KIWI POP PIONEERS TO CELEBRATE 40 YEARS OF NATURE & PLAY HISTORIC REUNION SHOWS
Auckland @ The Windsor Castle, Juice Bar Parnell Thursday 18th March tickets from www.undertheradar.co.nz from Monday 15th Feb
Upper Hutt @ Expressions Arts & Entertainment Centre Saturday 20th March tickets from www.ticketdirect.co.nz from Monday 15th Feb
Pioneering New Zealand pop band The Fourmyula – remembered for their iconic song ‘Nature’ and a string of Top Ten hits – return to the stage with all original members for two rare performances this March.
These shows celebrate the release of The Complete Fourmyula: a definitive four-CD set comprised of all the group’s recordings: their singles, three studio albums and live set, plus the legendary ‘lost’ LP Turn Your Back On The Wind, recorded in Britain shortly before the group disbanded in 1971. This collection, produced by Grant Gillanders, will be released on February 22nd, 2010 through EMI.
Formed in Upper Hutt in the mid-sixties, The Fourmyula earned the title ‘New Zealand’s Beatles’ for being the first local band to insist on recording their own material, resulting in a spectacular run of hits. Radio played them constantly: ‘Come With Me’, ‘Alice Is There’, ‘I Know Why’, ‘Home’, ‘Otaki’ and, of course, ‘Nature’ – the song that won its author Wayne Mason the coveted APRA Silver Scroll Award, became a hit all over again in the 90s for The Mutton Birds, was voted Best New Zealand Song of the past 75 years and became the title song of the Nature’s Best series.
Following the departure of their first singer Frank Stevenson – who would go on to find fame on stage and screen as Frankie Stevens – The Fourmyula consolidated in the line-up of Wayne Mason (keyboards, guitar, vocals), Ali Richardson (bass, vocals), Martin Hope (guitar, vocals), Carl Evensen (Vocals) and Chris Parry (drums). This is the group that appeared on all the recordings and that will be touring this March.
Having conquered New Zealand, The Fourmyula set their sights on Europe, basing themselves in the U.K. from 1969. Though they did not repeat their Antipodean success, they toured extensively, recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios (while the Beatles were making their final album together in the next room) and completed what is arguably their finest work: the unreleased Turn Your Back On The Wind. Showing the influence of then-emerging British bands like Led Zeppelin as well as the Beatles, this lost classic sounds fresh and forceful today, and is a highlight of The Complete Fourmyula.
Many of the group went on to have impressive careers in music. Returning to New Zealand, Wayne Mason and Carl Evensen played in Rockinghorse in the seventies, while Mason went on to form The Warratahs in the eighties. After a spell in Auckland with Human Instinct, Martin Hope moved to the United States and then Australia, where he works to this day as a session musician. Chris Parry remained in Britain where he discovered and produced the seminal British bands The Jam and The Cure.
The Fourmyula’s two appearances will be a chance to see one of the most important groups in New Zealand music history playing at full strength in a rare and significant reunion.
