Peter Dawkins (musician)

Peter William Dawkins (27 November 1946 – 3 July 2014) was a New Zealand record producer and musician, best known for his late-1960s to mid-1970s New Zealand hits and his 1970s productions for Australian-based pop artists, including Dragon, Australian Crawl and Air Supply. He won multiple production awards, including the Countdown Producer of the Year. In the late 1980s he developed Parkinson's disease.

Born in Timaru, New Zealand, Dawkins started in the music business as a drummer in his teens; he toured Europe in the mid-1960s with his freakbeat bands Me And The Others, and The New Nadir. In London they jammed at The Speakeasy with Jimi Hendrix, which eventually led to the recording of a lost 7" acetate for the UK Polydor label. Over 40 years later, in 2009 a whole album of 1966 - 1967 recordings by Me And The Others and The New Nadir was finally released by Feathered Apple Records. After the breakup of The New Nadir, guitarist and lead vocalist Ed Carter moved to California to play for the Beach Boys, bassist Gary Thain joined the Keef Hartley Band, and then Uriah Heep before dying of an overdose in 1975. Dawkins returned home in late 1968 and started his production career with HMV Records, the NZ branch of EMI, where he produced a large number of recordings, scoring seven No.1 pop hits including "Nature" by The Fourmyula.

Dawkins moved to Australia ca. 1972 and became a house producer for EMI Australia, where he succeeded fellow NZ expatriate Howard Gable as the producer of leading Australian progressive rock band Spectrum, for whom he produced the albums Warts Up Your Nose (1972, released under the pseudonym 'Indelible Murtceps'), Testimonial (1973) and the valedictory live album Terminal Buzz. Around 1972/1973 he also produced early singles for John Farnham (then known as Johnny Farnham) including "Don't You Know It's Magic" and "Rock Me Baby".

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