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With a master mariner as a father and a mother who loved music, it is no surprise that John Hayday’s two passions in life have been boats and music. The Matakana-based music teacher has criss-crossed the world’s oceans many times and lived the life of a strolling minstrel, but it hasn’t all be plain sailing as Jannette Thompson discovered ….
For the greatest part of my life, I’ve been a music teacher but in some respects that happened by accident. I’d been studying classical guitar with Daphne Dobson, in Auckland, for about three or four years when the Yamaha Music Foundation asked if she had a student who might be interested in teaching. I enjoyed the experience a lot and went on to teach at schools such as Kings College, Dilworth and St Kentigern. It was as if I’d found my niche in life. It was also how I met my wife Sue, who was also teaching with Yamaha. She’s the real musician in the family; she’s a helluva muso. I credit Mum with my love of music. Even though she didn’t play an instrument, listening to records and the radio were part of our childhood.
I was born in Nottinghamshire, in the Midlands, the second youngest of five. My father was a master mariner in the Merchant Navy who’d worked on convoys to Russia during World War II and had been torpedoed twice. He got tuberculosis during that period and retired in 1947, when I was four. When I was old enough, they sent me to a school for the sons of retired or disabled officers. I boarded with a family, but when they moved, they put me in the Seaman’s Mission. Well, that was a huge mistake! It was full of young men, who were loaded with money and stories of their adventures. I became like their mascot. It led to a very interesting education, but perhaps not the sort that my parents were hoping for. At the ripe old age of 14, I signed up with a fishing fleet out of Lowestoft, lying about my age, of course. As far as my parents were concerned, I was staying with a school friend for the holidays! I got on well with the crew and enjoyed the weeks at sea, but then on returning from a trip I found my father standing on the wharf. He was absolutely ropable! He wasn’t a man to be brooked when he was angry and he told the skipper in no uncertain terms the trouble he would be in if the authorities found out that he had an underage crew member on board. The upshot was that the skipper offered me an apprenticeship as a deckie and for the next three-and-a-half years I worked on the cod trawlers, often fishing around Bear Island in the Arctic Circle. The North Sea and Arctic Ocean are fearsome places in winter and if you had a tough skipper, you could find yourself fishing in Force 8 gales. The winter of 1959 was particularly rough and a couple of trawlers turned over due to the weight of the ice on their decks. It was about then that Mum convinced me it might be time to look for a different job so I joined the merchant navy.
I started work with the NZ Shipping Company, bringing cargo out to Australia and New Zealand and taking wool and refrigerated goods back to England. I’d started playing the guitar and on a trip to Sydney, a girl took me to a folk concert. Among the performers was Gary Shearston who performed in that great Aussie story-telling tradition. I thought to myself, ‘I could do that’. Then one evening, on board ship, we were in Auckland watching the current affairs show Town & Around, when they featured a local singer and one of the guys said, “You can sing better than him.” I rang the show the next day and told them I was a touring English folk singer, and that’s how I got my first TV appearance. A few offers came in after that and that’s where my career as a musician really started.
When I returned to England I met John Sleep and together we founded the Cornwall Folk Cottage, at Newquay, which became quite famous launching the likes of Burt Jansch and Ralph McTell, who wrote the song The Streets of London. Although this was the era of the Beatles and Elvis Presley, folk music – with people like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger – was really big, almost as a counter movement to the froth and bubble of the pop world. We ran the Folk Cottage for two years, but then I decided I wanted to head back to NZ. I never enjoyed the English class system, where people fixed you by your accent. By contrast, NZ felt like a land of opportunity where you could do anything you put your mind to. I arranged to work as a groom with a couple of horses that were being shipped out, got a free passage and landed with £8 in my pocket and a guitar.
It was a fairly hand-to-mouth existence in the first few years. I travelled all over the country performing at folk clubs and universities, just doing what I enjoyed. I didn’t have a car or huge needs. Eventually though the realisation that I was becoming a clichéd guitar player began to dawn. It prompted me to take up the classical guitar, which is more demanding in terms of patterns of practise and technique. While I was studying, I worked as the deputy registrar at the Magistrates Court in Auckland, where I managed people’s fines. It was certainly an interesting experience and a window into the way people live their lives. It was surprising to see how many people were living on the breadline and they weren’t always the people you would necessarily pick as being poor.
I’ve met many people during my years of playing music. I toured with Pentangle and Tom Paxton, and opened for Mary Hopkins on her NZ tour. Between us, Sue and I have taught hundreds of students in the Mahurangi area including Vaughan Morgan, Heather Rees and Stephon Battour who have gone on to become teachers themselves. Vaughan and I co-wrote the score for a TV documentary and after a break of about 10 years, we’ve recently started performing together again including appearing at the Whangateau Folk Club. My son James, who is a sound engineer and sound designer based in London, produced our first CD. Daughter Anitra is a dancer and dance teacher in Auckland so both the kids have followed a musical bent.
One of the things that I think has changed over the years is the amount of discipline expected of music students. Unfortunately, we live in an era where everything is ‘awesome’ and ‘wonderful’, even if it isn’t. I believe students still need to learn scales and theory so they understand the foundations of music. In most cases, this isn’t happening anymore and it’s limiting students’ ability to keep learning. This is particularly sad when it involves a gifted student. In terms of learning music, I believe the years between 12 and 17 years are critical. And I’m a great believer in setting goals so that both the student and their parents can measure the progress.
I’ve built a few boats over the years – the largest was a 50-foot steel-hulled motor sailer Cara, which was launched at Omaha. I’ve done plenty of sailing including a few off-shore trips to Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific, but that came to an end when I broke my back. Sue and I were both teaching music when she got pregnant and I thought it would be hard to support a family on one teaching wage so I took a job as a rigger at the Glenbrooke Steelworks. I was removing burners from a huge kiln when the scaffolding gave way and I fell about 10-metres onto a pile of rubbish. In the blink of an eye, my life changed and even after two operations, it still gives me trouble. My real resentment is that it meant I was never able to pick up my kids and toss them around like I would’ve liked to. But on the other hand, I think I was pretty lucky it didn’t kill me. It was hard on Sue though. After the accident, we started looking around for a place that we could afford and Matakana’s rural aspect was appealing. That was 20-odd years ago and it was the best move we ever made.
If you asked me if I still have a goal, I’d say, “Yeah, I’d like to see my first grandkid”. But that’s not something I can’t do much about except mention it, of course, in this interview which my kids will read! I like kids, and grandkids look like good fun.
