Marc hunter biography book

I'm guessing that in some ways, Marc Hunter would have been a dream to write about. The front man of New Zealand's leading 1970s mega rock band Dragon, singer of hits such as 'Rain', 'Are You Old Enough?' and 'April Sun in Cuba', left no rock star trope unturned.

He took enough heroin to stuff a rhino, he drank, he smoked, he took speed, he swaggered, he trashed hotel rooms, he took heroin, he screwed around, he screwed up whenever Dragon needed to impress anyone important, he threw tantrums, he died young, and, did I mention, he was rather partial to the occasional taste of heroin? There's an irony there, that someone so determined to stand out from the pack ended up yet another self-destructive junkie.

The archetypal nature of Marc Hunter's tragic story arc, from sharp-tongued fat kid in small-town New Zealand to a bloated wash-up via two decades of long-haired drug-fuelled posturing, means that it's a challenge to separate the man from the cliché. Jeff Apter's biography, Chasing The Dragon, The Life and Death of Marc Hunter, while thoroughly researched, doesn't ultimately render Marc Hunter three dimensional.

This is at least partly due to Apter's writing. Chasing The Dragon reads like an early draft. All the interviews and research are laid out in chronological order and linked together, but there's precious little style lifting the writing out of the utilitarian.

Apter is no ingenue in the field. He's something of an expert on Kiwi musos, having also written biographies of Keith Urban and The Finn Brothers, and music biographies in general. He's published books on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Jeff Buckley, Silverchair, Gwen Stefani, The Cure, David Grohl, and Kasey Chambers. Apter is prolific, but at this point in time formulaic and repetitive.

It's not a good sign if you can turn a book into a drinking game: If you took a shot for every time Marc is described as 'charismatic' or likened to Jim Morrison, you'd be off your trolley within two chapters. Add in a shot for every time you read the phrase 'and yet still his demons remained', and two shots for any variation on the sentiment 'Everyone else said he was a prick, but he was always lovely to me', and you'd have drunk half as much as Marc Hunter on a night off.

It's a bummer, because Apter has gathered a lot of information about Hunter's life and is clearly attempting to honour the guy. And Hunter, who was apparently as intelligent and charming as he was incapable of reining himself in, deserves a bit of dash and flash in his sole biography. Dragon might have been founded by Marc's steady older brother Todd, and the many hit songs might have been written by every member of the band, but it's clear Dragon would have been nothing without Marc up front. He was a rock god's rock god, and people were literally mesmerised by him.

The book covers Marc's life from go to whoa, which was intimately bound to the trajectory of Dragon. Apter interviewed Hunter's stoic Fijian mother, Voi, his one surviving brother, Todd, and a smorgasbord of band-mates, girlfriends, venue owners, peers and friends. Renee Geyer was a close friend and one-time lover, Tommy Emmanuel an unlikely band-mate, James Reyne a huge fan. The picture emerges of a sensitive, intelligent, complicated, incredibly gifted, undisciplined screw-up of a man-child with charm to burn and a mean streak you could land a 747 on.

By the final chapters, where Marc's health and fortunes fail, both a direct result of his cocktail of addictions, we finally begin to connect with and have some sympathy for Hunter. This is inevitable. To die of throat cancer at 44 is a sad, terrible thing, not least when you're leaving behind a wife you love and four children.

To me, though, the book lacks a heart, because Apter didn't bring Marc Hunter, the fascinating anti-hero, to life. It's okay to not like a protagonist—and there's a lot to not like about Mark, the book is littered with examples of his cruelty and unreliability—but everyone he ever met was intoxicated by him, and I longed to be similarly seduced. I wasn't. Dragon fans, however, will have a fine old time.