Set The Stage Dragon Returns To Airlie Beach Festival Of Music

BY BRONTE HODGE

Ever a fan of touring and getting back to their roots, Australian-New Zealand rock legends Dragon will be gracing the Airlie Beach Festival of Music stage this November.

In fact, Dragon was a headliner for the first Airlie Beach Festival of Music, back in 2013, and now 10 years on, they are honoured to be invited once again.

The boys, Todd on vocals and bass, Mark with vocals and guitar, Bruce on guitar, and Pete who is awesome on drums, have an antipodean rhythm that thrums through them, creating hit Aussie classics that everybody has to get up and dance to.

The band embodies rock and roll and rocks out in a ‘gentlemanly-like fashion’, according to Mark, who was propositioned by Todd 17 years ago to join the band.

“Of course, I said yes,” said Mark. “I was just wondering, who calls at 10 o’clock in the morning with something so unexpected?

“And it was quite amazing.”

Dragon has transformed into a household family name, particularly in 1987 when the band toured across Europe with powerhouse Tina Turner, under the name ‘Hunter’.

“I think that is by far a high point for the band,” said Mark.

Since then, Dragon has returned to Australia and made a local name for themselves across Australia and New Zealand.

“We went to one of those big festivals in New Zealand, Rhythm and Vines.

“And, you know, there was nobody there, nobody in the audience.

“We had only just arrived and there was somebody on stage just announcing.

“And we’re going ‘oh my god, this is going to be awful. We’re going to walk out on stage and play to nobody’ and literally within the 10 minutes before we walked on stage, thousands of people came over the hills and everywhere, and everyone came down to the stage.

“It was a phenomenal sight!”

Making their way to Airlie Beach Festival of Music is high on the band’s agenda.

“We have been wondering when we’d have the chance to come to the festival again. Every year it goes by, and every year we go ‘there it is, and there we ar-