One Tree Hill

One Tree Hill

We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the day begs the night for mercy
Your sun so bright it leaves no shadows, only scars
Carved into stone on the face of earth
The moon is up and over One Tree Hill
We see the sun go down in your eyes
You ran like a river to the sea
Like a river to the sea
And in our world a heart of darkness, a fire zone
Where poets speak their hearts, then bleed for it
Jara sang, his song a weapon, in the hands of love
You know his blood still cries from the ground
It runs like a river to the sea
Like a river to the sea
I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts
While bullets rape the night of the merciful
I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill
We run like a river to the sea
Like a river to the sea
(Greg Carroll's Funeral, Wanganui, New Zealand, 10th July 1986)

Greg Carroll R.I.P.

One Tree Hill - Maungakiekie

Key facts:
Maori name: Maungakiekie, 'hill of the kiekie vine'
Location: Auckland City, map reference NZMS 260: R11/692764
Height: 182 m
Age: Formed 20,000-30,000 years ago
Volume scoria: 7 million cubic metres (equivalent to 1400 Olympic sized swimming pools)
Volume lava: 260 million cubic metres (equivalent to 52000 Olympic sized swimming pools)

These are all stories & scans from the Wanganui Chronicle

The Wanganui-born stage man- ager of the cult Irish rock band U2 will be buried in his home town on Thursday. Greg Carroll, 26, was killed in a car accident in Dublin last' Thursday. He is to be buried at Aramoho Cemetery on Thursday after-a funeral service at Kai Iwi Marae, near Wanganui. His body arrived in Auckland from Ireland yesterday and was later flown to Wanganui, where it was met by family and friends. Mr Carroll joined U2 in 1984 during its tour of New Zealand. At that time the band was enjoying huge success from the live album, "Under a Blood Red Sky." This was more recently followed up by another big seller, "The Unforgettable Fire." Two Irishmen on yesterday's flight were rumoured to have been linked with the band, but they were reluctant to speak to the media yesterday. The men declined to give their names, although one told the Chronicle Mr Carroll had been a "good friend" of theirs. Mr Carroll had already earned a reputation in New Zealand as a top-class sound engineer before he joined U2. His career began in Wanganui with a local band, Straight Flash. He and others in the band-moved to Auckland about six years ago after deciding to turn professional. They subsequently formed the new wave band New Entrants, which evolved in 1981 into Blonde Comedy. They enjoyed notable success and cut several records under the Mushroom label. Mr Carroll was adopted at an early age by a Wanganui couple, Eiieen and Tom Carroll. Also accompanying his body home yes- terday was Greg's natural father, Tahu Asher.

They came halfway around the world to mourn a friend.

They came halfway around the world to mourn a friend. By Bryce Johns They came halfway around the world to mourn a friend. Members of the acclaimed Irish rock band U2 shared grief with the family of their Wanganui-born stage man- ager Greg Carroll at the Aramoho Cemetery yesterday, Mr Carroll, 26, was killed in a car accident in Dublin last Thurs- day and was interred at the Aramoho Cemetery yesterday. Several members of the cult band, including lead singer Bono Vox and drummer Larry Mullen, attended the funeral service at the Kai Iwi Marae which preceded the burial. About 200 people attended the Aramoho service and in a short eulogy Mr Vox paid tribute to a top-class sound engineer and friend. "He believed in New Zealand. He believed in his Maori back- ground. And he believed in New Zealand music." Mr Vox said. "We all believed in him." Mr Vox and others from the U2 party, including Mr Vox's wife Allison Hewson and Mr Carroll's girlfreind Kathy McGuinness, arrived in Wanganui on Wednesday under a cloack of secrecy. "We have found it very difficult to keep it low key," Dalvanius Prime, press liaison officer for the group, said. "The visit is a private one and contact with the media has been played down." With the U2 party were two plain clothes detectives, a representa- tive from the Prime Minister's Office who handled the band members' arrangements, and eight Maori wardens who ringed the band members at the funeral. Mr Carroll joined U2 in I984 during its tour of New Zealand. At that time the band was enjoying huge success from the live album "Under A Blood Red Sky." This was more recently followed up bv annother big seller."The Unforgetable Fire." Mr Carroll had allready earned a reputation in New Zealand as a top-class sound engineer before he joined U2. His career began in Wanganui with a local band, Straight Flash. The Chronicle was invited to yesterday's funeral by Mr Carroll's Wanganui Parents.

Greg Carroll...if there was ever a hiccup, he had it sussed in minutes
The Best Roadie in the World

"Greg had made himself the best roadie in New Zealand - and the beat roadie in New Zealand is the best roadie in the world." It's the day after Greg Carroll's funeral and the speaker, Gavin Burton, is one of several Auck- land musicians reminisc- ing about their former friend and colleague over a few beers in the Coach Room of Wan- ganui's Rutland Hotel. It's a sweeping state- ment -- but there's no argument from the others and, lost in con- templation for a mom- ent, they say nothing. There's no one else in the bar on this bleak Friday afternoon and the moody silence is broken only by the hum of the refrigerator in the servery. "That's because things are so much harder here," says Gavin eventually. "It's all so much easier overseas be- cause the scale is so much bigger." And Greg Carroll's achievements, both in New zealand and over- seas, are almost legen- dary in Auckland musi- cal circles. Struggling Six years ago he started out as the sound man for a struggling Wanganui rock group. When he died in Dublin on July 3 this year - the victim of a motor acci- dent - he was stage manager for acclaimed international rock band U2. He was only 26 years old. His body, air-freighted home from Ireland, lay in state on the Kai Iwi Marae for two days. U2 lead singer Bono Vox and drummer Larry Mul- len joined the hundreds of mourners for the tangi there and the funeral on Thursday last week at the Aramoho cemetery. It was a fitting tribute to one who had achieved so much in so short a time. The guys from Auck- land still seem a little stunned by the whole thing, but they're gradu- ally winding down and want to talk. Gavin Buxton (whose Ponsonby DCs album was recently released in the United States), Tony Johns (whose National Anthem album has just been-released in New Zealand, and Dave Mauger (ex Marginal Era, The Frocks and other bands) flew down together for the funeral. They were joined here by Tony's brother An- drew, who now lives locally. Intergral All four were once associated with a band called Blond Comedy, and Greg Carroll was an intergral part of their lives. And like Greg, all four started out in Wanganui. Back in 1980, Tony Andrew, and Dave had a new wave band called Straight Flash, which played in this very bar of the Rutland Hotel. "I remember the first time Greg phoned me up," says Tony. "We were after somebody to do our lighting and we put an ad in the Wan- ganui paper: 'male or female light person wanted'. It was basically only to meet birds, right? And some really nice ones turned up ... "Anyway, Greg phoned me up and said 'My name's Greg Carroll, are you after a sound engineer?' and I said 'Well, no because we haven't got any sound equipment'. He said, Yeah, well... so?" Auditioned "We met him and for the first two hours we just laughed. He could make you laugh, even if you didn't know him." Greg joined the band, which was relatively short-lived. When it broke up, Andrew (the drummer) and Tony (guitarist and singer), auditioned for a-touring band called Lix and got the jobs. They stipulated that Greg had to come too. "The idea was to buy enough sound gear to employ Greg," says To- ny. "We did employ him, anyway. We gave him sixty bucks a week." Lix toured the country for about eight months, but it wasn't a happy band. Andrew, Creg and Tony spIit with the other members and headed for Auckland with a consid- erable amount of equip ment they had got to- gether. Dave Mauger, their old Straight Flash bass-play- er was already there, at university. He dropped out and joined. the new band, New Entrants, along with another former Wanganuui musi- cian, guitarist Craig Smith-Pilling. Times were hard for fledgling bands in Anck- land and New Entrants found themselves living in a shabby flat in a crummy neighbourhood. Squalor "It was in Beacons- field St, but we used to call it Dero Drive," says Dave. "We even immor- talised it in a song. We lived there in absolute squalor." Squalor and abject poverty. The band members shared the flat with ab- out eight human han- gers-on and a noisy noc- turnal colony of rats. They lived on rice and cabbage ("it was all we could afford," explains Tony) and fought over the cigarette butts left behind by visitors. For months on end they slept during the day and practised at night in a Parnell rehearsal room. Greg, rapidly becom- ing an adept sound tech- nician, was a full member of the band, says Tony. "He was the fifth member and whatever· we earned - which was nothing - he had a share of it." When the band started gigging, Greg really come into his own. "We never had to wor- ry about sound," says Tony. "I mean, if there was ever a hiccup when we urere playing, you'd guarantee that he'd have it sussed in minutes. He had a knack ..." Praise "It wasn't often that you got praise from him," says Andrew. "It was never a good idea," says Dave, "to ask Greg what he thought of anything. Otherwise you'd get a full-length bloody documentary of all the short-comings. For Greg to Say that a gig was Okay - that would mean that it was actually pretty outstanding." In retaliation, the band members used to critr- cise the sound mix and quality - but in fact there was-seldom any- thing wrong with it. "We never actually sat down and discussed the sound, ever," says Tony. "We didn't need to. We knew it was pretty good." New Entrants' first re- cording"The Kids are Crying", appeared on a compilation album, then - after a change of name to Blond Comedy - they put out a 12" EP including that track and three others. It was about that time, too, that Blond Comedy signed to the up-and- coming Mushroom NZ Label, managed by former Split Enz and Citizen Band bassist Mike Chunn. "Greg used to help arrange the songs", says Tony, "and he always used to help the studio engineer out. But it wasn't until 'Rebecca' that he produced a Single. The sessions were at Auckland's Mandrill Studios. Trademark "We went in there twice. We worked with Graham Myhre and Glyn Tucker, and that's when we got to know Mike Chunn quite well," says Tony. "The song just wasn't right and, really, Greg should have produced it from the word go. "We went back in there for the third time and Greg just slapped echo - that was his trademark - on every- thing, gave it that ambi- ence, that big sound. "He was in there an hour and made the song just stand out so much. "Greg liked engineer- ing and he had a flair for it. I think his only handi- cap was that he wasn't a musician. If he'd had that musical background, I think he would have made an excellent pro- ducer." Greg's abilities as a sound man and efficien- cy'as a roadie became almost legendary. "We did some good gigs and we played some terrible ones," says To- ny. "But never did we get a bad review for the sound. "We used to get re- views like 'the band was good but the sound was better', you know!" Articulate Intelligent, quick and articulate, Greg was an entertaining companion on tour says Gavin, who did a stint as Blond comedy lighting man. "He was really into the on-the-road lifestyle. He loved .it." But he had his eccen- tricities. "Oneday," says Tony, "I went into the bath- room in Beaconsfield St and there's Greg sitting in the bath with his clothes on. "He's having a bath and washing his clothes at the same time." "Like Steptoe and Son," adds Dave, "but real." "But he was always immaculately dressed," says Andrew. "He could change his clothes two or three times a day, easy, just to fit in with where he was going." "He used to leave us dead for image," says Tony. "We'd walk down the street and there's Greg with his sunglass- es, no-sleeved shirt and his mohican haircut and his bag. It was like we were the hangers-on." "One thing Greg loved was beautiful women," says Andrew. "And he used to pick them up no trouble." "He never seemed to have any lasting relat- ionships, though," says Dave. Food Another of Greg's great loves was food. "Even when we knew Greg, he was into the delicatessen scene," says Andrew, "Fine foods and that. "The U2 guys were telling us that when he was over there, they always knew where he'd been because he left all these weird foods and bloody lobsters and things in the fridge. "They live in a castle over there and they've got about eight houses in Dublin, where all the crews and that live ... and they always knew when Greg had been around because of this delicatessen stuff. "He really savoured his food." "Yeah," says Tony. "He would have been the slowest eater I've ever sat around a table with. He used to take a mouth- ful of food and it was like he was eating for the first time. Every meal was like that." Greg's bizarre sense of humour and quick wit always made him the centre of attention at parties, something for which Blond Comedy had a boundless cap- acity. "And if there was ever anything outrageous to be done," says Dave, "Greg was always in the forefront." Irked Auckland band Vivid Militia had reason to remember this facet of; his character. He thought they wer- en't up to scratch when they supported Blond Comedy in Hamilton and was further irked by their unwillingness to party after the gig. Late that night, while they slept, he flooded their motel room with a fire hose. Blond Comedy, mean- while, had gone into de- cline. First Craig then Andrew had left, to be replaced by AuckLand musicians. The surviving founder members wondered if success had eluded them for good. "All of us in the band sat down," says Tony, "and said 'look, we're not getting anywhere. Let's call it a day'. And every- body agreed, but we de- cided to do one more tour just to get rid of a few bills. We had about five or six grand's worth. "But Greg said'I'm not going to work any more unless I get $100 a night'." The tour went ahead with another sound man and the bills were paid. Roadie Greg went to work for Oceania Sound Company as a roadie and worked on several major tours by overseas acts. It was in 1984, while working on the U2 tour, that he first came to the notice of the Irish band. "I hear they were real- ly impressed with the way he handled the croud," says Tony. "A lot of roadies can be really rough, like picking people out of the front and chucking them at the back. "Actually, Tuck - who came down for the funer- al - used to be our roadie and he used to beat people up for danc- ing ... "Anyway, U2 were re- ally impressed with Greg and asked him to go to Australia with them and they were just over whelmed by the way he did things, so they asked him to do the rest of the tour." Payroll At the time, U2 repu- tedly had 100 people on their payroll but Greg rose through the ranks very quickly. "He worked his way up through the whole lot and ended up as their friend, financial dealer ... he used to buy properties for them." "That's his efficiency coming out again," ob- serves Dave. "Whatever he did, he did very effi- ciently." Greg's last contact with his old colleagues was three months ago "He phoned me up from Dublin," says Tony "and he said if we'd gone over to England when we were all together, he reckoned we'd have cleaned up. "The London scene and everything worl- dwide is no different from New Zealand, and I think he realised that. "It's like the members of U2. They're no diffe- rent from anybody else but when you're here and they're there, you tend to look up and think 'That's it, that is what we're aiming for.' No different "But Greg had got there, he'd associated with them and found that they were no different and they lived no diffe- rent. "I really appreciated that call. I think it was just his way of saying that perhaps he shouldn't have been so ambitious." "Just imagine," says Andrew, "what Greg's status would have been in another 10 years." "Within two years of not knowing any of the guys in U2, they come to your funeral," says To- ny. "That was the calibre of the guy. He had so much steam and energy." "You know," says Dave, "how they were talking about mana and stuff at the tangi? Greg really had it, eh. He had something that people can respect, that could bring people from all over the country and all over the world ..." "I think he had more charisma than Bono, from what I've seen of Bono," says Gavin. "What a waste," says Andrew. "For a guy to achieve that and die at that age. So young But then, on the other hand, he achieved more in that brief lifespan than other people would in much longer." "And," says Tony, "he did go in style. Definately."