BURNING UP THE YEARS 2 HUGH LYNN by MURRAY CAMMICK- REAL GROOVE’ AUGUST 2000

The most memorable figure in the local music business in the 1980s was concert promoter Hugh Lynn, he was the master of the mega – sized Western Springs Concert event, with over 82,000 people attending David Bowie’s 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour concert. In the same decade that Lynn had his biggest concert successes, he also set out to explore his being Maori, and as manager of Herbs he sought to take contemporary Maori music to the world. But by the end of the decade, Lynn’s 20 years of drug-fuelled, obsessive energy seemed to falter and Lynn seemed resigned to the collapse of his entertainment empire.
Hugh Lynn, who spent the 60s, the 70s and the 80s in the music business achieving the perception of being a ‘memorable figure’, now prefers the perception of the spiritual to the perception of the outwardly memorable. But ‘image’ waseverything to the young Hugh Lynn, his dance teaching mother and his own achievements in ballet and Latin American dancing (sixth in theworld in 1964) didn’t make being a teen male easy.
“I got schtick from guys at school through being a ballet dancer. I got harassed at school every day, it got so bad I had to wear army boots for the last three years just to try and protect myself.”
Just in case anybody had any doubts asto his manliness, Lynn got into martial arts, bodybuilding and motorbikes. At 16 he had a 125cc James two-stroke.
“The first group I rode with was the ‘Mt Roskill Ghosts’. I was a dancer but I could dress up, put on these clothes and everybody would treat me differently. That’s when I met two of the first Hell’s Angels, when they first came out to New Zealand. That’s when my mother sent me over to Australia, or otherwise I probably would have become a patched member.”
After six months on a sheep station in Australia, Lynn returned to Auckland and began working at Continue reading ‘BURNING UP THE YEARS 2 HUGH LYNN – Hugh Lynn’
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