Inside, a team led by Eddie Cloer prepares Bible materials to ship as part of their “Into all the World by 2015” project. Standing in the lobby among foreign flags and clocks with international time zones, I sense an urgency that must be unique to an organization concerned more with the souls, than the checkbooks, of their consumers.
Thirty-eight years ago, New Zealand’s music scene was buzzing about the boys in white vests and the flyers announcing: “Hear... Dave, Ian, Alex, Billy, and Frank of Hogsnort Ruperts’ Original Flagon Band.”
A second place win on the American Idol equivalent of 1968 launched their first album. Known for their musical style of skiffle—a form of homemade bluegrass—Hogsnort Rupert took their pub-based show of eclectic rock and comedy on the road to growing populatiry.
After “Gretal” became an overnight hit, the band’s future as a major-label force looked certain until half the band suddenly dropped out in 1970. The cause? Christianity.
Today I sit in a conference room at Truth for Today with Ian Terry, 61. Once the lead guitar player and vocalist for Hogsnort Rupert, Terry is now an evangelist at Truth for Today where he has turned his last thirty years of experience since leaving the band into a seminar on Christian outreach
He flips through an aged scrapbook of albums and photos from his days as pop’s next-big-thing.
“Here we are at #2 with ‘Gretal’,” he says pointing to Wellington’s Pop-O-Meter. “And here’s the Beatles’ ‘Let it Be’ at #3. See? We were above the Beatles.” His English accent seems only fitting for such topics as rock n’ roll.
Born in Bradford, North England, Terry was raised by his grandmother at the height of the British music invasion. A telecommunication technition by day, he was “The Intruders” lead-man by night.
“My greatest ambition as a young man was to be a pop star—a popular star,” Terry says with a certain ‘pop.’ He further pursued music by sailing around the world to New Zealand as a 21-year-old and forming Hogsnort Rupert with Dave Luther, who arrived from England the same day.
As the band developed into a local pub favorite, Terry keeps reminding me, pointing to the beer and cigarettes in a club performance, “This was before I became a Christian.”
1969 proved to be the year of the dream and the wake-up call for Terry. With “Gretal” climbing the charts in their first hit, a Bible professor from Libscomb University named Joe Gray arrived in Wellington, New Zealand.
Growing up, Terry attended a Church of England school while frequenting the Pentecostal congregation where his grandfather preached.
“I rejected both extremes—the emotional miracle-promising Pentecostals and the rigid Christianity of England’s Church,” Terry said. “I knew if there was such a thing as true Christianity, it was somewhere in between. A balance.”
Once drummer Billy Such converted on Joe Gray’s campaign, Terry found the balance he’d been looking for and was baptized in April. Bassist Frank Boardman followed.
Hogsnort Rupert—a band whose identity cannot be separated from late night clubs; a band that drinks alcohol on stage; a band with a top five single—was now majority Christian.
“I sacrificed my dream of being a well-known pop star because of my Christian commitment,” Terry says. “So the band folded.”
Following the reordering of Hogsnort Rupert, minus Terry and the other converts, the band released “Pretty Girl,” their only #1 hit, and are regarded today as New Zealand’s longest-running pop band. EMI released “The Very Best of Hogsnort Rupert” featuring Terry’s “Gretal” in 2001.
Terry was eventually supported through Ivan Stewart’s school of evangelism and has been preaching in California, Louisiana, and Texas for the past twenty years.
“Did I do the right thing?” Terry asks himself. “If I’d stayed in the band, I wouldn’t have married the woman I did. I wouldn’t have had the kids I had. I wouldn’t be in America… so, yes.”
His work at Truth for Today on a 6-session seminar and DVD series is finished. He slides over a blue pamphlet titled: “Sharing the abundant life.” A product of the great commission himself, Terry now looks to share with others the abundant life that was shared to him by a missionary in 1969.
Though Terry occasionally plays the guitar for his College Church of Christ care group, I detect nostalgia in him as he signs a Hogsnort Rupert poster for me. Staring down at the five boys in white vests, he says that on returning to New Zealand in 1999 for a campaign, he heard the local radio station play “Gretal” one afternoon.
“It was almost like they were welcoming me back,” he says.
