DENNIS MASON INTERVIEWED

Rip It Up, Issue 17, 1 November 1978, Page 4

DENNIS MASON INTERVIEWED

Alastair Dougal

Dennis Mason is different to most musicians you'll find interviewed in these pages. While most local rock and rollers are scuffling for a shot at New Zealand’s limited bigtime, Dennis remains happily free of such ambitions: ‘‘l’ve got no desire to go overseas and be a pop star. Trying to get it together and make a name for yourself can be a bit of a . . . pressure. You can do without it, man,” he explains. Nevertheless Dennis has not been without success. He’s featured in several-of this country’s more well-known bands Redeye and Quincy Conserve for example and his name recurs on the back sleeves of more than a few local albums.

In 1968 at age 21, after a mere 12 months of self tuition on sax, he walked into the newly formed Quincy Conserve as second saxophonist. Dennis recalls the occasion with amusement. "When I went down for an audition Malcolm Hayman the singer in the band said: 'You’re a wee bit flat. Play a B flat and we’ll tune to the piano.’ But I didn’t even know where a B flat was on the fingering of a sax.

Nonetheless he got the job. ‘‘lt was more my looks than my sax playing,” he chuckles, "Malcolm was trying to get something together with a modern image and most of the guys that auditioned were either a bit old or didn’t look the part.” He lasted four years with Quincy Conserve, a period that produced the bands most successful recordings two albums and the singles, "Aire of Good Feeling”, “Alright in the City" and, particularly, “Ride the Rain". Following Quincy came a couple of shortlived units, until out of various permutations of a floating pool of Wellington musicians emerged the band for which Dennis is probably best known, Redeye. The grouping of Dennis on sax, percussion and vocals; John O’Connor, guitar; Frits Stitger, bass; Tom Swainson, drums and Bob Smith, keyboards. As with Dennis’ other bands, Redeye rarely moved out of Wellington but, by the magic of the little square screen, Redeye became known as “the band that does the backings on Ready to Roll". And an excellent job they did too. But Dennis does not remember their TV appearances with good feeling: “I hated it towards the end.” Throughout its run the TV production team showed scant regard for the music “After about a month of the show we learnt that if you made a mistake in your playing, you stop. Cos if you didn’t and what they’d filmed looked alright they’d use it. We had our reputation to hang onto but they couldn’t give a shit about what we were doing musically.” But admits, "We stuck with it for the money but anybody who thought we were making a lot out of it is crazy.”

The album Redeye recorded came about as something of an accident. As Dennis notes, “most things that happened to that band came about as the result of somebody else’s initiative.” One of the few original songs that Redeye performed, one of Dennis’ titled “Who Said That”, came to the attention of one of EMl’s staff and the band was commissioned to record an album. At the time they had virtually no other material. "We wrote the rest of the tunes during the recording of that album,” Dennis says, “It took about seven months off and on.”

Should Redeye have been allowed to record an album when they had only a couple of original songs to their name? Dennis thinks so. “We were getting a hell of a lot of TV coverage and nothing had come out of it. So we thought we might as well cash in on it since we were unable to move outside of Wellington because of the work we were doing.” The album, as many NZ LPs do, sank without trace about 400 copies were sold. But Dennis remains relatively happy about the album itself: "It was O.K. I dunno . . . it’s a long time since I heard it.” Dennis Mason quit Redeye last year. As he puts it, “Redeye became safe and I just wanted to get out and take a few risks.” Since that time he’s done some work as a carpenter (his fade) and session work on everything from jingles to the new John Rowles album. He takes lead vocals on one track on the forthcoming Mike Harvey album. Currently Dennis is holding down sax duties in The Pocky Horror Show. And thereafter? His ambitions are characteristically modest. “If I can get a good, happy band together playing to a crowd we enjoy and who enjoy us, then you can go for as long as you like.” “My mother tells me that when I was a kid if I’d had a hard time at school, I’d come home, sit beside the radio and play along with a piece of silver paper wrapped round a comb. I just like to play and I want to keep on till I’m 75 ... at least.”