Feeling trapped by the repetition of reeling out his hits again and again, Hanlon knocked it all on the head in 1978. He moved to Sydney and returned to his original career, as a Mad Men-style advertising guru. Practically invisible on the NZ scene for the past three decades, he returned in 2013 with a compilation of hits and the unheard.
When Hanlon won an APRA Silver Scroll for his epic track ‘Wind Songs’ in 1975, Max Cryer got behind him in a massive stoush with television. “Max decided they were shits because they wouldn’t put me on (to sing my own song). Everyone had to sing covers to be on TV in those days, and I wouldn’t go on and murder somebody else’s song.”