WHAT COMES TO MIND … MARC HUNTER HAS FAMILY BUSINESS
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Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence.
Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before, and maybe even unseen by anyone beyond Stuart himself.
This week, Marc Hunter silences the sibilance of siblings. Oh yessss.
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THERE ARE SOME who might say I was an annoying shit in my junior years, though really, I struggle to see the foundation for such libel. Shit? Moi? Jamais!
But there are some who claim to remember incidents like walking through the room when certain people were watching their show, turning off the TV, and walking out of the room. Cackling. Allegedly. Or pointing, from a distance, a knife at the sister I knew had a thing about just that. Cackling. Allegedly.
Some who seem to recall the youngest of my sisters – the first to be born in Australia, given a very local-friendly name (not one of those foreign-sounding ones her two siblings had) and spared the usual Mauritian middle name protocol – being told that on this evidence she clearly was adopted. Told this for years. Though she looked exactly like what I would look like if I somehow were attractive and female. And nicer.
And some who still shake their heads (in wonder? disgust?) when talking about how if they borrowed one of my records to play while I was out, making sure to put it back where they found it – or so they thought! – I would inevitably realise. And let them know.
(Ok, this might be true. I had the records in alphabetical order, obviously, and chronologically within each artist, obviously, and having stared at the shelves for hours – choosing the next, wondering what I was missing, planning another exploration that would add to the collection – I knew the spines from colour or shape of text alone, so any deviation leapt out at me. What? That’s an odd question. No, I did not ever have a girlfriend. Obviously.)
Somehow that annoying shit in the grown up version – ok, maybe not that grown up, but certainly aged – was forgiven in the decades since. About 10 days ago I sat across from the youngest, the adopted one (yes, the joke still comes out on occasion. Come on, that’s still funny! Sheesh, where’s your sense of humour?) while she told us of a tense encounter that day, and I was reminded why that matters.
For reasons we don’t need to go into here she had cause to explain to someone that we came as a package, the three of us. That recent troubles, recent traumas really, had shown each of us the value of solidarity, unity, and the strength we drew from each other. That shitting on me wasn’t going to cut it because they knew me and, well, they knew him all too well, and if it came down to it, you got us all or you got none of us.
I could only admire her strength and thank her. Families have fractured for less after all, and this unity isn’t a given, it doesn’t necessarily come naturally. Hell, I’m watching a few friends living that truth out now, and it’s butt ugly and distressing even at two or three steps removed. But when it does come with sisters and brothers, it changes things. It changes you.
Oddly enough, last week I had a radio gig, planned before Stuart Spence sent this photo, talking about musical siblings where one outshone – briefly or eventually or maybe just mechanically, in sales or another inadequate measure – the other. Among the pairings, including Miley and Noah Cyrus, Tim and Neil Finn, and Kylie and Dannii Minogue, were Marc and Todd Hunter.
I don’t know what the relationship was in the Hunter family off-stage, and can only guess at the one on-stage, with one brother the flamboyant front man, proper star and occasional writer; the other, the relatively stoic one up the back who turned into a major songwriter when paired with the singer/songwriter Joanna Pigott. I do know that as in most of these situations, my younger self only had eyes for Marc, who pulled in attention from men, women and anyone and in-between, most of us probably learning exactly what the word louche meant by looking his picture up in the dictionary.
The eyes might occasionally have gone to keyboardist and brilliant writer Paul Hewson, who looked like the decadent rock figure we thought we’d only read about – and died like that too – or later to one of his replacements, Alan Mansfield, whose playing, for non-musicians at least, always, always, played second fiddle to some magnificent/ridiculous ‘80s hair. And the keytar. But Todd was not ever holding centre stage, not in Dragon or Scribble, not with Sweet & Sour or the Heartbreak High soundtrack, nor did he want to it seemed.
But I do know that Marc, in Dragon before and after, and particularly during his solo career, called on Todd for writing, producing, supporting. Had faith in him. Trust. Not because they were brothers, because that’s no guarantee of anything – ask the Everlys, ask the Gallaghers – not even because he had to as that changes nothing, but because he’d learnt he could.
Luckily, even little shits can learn that.
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