Lyon’s pride in solo sail

It’s taken Hello Sailor guitarist Harry Lyon more than 50 years to make his first solo record, with a little help from Lyttelton’s Delaney Davidson, writes Grant Smithies.

Iimagine them scattered everywhere – some finished, some not: little poetic remnants of the past. I picture scribbled lyrics crammed into the pockets of old suit jackets in his wardrobe, or crumpled up in a dusty corner behind a chest of drawers.

Look in the glove compartment of Harry Lyon’s car, there are probably more. No doubt there are boxes of them in the home office or out in the garage. You might even find a few down the back of his couch.

Lyon lives his life surrounded by songs. ‘‘Down the back of the couch?’’ says Lyon. ‘‘I love that analogy! And you’re right – there are heaps of them, because I’ve been writing songs for a very long time.’’

Some songs on Lyon’s new album have been kicking around for ages, he admits. Decades, in fact. ‘‘Some are well over 30 years old.’’

Lyon recently packed up his guitars, his music, his life, and moved up north to Russell with his ‘‘gorgeous partner in crime’’, Maggie.

Before the shift came a lifetime of music-making in Auckland, Australia and America.

Lyon spent years teaching at Mainz music school, and was in a bunch of bands before that, including The Legends, The Crying Shame, Beam, Coup D’Etat, The Pink Flamingos, The Legionnaires.

Most famously, he was in Hello Sailor, a notoriously booze-soaked, drug-assisted bunch of reprobates who were, during the late 1970s, Aotearoa’s closest approximation to the Rolling Stones, who had a crack at making it in LA.

It was Lyon who wrote Watch Your Back and Lyin’ In The Sand on Hello Sailor’s cracking 1977 debut album as it happens, but that was 40 long years ago.

How is it that a man who’s written songs for so long is only now getting around to releasing his first solo album?

‘‘I guess I just preferred being in bands. I loved