Pete Kircher

Peter Kircher, b.1948, Folkestone, Kent, is a rock drummer who played out the last few years of his professional career in the rock band Status Quo. Highlights of this period included playing at Live Aid and meeting HRH The Prince of Wales at a benefit gig for the Prince's Trust at the Birmingham NEC, an event preserved on the 1984 album "Live At The NEC".

Related Topics:
Folkestone - Kent - Status Quo - Live Aid - HRH The Prince of Wales

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Pete's style was very rhythmic, and he has a very distinctive snare_drum sound which could be considered his signature trait. Pete, however, was also a talented vocalist, though his excursions into singing on record were few.

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His earliest documented recordings are with Jimi Hendrix bassist Noel Redding. More session work followed, before he was recruited in 1967 to join Honeybus, who, although often written off as one-hit wonders, produced a fine body of work, which culminated in a critically-acclaimed 1970 album, Story, released after the eventual dissolution of the band. Less commercially successful work with the Honeybus personnel survives in the form of two albums, "March Hare" (credited to Colin Hare, the bassist in Honeybus) and "Into Your Ears", a solo album by Pete Dello, which were both released in 1971. Comparisons with Honeybus were inevitably drawn - the sessions bled into each other causing a reunion in all but name, and record company executives were so impressed by this new work that they commissioned an album, Recital. Only test pressings exist, as a change in management at EMI aborted the planned release of the album. Following this episode, most of the band's members retired from the music scene.

Related Topics:
Jimi Hendrix - Noel Redding - Honeybus

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The next excursion for Pete's drumming was as a member of Shanghai, where he joined Mick Green from the Pirates. The band produced two albums, released in 1974 and 1976, when the band ended up supporting Status Quo on the "Blue For You" tour. This directly led to Pete's induction into the group of session musicians for John Du Cann's "Nothing Better" album in 1977, which mixes the attitude of the Sex Pistols with the boogie sound of Quo. The sessions were, unsurprisingly, produced by Francis Rossi.

Related Topics:
Pirates - Status Quo - Sex Pistols - Francis Rossi

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Following a stint in Liverpool Express (LEX), Pete was invited in 1979 to join the Original Mirrors, a band featuring the Lightning Seeds Ian Broudie on guitar. His time in this band took him up to 1981, when there was just enough time to contribute some drums to a Nolans single before the call came to join the Quo.

Related Topics:
Original Mirrors - Lightning Seeds - Ian Broudie - Nolans

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Aside from recording some tracks with Francis Rossi and Bernard Frost for their (unreleased) solo album "Flying Debris" in 1985, nothing much has been heard from Pete, although Honeybus were reunited for a Dutch TV show in 2003.

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