Remembering Arthur Baysting

We didn’t cross paths until the 80’s but I knew of him from the fact that he wrote Sleeping Dogs and he was that ‘Neville on the level’ guy on the TV that had said fuck.

There’s a saying in my family which goes - ‘they broke the mould after they made that one’ – that’s you Arthur - fantastic to have about the place, you’re a version of nothing else before or after, a one off.

I once went on stage with Neville Purvis, it was like a Purvis comeback moment in the 90’s - I said to Arthur I’m not that great on the guitar, he said something like ‘that’s ok you’ll look brilliant because I’m so crap they won’t notice’. He was still writing the song on a scrap of paper as we were being announced and then he said I’ll pretend to be blind and just out of prison you lead me up to the mic! …. and then before I had time to protest we were on.

We’d spent nearly a year together (on and off) writing a tv series, local tv didn’t want it so I took it to Canada while I was on another gig – the Canadians sort of ‘took it’ without letting us know so I had to make an awkward phone call to tell Arthur our work had been effectively plagiarised. See, he said, ‘I told you it was good enough to steal!’ – Always the optimist and seeing the good in any situation.

It’s not often that you can say someone changed your life but after Arthur and me wrote that first song I felt like I’d been let free… it gave me hope where hope hadn’t even had a look in, the idea that writing and being a writer wasn’t a mystery anymore, Arthur did that in one afternoon and did it around the community running song writing sessions in primary school.

Play some random chords on the guitar he’d say enthusiastically. And I would. Then he’d even more enthusiastically demand that I play that bit again and then again and he’d scribe away throwing bits of paper here and there (I found the file the other day when I was clearing out the barn) – his name at the top of the page and the date… ‘in case it became a hit,’ he had said, ‘then we know who was in the room when it got writ’. Brilliant eh?

In Arthur’s world anything was possible and there was never any time to waste. He became Helen Clark’s electorate secretary, he wrote more songs, more books, more kids books; he became president of the writer’s guild and then later (for 18 years) was the employed champion of all musicians at APRA. One of his biggest achievements could’ve been the idea that the recorder could be replaced by the ukulele in schools… ‘You can sing better without that thing in your mouth’, he once quietly laconically muttered in that understated way.

There aren’t many people you can truly say changed your life but I’d be in a very long queue of people who would admit to that… what an inspiration you are Arthur Norman Baysting:

Farewell brother, journey safe.

Tears, you’re back again.

Waka Attewell