Rebel — and masterful storyteller
Larry Morris, star of 60s Kiwi band Larry’s Rebels, died this month. Steve Braunias remembers the masterful tales he used to tell.
Farewell, then, to top man Larry Morris, a screamadelic 60s pop star from Herne Bay who was jailed for possession of a thousand tabs of acid, came out older, wiser and just as adventurous, and died on January 17. He was 75.
I interviewed him in 2017. We met at his house in Parnell where he was fulfilling a promise to his parents to look after them when they got old. His mum, Lister, 96, had dementia; his dad, John, 89, got out of bed most mornings at a quarter to one in the afternoon. Larry himself seemed set to live till 100. He had swagger and presence, and was a masterful storyteller. A few of these stories made it into the story I wrote about him. On his passing, here are some of the others, from a life well and truly lived.
On the late Graham Brazier of Hello Sailor
I knew The Braz well. He was a good bastard. We were on the road once and played at the Soundshell in Gisborne. He only got through one song. I actually performed the entire set on a microphone from behind the stage, with him just wandering around and looking at people. He just wasn’t capable of opening his mouth to sing. He was on heroin. He had his problems, but we all have our faults.
On razing a sawmill to the ground at 15
I left school at 15 and got a job at the Whitecliffs sawmill at Matanui. On the first day on the job, I burnt the mill to the ground.
I left home at 4.30am to get there at 5am, and the first thing you do, the foreman gives you a big, long piece of stick, with muslin around the end of it, that had been soaked in diesel, and they light the flame, and you take it right underneath the main sawmill pipe. Well, my flame goes out.
I said to the foreman, “What do I do with this, boss?”
He says, “Go and refuel it.” There were three 44-gallon diesel drums with a tap on each one. So I turned the diesel tap on and it was just BOOM. It blew me backwards. I lost all my eyebrows and the front of my hair got burnt off. It’s just after five in the morning and I get blown back about 20 feet. I got the shock of my life and now the shed was ablaze, and I mean ablaze. The fire brigade takes 20 minutes to get there and the whole thing has already gone up.
The foreman said, “You better get your arse out of here. You’ve cost everyone their jobs.
“Life is not gonna be worth living. I’d leave town if I were you.”
So I went back home, walked in — I must have looked a sight — and Mum freaks out when she sees me. Dad says to me, he says, “I’ve been considering buying a dairy on Jervois Rd in Herne Bay and now I’m definitely going to buy it. Now. But you need to get out of this town.”
So he put me on a bus that day to my Aunt Wynn’s place in Auckland. But we stopped in Hamilton, and I’m looking out the window of this bus and I see this poster. It says, JOIN THE NAVY. SEE THE WORLD. BECOME A MAN. So I enlisted that day.
But I felt dreadful about burning the sawmill down. When I went back there a few years later with the Rebels, the tour was called Blast Off 68 — very appropriate. This woman comes to the hotel to interview me for the paper. She says, “There’s a rumour going around that you were responsible for the fire.”
“Yes, it was me,” I said. “It was an accident.”
“Well,” she said, “they’re saying that you deliberately burned it down.”
So the front page of the f ***ing paper the next morning says, ARSONIST DISCOVERED.
But I’ve been back several times and it’s okay. The mill got relocated to Whanga¯rei and I’ve met the foreman. They all forgave me, even the local copper. He was a nice guy — he was the one who actually drove me down to the bus stop that day.
They interviewed me quite extensively that morning. The manager and the foreman told the police it was nothing but an accident and the idiocy of the kid. The foreman said, “I’m the idiot. I should never have allowed him to refuel the stick. I should have done that, and it would never have happened.”
So Dad bought Dairyland in Jervois Rd, and I went to the Navy and suffered chronic seasickness. But I done well in there. I was runner-up at the radar school — I have amazing ears, and I’ve still got all my hearing. I’ve been very lucky.
On entering the US illegally
Tommy Adderley was my closest friend in music. We did the Herald crossword every morning, together, and talked about music all the time, and he said one day, “What unfinished business do you have?”
I said, “I don’t feel I will have fulfilled my life if I don’t make an album in America.”
So he said, “You’ve got to do it.”
I went to get a visa but I’d been to prison and they said, “Come back in five years’ time and try again.”
I went back four years later and they said, “No, our situation with you hasn’t changed. You are not going to be seen fit for a visa.”
I had a residency at The Foundry back then, on ridiculously good wages, very successful, so I had a bit of coin stashed away. I was sharing a house in Lawrence St in Herne Bay with Tommy and a mate called Heta. I figured I would fly to Vancouver and apply for a visa there because they wouldn’t know about my situation. Heta said, “I’ll come with you.”
We arrive in Vancouver and go into the US consulate and the guy there says, “You go and make your record in America, boy.” He leaves to get the paperwork and comes back 15 minutes later and he’s angry. He’s found out by telex. Visa denied.
Heta said, “What are you gonna do now?”
I said, “F*** it. I’m going to go through the bush. They’re not going to beat me. I’m going to make this album, mate.”
He said, “I’ll come with you.” We went to the border and did a reconnoitre. We parked up and could see the American flags in the distance and the sun coming off the road. In between was a forest of great big redwood trees, massive, hundreds of feet high.
There was another guy with us. Let’s just call him the Third Man. I said to him and Heta, “I’ll go alone. I’ll see you in Blaine.” We got a map and saw the closest city was Blaine, in Portland, Oregon. The Third Man says, “I’ll go to Blaine in the morning and check it out.”
He does and tells us there’s a little pub on the main street and we’ll meet there.
They’ve got my bag with my passport. I’m in a black tracksuit with a silver fern on it and $12 in Canadian silver. No luggage.
So me, Heta and the Third Man drive to the border at five miles an hour and I roll out of the car on to the side of the road. And f *** me, about two seconds later Heta rolls out of the car, and he says, “I told you I’m coming with you. Your mother and father would never forgive me if anything happened to you.” I gave him a big hug. I remember it like it was yesterday.
So we’re now in the bush and it’s pitch black. The adrenaline gets in the way of common sense when you do something like this. Snakes, bears, panthers — they’re all in that bush, but it never crossed our minds. Two and a half hours later we come through this heavy bush — we’ve been crawling, and it was arduous — and there’s this big mowed strip, and it’s daylight now. Heta nudges me and points at this security camera. It’s turning towards us and we get down low. As soon as it moves around we just took off and sprinted across this mowed area and we’re now in America.
We found a village with little side streets. It looked very much like Ponsonby, except there were flags everywhere. It’s now like 8.15am and we see all these immigration guys in their immigration uniforms. Heta’s in a black tracksuit too, and he says, “Just wave at them.”
They waved back! They thought we were just other immigration guys, just out for a walk. So we come to a cyclone wire fence with the freeway on the other side and we just ran up it like it wasn’t there and over on the other side, and then we were in Blaine in a pub.
On his second marriage
I was single and singing at The Crypt. David Lange was the Prime Minister and they were looking to get dirt on his Cabinet. One of his ministers was at The Crypt one night and the idea was that a transvestite was going to come over and start passionately kissing him and a photographer would suddenly appear and start taking pictures.
I was on stage and saw this trannie making her way out to the minister’s table but she collides with the drinks girl, and the glasses go flying. There’s broken glass everywhere and the drinks girl has fallen over in the middle of it. I leap down from the stage and pick her up and take her to the bar and put her down.
She said, “That was very gracious of you.” We were married for seven years.
I felt dreadful about burning the sawmill down. When I went back there a few years later with the Rebels, the tour was called Blast Off 68 — very appropriate.