Dragon

Biography     Discography

The story of Dragon is one and the same as that of the group Burning Light founded in 1976 by singer/guitar-player Jean Vanaise – who also chose the group’s name – and his brother the drummer/flutist/percussionist Georges Vanaise along with some musician friends. The group which hails from the Belgian town of Ath, halfway between Lille an Brussels, started out by performing in the area which was very rich musically speaking. However, they only performed at parties playing their own personal versions of current hits along with one or two original compositions.
During this time spent perfecting its technique, the group included two singers. The first, Michel Lefevre had a superb voice but left the group to concentrate on his education, and the second, a native of Zaire whose voice was likened to Hendrix’s, left the group to become an attaché to President Mobutu’s son. The band’s first keyboard player was Jean-Pierre Pirard who left for health reasons.

The singer/guitar-player Bernard Callaert joined the band shortly afterwards and so completed the formation. Most of the compositions were originally created by Jean Vanaise and then worked on by the group as a whole, each member putting forward his own ideas and arrangements and making suggestions for his own instrumental part.

They had a predilection for the music played by bands such as Pink Floyd ,Golden Earring, or Iron Butterfly, but were determined to create their own personal sound giving preference to the instrumental parts, not just as a matter of choice but because they were aware of being better instrumentalists than singers. Such a choice only confirmed their preference for a conventional formation of bass, drums, keyboards and guitar. However, since several of the musicians played more than one instrument, they were able to fully exploit their talents and the varying instrumental possibilities available, thus giving their music a wide and particularly enriching variety of sounds and harmonies.

These accessories and special effects emphasised the visual and theatrical side to their show.

An advertisement seen in the British New Musical Express magazine led them to choose the Acorn studios, a new 16 tracks recording studio which later also welcomed the Belgian group Womega.

The albums superb double sleeve was designed by Jean-Pierre Pirard, while the songs featured were chosen because they were the most representative and polished in the group’s repertoire.

Moreover, all the musicians got married in the year following the release of their album and found it impossible to reconcile married life with their musical and professional careers since none of them were professional musicians.
(note: this second album did saw the light of day in the eighties as Jean Vanaise released it as a limited edition lp named Kalahen on 400 copies ; in 1992 it was also re-released on cd by the Italian Mellow records – ed.)

Reprinted from the liner notes of the Dragon cd booklet by kind permission of Musea records and Bernard Gueffier. In 1980, out of the blue a single hit the shops from a band called CITY TALES. This group played music in the vein of Dragon with Jean Vanaise handling the guitars. But besides this private release the band seemed to be vanished quite quick… -ED

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