CHRIS Parry is the A&R (Artist and Repertoire) man who discovered English band The Cure, and signed them to record label Fiction.
But he’s not comfortable with the suggestion that: “if it wasn’t for [Parry] there would be no Cure (or The Jam or Siouxie and the Banshees for that matter – all of whom he signed to Polydor).
“It was only a question of time before someone else signed The Cure,” he says.
The former drummer of New Zealand’s Beatles, The Fourmyula, who have reformed after 40 years apart and will play this weekend in Upper Hutt, turned to “the other side” when the band failed to reach the success they hoped for after shifting to the UK.
Shortly after moving to England, following the release of Nature (which reached number one in the New Zealand charts in December 1969, won an APRA Silver Scroll Award for the year, was voted NZ’s greatest pop song ever in 2001, and was covered by The Mutton Birds) Parry decided to call it quits.
“I thought bugger it. If we couldn’t crack it in London then what chance did we have?”
So Parry got married (1972), worked on building sites and went to business school in England before applying for a job at Polydor Records (2Pac, ABBA, Beatles, James Brown, Dr Dre, Jimi Hendrix...)
“We spent more time talking about The Fourmyula than the job [during the interview],” laughs Parry, who of course, got the job.
The Fourmyula’s reputation exceeded him – they had conquered New Zealand, and recorded at Abbey Road in the studio next door to the Beatles.
“All the Beatles were there including Yoko. We said hello, some were dressed just as they did for the cover of Abbey Road. Paul had his long black coat on.”
Parry has never looked back from the day he got the job with Polydor, and vividly remembers the first time he heard The Cure.
“It was on a Friday afternoon in the late summer of 1978. I grabbed a bunch of demos and tapes, and was reading NME and this song started playing ‘dit dit dit dit...”and I thought ‘God that’s good’. I put it on again (10.15 Saturday Night). I rang Robert Smith and he said they were playing a show at Redhill Tavern and I should come along. [When I arrived] they were playing on the floor of the bar and I was sitting on the stage. As soon as the music unfolded I said I would sign them.”
Hutt-born Parry has since organised Cure tours throughout the world and New Zealand, and taken advantage of trips back home to buy properties in the Coromandel and Auckland.
Now, at age 61, he and his band The Formyula (which used to include NZ Idol’s Frankie Stevens) have reformed to promote the release of a four CD box set featuring all their best tracks.
It’s been 40 years since the band played together and Parry is excited to get back on stage.
He says Stevens has not expressed an interest in playing with the band, but he is more than welcome and Parry hopes he will be at the gig.
The Fourmyula line up is Martin Hope (guitars/vox), Wayne Mason (guitar/keys/vox), Ali Richardson (bass/vox), Carl Evenson (vox), and Chris Parry (drums).
The Fourmyula, Reunion Tour, Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt, 8pm, March 20.