night & Day: In lots of ways Marc was quite a shy person. Hed get uptight before going on stage but then hed walk on, the lights would go up and bang, hed become Marc Hunter.

According to Mark Walmsley, another studio guy who was tight with Marc for a couple of years while working on his 1994 solo release