Paul Newell Hester (8 January 1959 26 March 2005) was an Australian musician and television personality; he was the drummer for the related bands, Split Enz and Crowded House.Hester was the older of two children (his younger sister is Carolyn Hester), from Melbourne, Australia. At an early age, he was encouraged by his mother, Anne, to learn to play drums, as she was a jazz drummer. Hester attempted various jobs before starting a musical career. He spent most of his teen years living in the Dandenong Ranges with the family home on the edge of Sherbrooke Forest on the Sherbrooke/Kallista boundary. Some of his early bands in the late 1970s, which gigged around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne included, Thunder, (possibly his first performance band) 1976 1977 and then Soft Edges 1977 1978. In 1980 he co-founded a Melbourne-based band called Cheks, renamed Deckchairs Overboard when they moved to Sydney in 1982; which also had Cathy McQuade, Ken Campbell and John Clifforth.