Todd Hunter
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Todd Hunter (born June 22, 1951 in Waitara) is a New Zealand musician and composer known for his involvement in the band Dragon.
[edit] Biography
Hunter formed Dragon with Graeme Collins and Ray Goodwin; the group was soon joined by Todd's brother Marc and moved to Australia in 1975. The band toured Australasia, America and Europe and their songs from that time, April Sun In Cuba, Are You Old Enough and Still in Love are still played on radio. The band sold over a million records and broke up on New Year's Eve of 1979.
After the demise of Dragon, Todd became a working record producer. He recorded bands like The Thought Criminals, the legendary X, The Hoodoo Gurus, the infamous NZ punk band Toy Love and many others. He produced two albums for the XL Capris and played guitar in the band in 1981. When Dragon reformed in 1982, Todd and Johanna Pigott (from the XL’s) wrote the song Rain, which went to No. 1 in November 1983.
Around this time Todd became involved with film and TV scoring and found that he was far more suited to the discipline of working in a studio to a deadline than playing in a live band. Nevertheless, Dragon toured Europe with Tina Turner in the mid 80’s promoting the Dreams Of Ordinary Men" album produced by Todd Rundgren. At that time the band consisted of Marc, Todd on bass, legendary guitar player Tommy Emanuel, Alan Mansfield from Robert Palmer's band on keyboards and Doane Perry from Jethro Tull on drums.
On that tour Todd hauled a large road case containing a portable studio through Europe and on it he wrote and recorded the scores for many imaginary movies. It was on that same Box that the Dragon hit single Celebrate was recorded in hotel rooms around the world with David Hershfelder producing. In 1987 while on tour with Tina, John Farnham asked Todd and Johanna to write a song for his next album. They wrote Age Of Reason, which went to No.1 in Australia and was a top 10 hit in Germany and Canada in 1989. Age Of Reason won the APRA song of the year award for 1990. After selling another million records worldwide in the 80s Dragon disbanded again in 1995.
From 1994 to 1999 Todd wrote and recorded all the underscoring for the hit TV Series Heartbreak High. Other series included Headstart and Out There.
In 2006 Todd reinvented Dragon with Mark Williams, Bruce Reid and Pete Drummond. They recorded Sunshine to Rain for Liberation Blue Records.
