Kiwi musician Larry Morris of Larry’s Rebels dies: ‘A man who defined his era’

Larry Morris of Larry’s Rebels fame has died.

The Auckland-born and raised musician, lead singer of the 1960s pop band, died late past evening.

To start with formed in the 1960s, Morris and the band were inducted into the NZ New music Corridor of Fame/Te Whare Taonga Puoro o Aotearoa in 2020, and right until recently, continued to perform.

Simon Grigg of NZ audio website Audio Culture stated in a tribute to Morris shared on Facebook: “Larry Morris was just one of the wonderful figures of New Zealand songs gifted both of those as a singer and a songwriter, certainly distinctive and a gentleman who described his period. It is with good sadness that we mark Larry’s passing last night”.

Herald writer Steve Braunias interviewed Morris in 2017 at his dwelling in Parnell, Auckland, in which he appeared soon after his elderly moms and dads Lister and John right until their fatalities.

In that job interview, he remembers of Larry’s Rebels that they “enjoyed crazy achievements – offered-out tours, seven best 20 hits in two many years – and recorded a basic album, A Research in Black, from midnight to dawn in Might 1967, particularly 50 many years in the past. It sounds just as risky now, with its fuzz guitars and Motown drums, a funky and major garage band given just one shot to get it suitable. Morris was the star”.

“He left the band in a horrible sulk in Whitianga. He was indignant that management obtained a better course of motel area. He went solo and made two albums in the 1970s, a single ahead of he was busted for LSD and just one following he received out. They kind the bulk of a new Frenzy Songs CD, Larry Morris: Anthology.”

He recounted Morris’s stint in jail soon after being busted for possession of LSD, his 10 yrs in the United States as an unlawful immigrant, and his 4 marriages and 5 children.

Morris told Braunias at the time that he experienced built a assure to his mother and father that he would seem following them, recalling his father telling him: “‘Don’t ever let your mom to go into a home.’ He states, ‘You glance after your mom if something goes improper with me.’ I claims, ‘Yeah, I give you my word,’ and I gave him a hug, and right here we all are. I’m accomplishing it”.

The jail phrase correctly finished his NZ musical career, which experienced witnessed him score major hits with the band in the course of the next 50 % of the 1960s and later on as a solo performer with songs like Do What You Gotta Do and Everybody’s Woman.

Soon after jail, Morris headed across the Tasman and afterwards to the US where by he lived for 10 yrs, returning to New Zealand in 1993. Morris’s American spouse went again to her homeland and left him to elevate their two youthful sons.

The moment known as a “degenerate” by former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, he was later praised as a “true Kiwi songs icon” by Prime Minister Helen Clark, who helped him re-enter New Zealand.