We have only a picture of slight, long haired sixties-era Smoke guitarist Brett Tauri. The then bass player lurking in front of a Palmerston North bridge with a disheveled looking bunch of R & B fanatics called Shapes of Things. Tauri staring off into the distance as the band mug for the camera.
He’d left home when he was 15, got his own flat (not yet the teenage rite of passage it would become), learnt one of the new instruments of teen rebellion (the bass), and grew his hair long, copping the usual redneck flak around town. At 16, Tauri hit out for America playing guitar on a cruise ship headed for San Francisco, where he scored a slot as a guitarist in a club band. He returned to New Zealand in 1965, bringing with him an early Gibson fuzzbox, a pre-1966 Fender Strat, and a rare Gibson 335 gold topped fretless basses made in Tallahassee.
He joined Shapes of Things, who, as their Yardbirds derived-name implied, were a raucous R & B band that gigged around Auckland, then secured a Palmerston North residency before breaking up in early 1966 after 15 months together. After the breakup Tauri spent a brief period in New Plymouth’s Rex and the Roadrunners, then returned to Auckland.
He didn’t have to look far for his next musical partners. Behind his parent’s Te Koa Rd, Panmure fence was the Nixon residence. Tauri’s sister, Jenny, was married to Roly Nixon, a veteran of South Auckland groups, including the Size Five with Len Monk on bass and stand-up drummer Lester Dempster, who’d been playing bands since 1965, most recently in the (other) Size Five. The group was completed by Ray Nixon, then just 19, singing.
The newly christened Smoke played their first show at the infamous Battle of the Bands at the Auckland Town hall in January 1967 when a bogus Australian promoter skipped with the proceeds and the prizes.
The Smoke attracted the attention of local promoters, identical twins Keith and Kevin Prohl, who set them up with South Auckland residencies at the Tudor Lounge in Glen Innes, Glen Innes Intermediate School, and the Point England Presbyterian Church Teen Rages.
New manager, Fred Brown, a salesman at Otahuhu’s Beggs Music Store, a well known chain store of the era Tauri showcased Fountain Thunderbird 55 Combo amps for, ushered the band into Astor Studios to record two original Tauri compositions.
Their producer was one of the best, Wahanui Wynyard, and the songs were outstanding. So they did it live. Tauri with two amps jacked up in series, one to distort the hell out of the signal, and the other to boost the distorted sound.
No More Now was one of the Smoke’s rave numbers. A loosely structured, semi-improvisational jam. The topside, the tightly structured Never Trust Another Woman, a classic beat ballad with a hard R & B backbone, psychedelic backwards guitar, and a biting lyric sung by the rapidly maturing voice of Ray Nixon. They were polished stage favourites - if fuzz guitar could ever be polished - and they recorded well. Well enough for Astor Studios to whisk them off to RCA Victor in Wellington for consideration. The response was positive and the Smoke returned to the studio in March 1967 to re-dub the harmonies. The original demo sessions were released as the musical backing as RCA Victor didn’t want the natural sound lost.
No More Now charted well in the Auckland area, gaining the band a lot of work on its back. It also made good ground in the Dunedin and Christchurch charts, and sold well in the United States, England, and Germany, where it was getting good radio play on Radio Berlin.
Unbeknown to the band the No More Now photo session involved the presence of a nude model called Christine. Roly explains: “It was the photographer’s idea, and the wives and girlfriends had to stay outside. To stop them coming up the stairs, he locked the doors, but they found out about it afterward. They said they wouldn’t have minded if they’d have been able to come up, but objected to the underhand way it was done.” Exit the married men Roly and Len.
Lawrie Opai (bass), late of the Green and Yellow, and Peter Sanford (organ/ guitar) were the new Smoke recruits. Sanford’s Jansen Transonic organ added another dimension to the Smoke’s sound, allowing them to play the songs of the rising crop of organ based groups such as the Spencer Davis Group, the Small Faces, and Procul Harum, in amongst their ‘pop’ Hendrix, Deep Purple and Cream numbers. Opai, an excellent bass player, added more drive to the sound, but on reflection, Lester Dempster thinks they lost something in the transition. “Our overall sound became fuller and more versatile, but we lost that sexy unique guitar sound.”
The Smoke played the second Auckland Battle of the Bands at the Auckland YMCA to a raucous collection of fans from their South and East Auckland strongholds. Down south, the band ruled, playing a residency at Otara’s Hacienda Club, and in Manurewa. They featured at the big Blast Off’68 show at the Auckland YMCA with Larry’s Rebels, and over on the North Shore, at the Surfside, and Takapuna RSA Hall. C’Mon ‘68 put them on the box. The band weren’t allowed to play the wild No More Now playing instead the Who’s Boris The Spider and Chicago Transit Authority’s I’m A Man.
The Smoke returned to Astor Studios in late 1968 to record their follow-up single, a version of Procol Harum’s Someone Following Me, together with a third quality Tauri composition, Control Your Love, which featured a swinging dance beat, wild Tauri guitar, and a reflective lyric. The Smoke played one final Northland tour with Larry’s Rebels, with Earle White drumming. Then gone. Sure as their name.
