A few words on 80s Irish band Zerra One and their 1982 tour of the UK and Europe supporting The Cure taking in: the kindness of Robert Smith, John Peel sessions, producer Todd Rundgren, U2, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a whole lot more.

“This is a record for which I care a great deal. You have to hear it a few times, I think, before it gets through to you. It’s by an Irish ensemble who’ve done a lot of gigs with Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure and others, called Zerra I, as far as I can tell. This is ‘The West’s Awake’. That’s Zed - E - double R - A and then I. It could possibly be a One, but it looks more like an I than a One. I know that I ought to know, but I don’t.
John Peel - 01 May 1983

Like Peel, I was unsure about the stylisation of the band’s name. On earlier releases the band called themselves “Zerra I” and later it was stylised as “Zerra One” but I’ve also seen it as “Zerra 1”. I asked Paul Bell if he had a preference. Paul picked Zerra One - so Zerra One it is.

Zerra One were formed in London in early 1982 by Paul Bell and Aindrias Ó Gruama (aka Grimmo). Paul is from Wexford and Aindrias is from Dublin. As a duo they supported amongst others: Cocteau Twins, The Monochrome Set, The Teardrop Explodes, Siouxsie and the Banchees and U2. They were also asked by Robert Smith to support The Cure on the band’s 1982 Fourteen Explicit Moments tour of the UK and Pornography tour of Europe.

I first read about Zerra One supporting The Cure in 2019 in Vox 80-83, the compendium of all 15 issues of Vox magazine published by Hi-Tone Books. In a news item from Vox No. 11 it mentions that: “After a few false starts and many shady band extras, Zerra 1 have finally evolved as a highly proficient and original two-piece - Paul (vocals/keyboards) and Grimmo (guitar/vocals). They are currently on tour with The Cure in England, and later in the summer will be playing some selective gigs here in Ireland.”

In a Zerra One feature from Vox No. 14 (reproduced below) Paul mentioned the tour: “I rang Robert Smith, even though I had never met him before, and asked could we do the tour with him. He agreed, we were treated quite well on that tour, and went on from there to doing support on The Cure’s European tour.”

Paul wrote about touring with The Cure, and Robert Smith’s kindness to himself and Grimmo, in Great Gig Memories: From Punks and Friends, published by Hope Publications in 2020.

In 2021 I interviewed Cathal Coughlan upon the release of his album, Song of Co-Aklan. We talked about Great Gig Memories as Cathal had also contributed a story to the book. I told Cathal that I thought Paul’s piece was great and asked if he had known about the story, as Aindrias had been the guitarist in The Fatima Mansions. He agreed with me about Paul’s piece and said: “I had heard bits and bobs of the story from Aindrias and from Paul as well, because I met them at the same time when Zerra One was still just the two of them. That was not long after they had come back from The Cure’s tour.”

When I started writing about The Cure’s links with Ireland for the Irish Examiner (‘Gardaí clash with punk rockers’: When the Cure caused a riot in Cork) my first thought was to contact Paul and Aindrias to flesh out the story. Due to wordcount restrictions, as is often the case, some of what the lads told me didn’t make the final version of the article. Their full accounts of that 1982 tour are below.

‘Let’s Go Home’ (7”, Top Hole Records, 1982).

Zerra One released their debut single ‘Let’s Go Home’ in late 1982 on the small Dutch label Top Hole Records. In 1983 the band released two more singles on their own label, Second Vision: ‘The West’s Awake’ - an interpretation of Thomas Osborne Davis’ ‘The West's Asleep’ - and ‘The Banner of Love (How I Run to You)’.

‘The West’s Awake’ and ‘The Banner of Love (How I Run to You) (2x7”, Second Vision, 1983).

John Peel was an early supporter of the band and in 1983 they recorded two sessions for his BBC radio show. You can listen to a montage of Peel Zerra One intros and outros below. Further touring throughout 1983 saw the band support Peter Gabriel and Echo & the Bunnymen.

“Another valuable contribution to the nation’s mental health from Zerra One with ‘Dangerous Vision’”
John Peel - 23 November 1983

Paul McDermott · Peel on Zerra One

I love perusing old lists like this. It helps to put Zerra One’s music in context by looking at what else was in the chart at the time. The lads are in some fine company alongside entries by The Fall, The Go-Betweens, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, The Sisters of Mercy, The Nightingales, This Mortal Coil, and others.

It’s also interesting to note that even though New Order appear twice in this Top 50 with ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘Confusion’, three years after Ian Curtis’ passing Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was back in the Top 5, still selling copies.

Paul and Aindrias expanded the line-up to a four-piece: Adrian Wyatt on bass and Korda Marshall on drums. Marshall left in early 1984 to take up an A&R position at RCA Records eventually setting up Infectious Records, he was replaced by Mike Mesbur.

In 1984 Zerra One were signed by Mercury Records. Their self-titled debut album, was produced by Todd Rundgren in his Utopia Sounds studio in Woodstock, New York. In 1984 the band also toured with Big Country, The Mighty Wah!, and The Boomtown Rats. Zerra I was later repackaged and re-titled Mountains and Water and released by Vertigo Records in Canada.

*The Domino Effect* (LP, Mercury Records, 1986).

By the time of the band’s second album, The Domino Effect, Mike Mesbur was gone, Aindrias had left to be replaced by Anthony Drennan and Adrian Wyatt was replaced by Eamonn Doyle. The Domino Effect was released in 1986. In late 1986 the band supported Ultavox on an arena tour of the UK and disbanded the following year.

The Cure
Fourteen Explicit Moments - UK Tour, April 1982
Pornography - European tour, May/June 1982

The Cure - *Fourteen Explicit Moments*: Manchester Apollo 27 April, 1982. Image from Omega Auctions.

Paul Bell:
I remember when I dropped the tape off at RAK Studios where The Cure were recording Pornography. Robert said he would listen to it. He told me to take the studio number and give him a call. I presumed he meant in a week or so but he said to give him a call in a couple of days. I rang the studio from a payphone just off Kilburn High Road. When Robert said he thought the songs were amazing I nearly fainted! I genuinely felt weak and had to compose myself to be able to speak to him.

Robert asked if we would like to come to the studio and “hang out” with them. I asked wouldn’t they be busy finishing their album, he replied, “Yes, but we can still hang out”. We went down the next evening and for most of the next two weeks we were there nearly every day. We were on the dole and we were not eating well. The lads had catering in the studio and Robert made it clear that we were to treat it as ours so anything we wanted we could have.

He asked if we did their upcoming UK tour how would that work. We told him we would do it in the old car we had at the time. He asked about road crew, sound engineer and accommodation. I told him we didn’t have any of those. We said we would be so privileged to do it that we would sleep in the car and maybe we could just get someone to set up a sound balance on the first date and then leave it like that for the whole tour. Robert replied, “What we will do is, you can travel with us, stay in the same hotels as us, we will give you a sound engineer, monitor engineer and lighting guy, you will have the same catering as us and we will pay you £100 per show on top of all that”.

Aindrias Ó Gruama:
We were really excited. We had been listening to Faith and Seventeen Seconds. When we first met them in RAK studios, we heard a playback of the album whose music would accompany us all throughout the summer of 1982, Pornography. They are, all three of them, seminal records and remain very special to me.

Paul:
It was all so fantastic that it seemed unreal. I mentioned that Blancmange, who were on the same label had agreed their “buy on” and they were doing the tour, to which Robert said, “Leave that to me”.

The whole thing, being in RAK and hanging out with them as if we were friends and now being offered this amazing tour was very hard to take in. Chris Parry, The Cure’s manager, contacted us and pleaded with us not to do the tour saying that Robert didn’t know the implications of what he was offering and that it would cost them in excess of £50,000. He actually offered us, £2,000 NOT to do the tour. We didn’t accept, although that was a HUGE amount of money for two guys on the dole in 1982.

Aindrias:
Paul Bell’s lyrics were, at this time, like Robert Smith’s, very existentialist. Like The Cure, Zerra One were trying to do something new, no more Joe Walsh. Importantly, as Lol Tolhurst once put it, we knew what we didn’t want in the music. Paul was also stripping it all right down when I first met up with him. Rick Gallup, Simon’s brother and director of the film Airlock which screened throughout the Pornography tour between the two bands during the stage change over, came up to me once and said, “Zerra One are Dada!” I had no idea what he was talking about.

There was panic when we discovered our new backing tracks were not in tune with the earlier backing track recordings. So I found myself down in Fiction Records HQ in Montague Sq, as they kindly agreed to let us use a Revox tape machine with vari-speed they had there to tune the tracks as it were, bring them all into concert pitch.

Paul:
Robert did our sound on the tour and it was just another moment in a long list of moments with Robert and The Cure where you really have to check you’re not imagining all this. In this case I did check with Robert the next day just in case it wasn’t real. But it was and it was truly amazing thing for him to do for the rest of the UK and European tour!

Aindrias:
The way I remember it, we were in some hotel room three days into the British tour and Robert had a cassette recording of the Zerra One performance from that night. After listening to it for a while, Robert says, “no that won’t do at all, the sound, the mix is all wrong”. He suggested that that he mix the sound himself next show and asked, “would we mind?” Somewhat aghast by such a generous offer, Paul said, “Won’t you be recognised and hassled?” “Nah,” said Robert, “I’ll just be another Robert Smith lookalike amongst many”. It was true nobody did recognise him, partly because his face wasn’t as well known then as it was to become later on in the 80s. He did the sound the next night and on every night of the rest of the UK leg of the tour and then invited us to do the six-week European leg as well, during which he also mixed our sound without fail every night.

We had no record company and no money. The Cure were unbelievably generous. We stayed in five star hotels where ever we went and had days off in the major cities to recuperate from the drinking. The itinerary said this is not a rock n roll tour, and it was more like a mad surreal adventure. All sorts of strange happenings and mysteries too (like when somebody made off with the petty cash). It was though, little did we know it, the last tour the three imaginary boys - Simon, Robert and Lol - would play.

Paul:
I remember Hammersmith Odeon like it was yesterday. We had only played a couple of small gigs in places like The Rock Garden before this tour. It was all such an adventure that every venue was huge for us, both physically and emotionally. But Hammersmith and Paris Olympia were two great venues. Cure fans were so kind to us. They seemed to like us.

Aindrias:
I remember Robert being very excited to be performing on the same stage that Edith Piaf had sung on. There is a live recording of the Paris Olympia show online. You can hear the audience jeer and whistle in disappointment as we come on as the support act, because of course they are there to see The Cure, but by the end of our first song they’d long stopped whistling and gave us a generous round of applause. That was our experience in most places if my memory doesn’t deceive me.

Paul:
We were offered several record deals (one from Chris Parry on Fiction) but we turned them all down for various reasons. We didn’t have management which probably explains why we ended up doing support to The Cure, U2, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Teardrop Explodes and many more WITHOUT any records to sell!!!

Aindrias:
I remember Paul and I, shortly after the tour, in Simon Potts’ office, the head of A&R at Arista Records, playing him our first studio recording, ‘Let’s Go Home’. He danced in his seat for the entire duration of the track. “You know, I love all these bands, U2, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & the Bunnymen, and I include yourselves, all great bands,” he exclaimed. “But they’ll never sell any records!”

Paul:
Coming back to London was very strange and a real come down. But that’s the real world and where we were at that time. My fondest memories of that tour was that it felt like a real brotherhood. Robert, Simon and Lol, Grimmo and me. There was no separation except for the time The Cure were on stage. I have never felt so accepted, so liked and well looked after in the music business before or since. Apart from it being an amazing experience musically, it was also a great laugh. We had so much fun. Also we drank a lot and I mean a lot. I gave up alcohol in ‘84 but I can tell you our levels of drinking on that tour would be on a par with Motörhead!

Zerra One: John Peel session 14 November 1983
The band’s second Peel session was first broadcast on 23 November 1983. According to Keeping It Peel the line-up for this session was: Paul Bell (Keyboards,Vocal), Grimmo (Guitar), Korda (Drums), Alison Kelly (Cello) and Adrian Wyatt (Bass).

For Further Reading…