Hello Sailor mourn death of NZ Music Hall of Fame member and producer Stuart Pearce

Veteran Kiwi musician Stuart Pearce has died after a long illness.

Pearce was well connected across many genres of the New Zealand music community, including as keyboardist in pioneering pop/rock band Hello Sailor.

On the group’s Facebook page, a representative said they were “so very very sad to hear we’ve lost dear Stuart Pearce. He was such a huge part of the band from the Legionnaires and Sailor in the 1980s”.

“He was a constant in our live band and inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame with us in 2011. He played on and produced The Album in 1994 and our last studio release Surrey Crescent Moon in 2012.”

Stuart also worked extensively as a music arranger and producer at recording studios Mandrill, York Street and Greenstone Music Karekare, contributing to several NZ hits.

Profiling him in 2020, Audio Culture credited Pearce as having arranged and/or played on “a number of New Zealand’s most iconic songs – E Ipo, Sierra Leone, Poi E and I’ll Say Goodbye (Even Though I’m Blue) among them".

From a family of pianists, Pearce moved from Wellsford to Auckland City to join a band as a youth and joined his first group, Chapeaux, after seeing an ad in the Herald, seeking a piano player for a nightclub residency.

Though not in Hello Sailor when they released their self-titled 1977 debut album that produced top 20 singles Lyin’ In The Sand, Blue Lady and Gutter Black, Pearce was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2011 with Hello Sailor.

Bandmate Graham Brazier passed away in 2015, and Dave McArtney died during an operation in 2013.

Pearce went on to collaborate with a vast number of Kiwi artists including Shihad, The Topp Twins, Prince Tui Teka, Moana and The Moahunters and Home Brew.

In 2020, Pearce estimated he’d played more than 9000 gigs across his career, most of those in covers bands.

“As a musician there is a certain stigma around being in a covers band, but I will say this: when music is being played by people, not one person onstage is thinking about who wrote it,” he told Audio Culture.

“Most of my recording work has been original Kiwi songs; most of my live work has been covers. A recording pop band may play 25 times a year, a nightclub band may play 250 times. I did both simultaneously.”