Chris Curtis - After Music

After Music

Curtis left the music industry and joined the Inland Revenue in 1969. He found the change difficult but he liked his new colleagues and he stayed there for nineteen years. He took early retirement in 1988 suffering a systemic illness that he ascribed to sick building syndrome.

In the mid 1970s he made some demos with Bernard Whitty, a Liverpool producer, to whom he had been introduced by one of his colleagues at the Inland Revenue. Alan Willey was an accountant who played guitar semi professionally. He asked Curtis to join his band, Western Union, but Curtis started drinking heavily and was asked to leave. Ultimately, however, nothing came of the demos.

In retirement he was active in his parish church of Holy Rosary in Sefton, Liverpool, where he sang folk music and rock and roll to attract younger worshippers. He also sang frequently with a karaoke machine at Cooper's Emporium and the Old Roan pub near the home he shared with his mother when the Searchers first started. Many of his audience had no idea who he was, but he had kept his skill and delighted to tell of someone stopping him in the supermarket to say how much they had liked his singing at the Old Roan.

In 1998 he gave his first interview in thirty years; to Spencer Leigh for BBC Radio Merseyside. Some years later he started appearing weekly with live musicians for the Merseycats charity at the Marconi club in Huyton. His driver for these evenings was Mike Pender’s cousin, Michael Prendergast but he never revisited the old Searchers’ songs. On April 13, 2003 he gave another interview to Spencer Leigh for BBC Radio Merseyside to discuss the 'new' Searchers’ albums, The Searchers At The Iron Door, The Searchers At The Star-Club and the Swedish Radio Sessions.

He died at home on February 28, 2005. He was 63 years old.