Gidday I'm Bruce Lynch. I started in the music business in the 1960s and learned to fly a bit after that. As of today, I'm still busy doing both, just not at the same time.
Starting out in the thriving Taranaki dance band scene, I produced and played with many of the biggest Kiwi pop artists of the era, including Larry Morris, Suzanne Lynch and Craig Scott. A move to London in 1973 saw me playing and touring with legends like Gary Brooker (Procol Harum), Kate Bush, Murray Head, Rick Wakeman, Mary Hopkin, Spike Milligan (it's true, folks!) and Cat Stevens.
For the last 60 years I've made a living out of music and spent a lot of it on flying. This website is about both.
After going straight from school to playing in Taranaki dance bands (I'm still in uniform in my first band's publicity shots) I moved to the big smoke of Auckland, then the bigger smoke of London, working as a producer, session musician and touring musician with some of the biggest acts of the time.
In 1980, I headed home to help set up a new facility called Mandrill Studios. This quickly became the place to record, and we produced (and I played on) albums for Peking Man, Dave Dobbyn, Shona Laing, Hammond Gamble and even David Hasselhoff. Music and audio post for TV and radio commercials also kept us busy, along with trips back to the UK for session work.
In 1988 I converted an Auckland boatshed into another studio, producing TV commercials, film and TV soundtracks and more albums, including Anika Moa, Mel Parsons and Dame Kiri te Kanawa's album Māori Songs. Another major project during this time was composing and recording the score for 140 episodes of Disney’s major TV series, Power Rangers.
My latest migration has been up the road to the beautiful Warkworth/Matakana countryside where together with my son, musician Andy Lynch, we run two studios on six acres of rural paradise. We're also handy to Kaipara Flats airfield, a picturesque paddock perfectly placed for perusing and periodically flying vintage aeroplanes.
Recently I've produced albums for local artists, audio for World of Wearable Arts segments, and made two trips to France for to work on albums with Cat Stevens, including a remake of Tea for the Tillerman for its 50th anniversary.
