OPINION: Never mind the bollocks

Baby boomers get all misty-eyed (and -eared) about nostalgia. There is no other explanation for the Rolling Stones having paying jobs when they should be tooling about town on their Gold Cards, for Leonard Cohen being voted Britain's best live act (some might debate that) of 2008, or the 40th anniversary concert of Woodstock (featuring Richie Havens pleading Freedom. No one told him about Obama?). Or Mamma Mia!, which must be the ultimate proof that pop will eat itself (if only ... ).
Which may explain the press release which arrived in our inbox this week: "After extensive renovations and planning, the neighbourhood pub is set to make a comeback in Parnell. Revitalised and raring to go, the Windsor Castle on the corner of Parnell Rd and Windsor St rises again.''
You may have missed this riveting - or, more accurately, ear- and tongue-piercing - news. Daniel Wrightson (Juice TV), publican Nick Brooks and Bruno Baptistella (Gina's, Francoli Ponsonby frontman) have reopened the Windsor Castle pub on Parnell Rd, with "refreshments and sustenance'' and live music Wednesday to Sunday.
Naturally, the PR release harks back to the place's past as a home of Kiwi pop, notably a
birthplace of the local punk scene. Mike Chunn rents a quote: "The first time he crossed the threshold 'there was this out-of-towner on the stage playing a Stratocaster through a Fender Twin Reverb. His microphone was plugged into the other channel on the amp. His voice was gnarly and distorted. His guitar sang like a bird and we were all stunned. It was Hammond Gamble.'.''
Two quotes for the price of one, in fact: "Chris Knox wading out into the crowd - standing on the tables, knocking over drinks. Pop Mechanix stunning them with their power pop. The arrival of boot boys and the Spelling Mistakes. Heavy!''
With a plug for the back catalogue, now out on CD and download: "But most of all, I remember Citizen Band, cutting their teeth in that room. Trying out new songs like Rust in My Car. Seeing how it went. It was a gas!'' Nice one, Mike: you're a real rock star when you can talk about yourself in the third person.
For Kiwis of a particular age, the Windsor Castle does bring back memories: I came north from Hamilton to the Big Smoke to hear and feel the century-old ceiling jiving to the sadly unappreciated 1953 Memorial Society Rock And Roll Band, featuring The Astounding Herbert Multiman, otherwise known as Robbie Laven, government service lawyer by day, manic and whimsical exponent of 70 to 80 instruments by night. And an early performance by a quaint quintet under the moniker of Split Ends. The Z came later. Sharon O'Neill, touting leather pants and pout all the way from Nelson.
The pub allegedly opened its corner doors in 1847 and claims to be one of Auckland's earliest surviving hotels and among the oldest brick buildings in the region. However, possibly due to its stock in trade, the history of pubs in Auckland is notoriously unreliable. Even the history of the Windsor Castle: until the late 1990s, it was supposed to have been built in or around 1900; renovations proved it was closer to 1850.
For decades, when Parnell was a village, until Les Harvey got hold of the last, precious
wooden buildings at the top of the hill, gentrified them and made the place into a Village, the Windsor Castle was one of Auckland City's many corner pubs. It wasn't flash: the sort of place that a man - or several hundred men - could crowd into after a Saturday afternoon's league in the mud of Carlaw Park, or before catching the tram home in the days of the 6 o'clock swill.
Renovators might have tarted up Parnell but they could never dress up the long, dark public bar. That's why it - and its crosstown mate, Ponsonby's Gluepot - were perfectly pitched for live music, for the rock then the punk years, when new licensing laws allowed them to stay open until the wee, small hours of 10pm.
The hottest acts had to be Proud Scum and the Superettes, and the hottest show had to be the one in 1979 when fire broke out onstage during Proud Scum's set. True to punk tradition, the band played on.
"The band kept playing as the flames reached six feet high, and no one was putting the
fire out,'' the Superettes' Jed Town remembered years later. "I leapt behind the bar, grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed the stage with foam. Everybody dispersed, and the police and fire brigade arrived to an empty, smoked-filled room. Nothing more was ever said about it.''
'Twasn't only music. Well-known in punk circles, Scott Blanks launched New Zealand's stand-up comedy scene here. From the far side of the desk, a colleague recalls taking her new American boyfriend to the Windsor Castle to hear David Eggleton declaiming beat, or off-beat, poetry. Colleague and boyfriend fled, but 20 years later the relationship survives the experience.
The Windsor Castle didn't. Leo Molloy, an enterprising former jockey, began a chain of bars that would spread from Palmerston North south and north to Parnell. It was no longer the Castle: The Fat Lady's Arms was in new hands. Molloy and his sometime brother-in-law Lou Jones, (courtesy of Jones' marriage to TV reality show queen Julie Christie), dominated the hospitality scene through their joint and individual ventures: think Euro, Danny Doolan's, Cardiac, Cowboy Bar, and keep thinking. At one time Molloy boasted that the Viaduct should be renamed Leoland "because I own just about half of it''.
The Fat Lady's charms were pretty much the same as the Castle's: beer, music, more beer, more music. Some food, because the era of host responsibility had dawned. So, too, had the Viaduct: the entertainment scene went downhill and Molloy went with it. Jones retained his interest and, under him, the old pub turned into a new direction in the post-America's Cup years.
Jones and Molloy had founded Euro on Princes Wharf and lured Simon Gault to their stoves from his self-named restaurant, Gault on Quay. During the cup, Oracle zillionaire Larry Ellison acquired a taste for Gault's cooking and pretty soon acquired the chef, too. When Gault returned home at the end of his contract in late 2003, Jones pounced. The old pub had been made over into an upmarket - alright, to be strictly accurate, meat-market - watering-hole under its third (at least) name, the George. Where league fans and 6 o'clock swillers and punks had milled about in the old sawdust-floored public bar, the fooderati would sip and nibble in the new place to eat and be seen, Gault@George.
Four - no, mine was 4 and a half, now I recall it - star reviews followed. But the only thing certain in the Windsor Castle's history is uncertainty. Gault just about saw out his two-year contract before he went back to Euro, under newish management, leaving Jones to find a new chef and a new name. Simply, it was reduced to The George. None of several  replacements had Gault's pulling power.
Do without one, then. The owners rolled out Blowfish, first branch outside California of the sushi franchise in which Julian Lennon is an investor. It kept the rock'n'roll connection but too few wanted to pay Sunset Boulevard prices for pretty much the same food they could get on K'Rd, or Dominion.
The brick building has been empty since Blowfish went phut almost two years ago. There were rumours: one of the most tasty had Leo Molloy coming back to open a steak bar, not unlike Gault's Jervois Steak House in Herne Bay. Nothing came of them.
Until this week's re-opening of the revived, rebranded, renovated, retro Windsor Castle.
Ended the press release: "a return to the Glory Days of the Parnell strip will be realised''.
Glory Days? Ouch. That's maybe where the PR firm, or their clients, got their pitch just a little bit wrong. The Windsor Castle punks of AK79 might have grown mature more gracefully, might have swapped Suburban Reptiles for suburban mortgages, become less Sex Pistols and more Saturday night special, but they'd rather laser off their tats and let their tongue piercings grow over than be caught listening to Bruce Springsteen.