Real Life: Shane Hales, the 77-year-old Kiwi singing icon booked out until 2025

Shane Hales – whose song ‘Saint Paul’ was one of the biggest hits by a New Zealand artist in the late ‘60s – is still on tour to this day. Photo / Ben Fraser

Iconic New Zealand singer Shane Hales MNZM may have started his career nearly six decades ago, but he’s still packing out venues well into his late 70s.

Known best by his stage name Shane, the rocker – whose song ‘Saint Paul’ was one of the biggest hits by a New Zealand artist in the late ‘60s – is still on tour to this day.

And with a packed performing schedule until Christmas 2024, he’s not planning on hanging up the microphone any time soon.

“I never thought I’d have a job at 77 years old – a good job that I love. It’s been perfect,” Shane told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.

“Now I look around the world, and there’s a lot of the good old rockers still going strong… It’s all the clean living,” he joked. “The clean living ones have hung in there. They pretended to be bad, but they weren’t really.”

Shane’s music career kicked off 58 years ago with an Australian band called the Pleazers in 1965, but it was the recording of Saint Paul, a homage to The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, that won him fans across the globe.

The track went to number one in New Zealand, was the 1969 winner of the Loxene Golden Disc for local song of the year, and presented him with opportunities to tour internationally.

Shane says the song has taken on “a life of its own”.

“It just keeps going. Even at gigs and concerts, people always say, ‘Are you going to sing Saint Paul?’ And they’re asking me in the first set. I do a three-hour show, and I save that until near the end just so I don’t lose them.

“The royalty cheques still come from that song, would you believe, 50-odd years later.”

While he left recording new music behind decades ago, Shane’s live shows have gone from strength to strength since the 2010s, and his diary is full months in advance. But he’s ready to give up performing whenever he feels like he can no longer do it to a high standard.

“The diary is fantastic. I can’t believe it. I’m looking at 78 years old and still working really hard. Next year is pretty much full right through to Christmas,” he told Cowan.

“Ray Columbus was my manager and my mentor many years ago. And he would say, ‘When I’m past it, tell me – don’t let me go on stage and make a fool of myself’… and that goes through my mind now: ‘Don’t let me do it’.”

For now, however, Shane’s voice is holding out, his energy is yet to fade, and he’s successfully battled back from Covid three times – so why would he stop now?

“People are booking further and further ahead, so who knows when it’ll end? The phone keeps ringing, and I keep answering and saying yes.”

Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.