A tuneful life

The Detail's Davina Zimmer discovers she's sitting across from a quiet music legend.Trevor Reekie is the force that's driven some of New Zealand's greatest music. The Detail sits down to hear about his life in the industry.What do the Warratahs, Tex Pistol, Shona Laing, Holidaymakers and The Parker Project all have in common?Trevor Reekie.He's been the driving force of Pagan, a record label created with the intention of being an outlet for the soundtracks of Mirage Films. Reekie bought the label for just $1,000 in 1988, and went on to represent some of the country's best known artists. On today's episode of The Detail, we sit down with Reekie to discuss his impressive music career as a musician, radio producer, record producer, music writer and label owner. When asked what originally drew him to music, Reekie recalls being excited by it from a young age, when English chart-toppers like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were the talk of the school yard. "There were also other avenues of music that were coming through in the late sixties as well, which really piqued my interest," he says. "Owning some of those different albums was a sort of passport to meeting other music fans at school. And suddenly that's where I realised, music travels, and it's also more than just music." Reekie started a band, called Prometheus, during his days at university in Dunedin.Musical distractions stretched a three-year history degree into five years and in the end took him on a trip across Europe, touring southern France with a theatre group."We had the ability to travel out into the little villages, which I would have never have got to otherwise. Small little villages - still got the cobblestones, off the beaten track. It's just a beautiful part of the world." he says.When Reekie returned to Aotearoa, he was offered a role at Pagan, and eventually ended up buying the label. Pagan's first release was Shona Laing's America, and then came (Glad I'm) Not a Kennedy, part of her 1987 album South, which Reekie says was massive. "It was just a great album, and it still is, it stands up today." he says.Another hit act was The Warratahs."I just thought 'we've got to do something with this because they are just phenomenal'," he says. "They must've played every town hall down the end of a dirt road all around the country, that's how meticulously they worked and they built up an incredible following," Reekie says the landscape has changed for musicians, but he doesn't think that should - or will - deter the next musicians…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details