Sixties celebrity Glyn Tucker calls Katikati home

Ex-pop star Glyn Tucker now resides in Katikati's Fairview Estate. Photo / Rebecca Mauger

Fairview Estate residents are learning there’s a 1960s pop star living among them.

Glyn Tucker and his band The Gremlins were once in a Beatles chart-topping sandwich back in the 1960s.

The Gremlins were riding high with their biggest hit The Coming Generation at No 2 on the music charts in 1966 with Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby on either side of them.

Not a bad place to be and certainly a feather in the Kiwi band's cap.

These days the musician, songwriter and music producer is retired and lives at Katikati's Fairview Estate with wife Carole. Residents are starting to realise they are rubbing shoulders with a bona fide 1960s pop star and successful producer.

Glyn's been keeping his hand in the game with cabaret/covers act Divas and Diamonds with Barbie Davidson and they recently performed at the estate.

Glyn's new gig ... Divas and Diamonds with Barbie Davidson.

Originally from Wellington and then Auckland, Glyn's love of rock'n'roll started with the likes of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and he abandoned the piano and violin training for the guitar.

He also started writing songs and joined a band. Their first gig in Northland earned them one pound each. A few bands down the track Glyn and his friends formed pop band The Gremlins.

The Gremlins' The Coming Generation became something of a teenage anthem and it reached No 2 on the New Zealand top 20. They featured on television shows such as The Loxene Gold Disc Award Show.

"But we never got that elusive international hit. I soon found myself getting into music production and producing other people's music."

Glyn says he had the best studio in Auckland for 20 years — Mandrill Studios and Mandrill Records, and later the Reaction label. He'd signed and/or produced music with the likes of Alistair Riddell, Citizen, Band, Rick Steele, Midge Marsden Connection, Human Instinct, Danse Macabre, Car Crash Set, Paul Agar, Marginal Era, Blond Comedy, National Anthem, Gotham City Express, Knightshade, Wayne Roland Brown, Everything That Flies, Mark Loveys Satellite Spies, Billy T James, The Hi Marks, Suzanne Prentice, Howard Morrison and others.

His biggest claim-to-fame song was producing Forever Tuesday Morning by The Mockers.

"I had already done an album with The Mockers (Swear it's True) so Andrew Fagan gave me this demo he was really excited about. I said, 'it's great but go away and write a bridge to it' — the middle section of the song — so he came back the next day.

"The keyboard player had a hand in co-writing the bridge and it was fantastic. I could never write a bridge that good and they came up with it ... if it wasn't for me it would have been half a song."

Glyn Tucker with wife Carole. The couple met at a party when they were teenagers.

Glyn's all-time favourite song he produced was Tears by The Crocodiles with talented vocalist Jenny Morris.

"The song keeps changing key and the vocals are amazing. When I finally met them in person they had made some changes — they showed up with a couple of new songs and a new singer — Jenny Morris.

"Bruno Lawrence was on drums and he was becoming a famous film star. I was rapt because they suddenly sounded commercial.''

One of his clients was David Hasselhoff not long after Knight Rider fame.

"He didn't take himself too seriously. We did an album called Lovin' Feelings and it didn't do what we expected it to do. But we still got some kudos and it was fun for me to rub shoulders with a big TV star. We had a fun three weeks with him in Auckland."

By the end of the 1990s, Glyn was losing interest with record production.

"The fun went out of the recording industry in the late 90s. Digital recording was coming into itself at the time. There was the electronic thing, the hip-hop thing ... I was well into my 50s and could not relate to it.

"Too much electronics and not enough live instruments. A lot of us from that era know there's nothing like having a band play live together in a studio."

These days Glyn has come full circle and is back in the spotlight with Divas and Diamonds. Barbie morphs into divas of the 1960s-70s era and Glyn plays his favourite songs from a range of stars such as Dean Martin, Neil Diamond and others of the era — including some Gremlins hits.