Paul HesterUnless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere on Mars, you’ll know that former Crowded House & Split Enz drummer Paul Hester killed himself on the 26th of March. This is truly tragic news. If you grew up with Crowded House then I don’t need to explain just how important & influential their music was. And if you didn’t, I don’t know if I adequately can.

But I’ll give it a shot.

Their music was beautiful. Heart-aching or joyous, but beautiful. Their songs stretched the whole expanse of human emotion. From the fun of Sister Madly to the melancholy of Nails in my Feet, Neil Finn’s amazing voice combined with Nick Seymour’s bass & Paul’s brilliant rhythm (and later Mark Hart’s keyboard & guitar) created a group that was greater than the sum of it’s parts. This is not to say that individually they were not great musicians, but while I love Neil’s individual offerings (and those with his brother) nothing he’s produced since comes close to the musical poetry that was Crowded House.

Paul Hester was a brilliant musician. No one who’s heard him perform, or heard the music he wrote, could maintain the usual jokes about drummers & musical ability. He often dragged a drum up to front of stage with Neil & Nick to carry on there. Yes he had rhythm, but saying that a drummer has rhythm is like saying a painter understands colour. You don’t get to be a drummer without rhythm. But Paul had a musical ability that carried him beyond the standard ‘keep the beat and stay back there’ drummer. He had a rhythm that was almost melodic (if it’s not sacrilegious to call it so).

As an angst-ridden, melodramatic teenager (is there any other kind?) their music expressed my mixed up emotions. I can only explain by comparison. Together Alone, by far their greatest offering, I place next to U2’s Achtung Baby & Zooropa and R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People. Their music was definitive of an era for me. But more than that, they were also part of developing my love of quality music, rather than just following the charts. Together Alone was their best album, but it was by no means their most popular.

One more thing. A public suicide like this, of a well-known person, always brings out a whole bunch of pundits & commentators who want to answer the question Why?. This is a natural response to any suicide, but it is not our place to start digging into Paul’s private life to try and find out what drove him to this, and as is often the case, to try and apportion blame. That is not helpful to his grieving family & it serves no useful purpose (note: Selling magazines is not a useful purpose). I do not subscribe to this common belief that people gain the advantages of fame and fortune at the expense of their privacy & dignity. While those who actively seek publicity to advance their career have no one to blame but themselves, *cough*Paris Hilton*cough*, Paul Hester was a very private man, rarely giving interviews & public appearances. In what is now his family’s hardest hour, we should at least have the decency to not dig too deeply into this.

Pete the Swede has posted an image of what will probably be the most poignant tribute to Paul Hester, and I’ll end this with the cover of Crowded House’s debut, self-titled album, who’s imagery has become disturbingly prophetic.

Crowded House