It was late 1974 when Taylor was looking for work after the break-up of Wellington-based Mammal, a group with which he had played a growing number of high-profile gigs, including soon after Black Sabbath at the Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival in 1973.
Taylor told Moffat he was at the time trying to join Blerta, aka the Bruno Lawrence Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition, both Mammal and Blerta being known for their hippy-toned buses as they toured the country.
Robert Taylor was guitarist for rock bands Mammal (pictured) and Dragon. Photo / Keith Stewart
“Todd Hunter called from Christchurch inviting him to join Dragon,” Moffat said. “He immediately flew down and joined.”
Taylor was Dragon’s lead guitarist from 1974 to 1979, soon featuring as writer of the single-release Education (1975), and then in the hits April Sun in Cuba and Are You Old Enough.
He was a member again from 1982-85, a period that included the band’s hit Rain.
Among Hunter’s gigs with what became known as an Australasian band, despite its New Zealand origins with Todd Hunter and brother Marc, was one at The Hotel Cabana, before the group’s first break-up in 1979.
The classic line-up of the rock band Dragon, with Robert Taylor pictured second from left.
Pik Atkinson, a former singer and guitarist with long-time Waipukurau-based Hawke’s Bay pub, cabaret and functions band Sire Duke, said he was about three years behind Taylor at Central Hawke’s Bay College – and Taylor was ”a very talented guitarist then”.
“He did come home from Oz to visit his parents while he was with Dragon, and jammed with us when we were Theme [the forerunner of Sir Duke] at the Leopard Hotel in Waipukurau,” Atkinson said.
Audio Culture shared the news of Taylor’s death on Facebook on Tuesday, writing, “[We are] sad to learn of the death of one of New Zealand’s best-known lead guitarists”.
“On the recording of the band’s big hit April Sun in Cuba – written by keyboardist Paul Hewson on a broken guitar – it is Taylor who plays the chunky two chords on which the song is based.
“In 1977, just as the band began to have its string of big radio hits, Taylor penned a short account of his life thus far: ‘Born in Waipukurau, New Zealand … son of an ice cream manufacturer and housewife … rugby and blues licks with the Māoris … confirmed in the Anglican church… won a scholarship to Wellington Uni … majored in English … English lecturer dealt dope, ran a rock band: goodbye studies … joined acid-symphonic rock’n’roll band Mammal’."
