But it also stopped Roycroft from dedicating himself to a life in music, therefore protecting him from the vagaries of trying to eke out a living as a recording artist. He ran businesses of his own at the same time as releasing albums in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Michael Roycroft finally met his boyhood idol John Hore Grenell when Grenell was touring his Jim Reeves tribute show with Eddie Low on the Gold Coast in the 1990s. Also in the audience was another of Roycroft’s favourites, Paul Walden, and the four men partied after the show. As a boy, Roycroft had made his mother’s friends cry with his rendition of Walden’s ‘Molly’.
The drummer and assistant producer on Roycroft’s Slow Burnin’ album, Milton Sledge, went on to play on many albums by country superstar Garth Brooks.
The bass player in Roycroft’s mid-1970s band Pocket Edition, Huru Rakete, was the father of future actor, TVNZ personality and radio announcer Robert Rakete.
Credited as Micky Roy, Roycroft was part of the infamous Te Teko Phone Box Choir that provided backing vocals on the 1984 Ritchie Pickett & The Inlaws LP Gone For Water.
RCA
EMI