Beatlemania takes hold in Britain and spreads throughout the Commonwealth throughout 1963.
“It is easy to be superior about pop music, but facts must be faced, and a fact confronting us today is the spectacular success of four young men known as The Beatles … Youth must now and then break through the restraints we impose upon it; and it is better done vicariously in a concert hall than elsewhere in violent actuality. ‘Yeh’ is not the best way of saying ‘Yes’ but it is probably the loudest … We do not propose, however, to carry this tolerance – or brief infatuation – to a sacrificial pitch. It is our hope and indeed firm intention that, having heard The Beatles once, we shall not hear them again.” ― Listener editor Monte Holcroft in the December 15, 1963 issue, a month before the NZ tour is announced
The Beatles arrive on a TEAL airliner from Australia on Sunday, June 21, landing at the capital’s Rongotai Airport, where they are greeted by thousands of fans and a local Māori cultural group.
They invited our club, the Te Pātaka Māori Group, to give the welcome. We didn’t know how important The Beatles were until we got there. It was crowded and people were climbing up on those big fences – we were the only ones allowed inside the gates. We did the pōwhiri and as they came down, we presented them with the tikis, great big ones, given to us by Tourist and Publicity, I think. We were a bit shy and we were so scared to meet them. I was married at the time with a child and oh, I felt like a teenager! I think it was Ringo Starr I picked out. I just said “Kia ora, and welcome to New Zealand,” and we pressed noses. He was great. ― Donas Nathan
When The Beatles arrived on the Sunday afternoon, about 4000 people gathered on the corner outside the hotel – they made the crowds for Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh look like a handful. Twenty policemen were outside the front door to give the crowd the impression The Beatles were going in there. But I was waiting in the bottle store at the side of the hotel with about 12 policemen. On the pavement outside was a sergeant who, as The Beatles came down Willis St, gave the signal – he lifted his hat and rubbed his forehead. I unlocked the door and the policemen stepped out as The Beatles’ car stopped at the kerb. The Beatles rushed out of the car like rats from a cage then made their way to the third-floor balcony, where they waved to the crowd.
The Beatles were playing a big game, with big money at stake, so they couldn’t afford to put a foot out of step. We had no problems with them, but the support band who never had anything to do with The Beatles played up – they messed up their rooms, damaged furnishings, even slashed some mattresses. But The Beatles were happy; they stayed in their rooms, where they ate all their meals and made a lot of toll calls home. ― Frank Drewitt, manager of the Hotel St George
I was at 2ZB with Pete Sinclair and I remember standing on the balcony of the St George Hotel and looking down on a sea of people completely blocking Perrett’s Corner – thousands and thousands of screaming fans – and we asked The Beatles what they thought of their welcome in New Zealand and they said, “Very conservative.” Every question we asked, that’s all they’d say – “Yeah, it’s very conservative, really.” I was told to interview The Beatles and to get them to say, “Hello New Zealand, this is Ringo speaking.” So Ringo did that, and then he passed the mike to Paul and he said, “Hello New Zealand, this is Ringo speaking, and that’s a lie for a kick-off, ‘cos it’s Paul.” ― Broadcaster Johnny Douglas
I managed to secure a Spanish guitar for Paul McCartney on a Sunday, which was no mean feat. I got the manager of Beggs Music Store in Wellington to open up his shop and get one out for him. He wanted to work on a composition, but I’m sorry to say I can’t remember which song. In return for that I was allowed to get a great deal of exclusive interview material, I hung around in The Beatles’ suite with all The Beatles all the time they were in Wellington. They were all very easy to be with. It’s just astonishing that they were such an incredible legend – the streets outside were just a mass of people, waiting to get a glimpse of them, and in fact they were just four awfully nice kids from Liverpool. ― Broadcaster Pete Sinclair
The band plays two shows a night at the Wellington Town Hall on June 22 and 23.
The next day, Monday, June 22, the whole town was agog – the papers were full of photos of their arrival, photos at the St George, all the shoe shops advertising Beatle boots, Beatle wigs and Beatle jackets, jumping on the bandwagon. I went to the first show on the Monday and I had a front-row ticket – A13 – and there was a row of policemen in front of me with all their helmets under the seats.
Being in the front row, we could actually hear it – the music was good, just like the records. The guitar was good and you could hear the words. I remember John Lennon saying “Shuddoop” and the crowd gradually quietened down. It was quite quiet at one stage, the crowd must have screamed themselves out, and George must have done a few little dance steps, and the crowd went berserk! Just because he actually moved!
Ringo sang a song, too – Boys – and that brought the house down. Ringo was always the ugliest, but the average person always liked him. There were no great crowd surges at the concert I was at, just a bit of derring-do – the occasional girl would run down the aisle and try and throw herself on the stage and just get dragged away. ― Damien O’Shaughnessy
I can remember pleading and wanting to go, and Greg – who was 14 – wouldn’t take me, because I was his 10-year-old sister and he didn’t want to be seen dead with me. So Mum said, “Well, I’ll take you then.” We were at the back of the Town Hall upstairs, and I can remember Greg was sitting about three or four rows in front of us, horribly embarrassed that we were so close. Everyone was screaming and I can still see my mum with horrible black glasses which pointed up at the sides and she had cotton wool in her ears. She was paranoid about the noise. ― Andrea Goodwin
We just walked up the stairs of the St George. That’s all. As we came out at the sixth floor, Ringo was just going across the foyer and we grabbed him! So, amid great excitement, he signed our arms – and we were all saying, “Oh! It’s really him!” We just couldn’t believe it. There was a photographer there and a reporter from the Dominion and the next day our pictures were in the paper. Back at school we got called out at assembly while our friends said, “Look, she’s going to make you scrub the signatures off.” So we put false signatures on our other arm. The headmistress produced the Ajax and said, “Scrub it off”, so we all pulled up the wrong sleeve and she said, “And I’m going to check both arms.” ― Winkle Pettit
The band flies to Auckland for shows on June 24 and 25 with a civic reception in front of the Town Hall in between.
At my school – Mt Roskill Grammar – dozens wagged to go to the civic reception. There had been dire warnings at morning assembly of the consequences but many caught buses into the city. At 14, it seemed the most wonderful thing that had happened in our lives – the Beatles had chosen to visit our city. My memory of the civic welcome is simply noise – we cheered everybody. The crowd was so big, when I lifted my leg up to scratch my foot I couldn’t put it down again. I went to the concert with a boy I wanted to impress so l didn’t wear my glasses and The Beatles were just a blur in the distance. We were all screaming. Screaming was a way of loving them – they gave us so much, and we just had to give it all back to them. ― Susan
The tour heads to the Dunedin Town Hall for one night, June 26.
Every man and his dog was at the Dunedin press conference, asking idiotic questions – which one is which? Have any of you played for The Rolling Stones? Later on that night, the promoters asked me to be a decoy while The Beatles sneaked into the Town Hall.
We all thought it was great fun, so we did it, but as we did, the crowd surged forward and there were people yanking and pulling at our hair. Meanwhile, The Beatles scurried out the back entrance of the hotel and got into a little Ford. They were in and out before anyone ever knew. I said to Paul McCartney, “I can’t believe you go through that performance every time you leave a hotel – you must be battered and bruised,” and he said, “Look, we told your bobbies, ‘ere, you’re going to ‘ave crowds and pushing and shoving, and they said to us, ‘Don’t tell us about crowd control – we’ve ‘ad Vera Lynn through ‘ere twice.” ― Neil Collins, Dunedin broadcaster
I was still at school. I was spotty with a school cap. At the concert we were about eight rows from the front, and I remember there was this young girl near us and she had a knitted hat with “Ringo” on it. She threw it up on the stage and John Lennon picked it up and threw it to Ringo. He caught it on his drumstick and popped it on his head – and this girl fainted. I’ll never forget that. She just passed out; she was rapt – it was all too much. Here was Ringo with her hat on his head. ― Wayne Mowat, Dunedin broadcaster
Then it’s north to Christchurch for their final two shows on June 27 and a flight out to Brisbane the following day.
They were staying in the Clarendon Hotel, which is the last of Christchurch’s stately hotels, where the Queen always used to stay. They must have wondered what had hit them. The staff were at their wits’ end because teenage girls are fairly inventive and they were turning up in laundry baskets and all sorts of things to try and be smuggled into the hotel.
At the concert, there was the supporting act of Johnny Devlin back on his native soil – in leather gear with bumps and grinds, etc – really, you felt you were in the middle of a volcano that was waiting to erupt. With The Beatles, because of the continual screaming, you didn’t hear much of the actual music – you’d hear the opening bars and then away they’d go again.
The only song that I actually heard in the whole performance was Till There Was You, which Paul sang. Being so quiet, everybody actually listened. The next day they left the country, so we had to do one more outside broadcast out at the airport. This time, the crowd seemed even bigger, and they seemed to be breaking through more and more and I heard one cop who’d obviously had his fill say, “If that bloody plane doesn’t go in the next few minutes, I’ll push it off myself!” ― John Craig, Christchurch
The aftermath
Well, they have come and gone, the most fabled young men in the world. Ten thousand throats are raw, ten thousand tear ducts dry. A two-day state of siege is lifted in the cities, policemen return to more usual “beats”, and the hearts of the young are heavy with loss. Last August, I was abroad and, thinking fondly of my elder daughter, sought to tell her what was with it in the British pop world. I sat solemnly through sessions of Juke Box Jury on TV and noted the hits, read the popular press, kept my ears to the air and to the ground. I dutifully reported my researches, and commented as follows: “The most popular group here at the moment seems to be The Beatles. Have you heard of them?” Her reply was blistering. “You are,’’ she wrote with acid affection, “the most complete [expletive] in the business.” Crushed, I returned in December to find her wallpaper obliterated by huge portraits of John, George, Paul and Ringo; her bookcase stacked with magazines exclusively devoted to them; her shoes all mysteriously pointed; her drawers stuffed with weird trinkets; the radiogram never free of the decisive (for it is nothing, if not that) Mersey Beat.
I am now with it. I know every word of their recorded songs, every plangent thrum of their guitars, every detail of their lives, what they say, what they read, what they eat, what they think. It has been no effort; with my household rocking to the beat and littered with the icons and mythology of the cult, it has been as painless as osmosis.
And, like many thousands of others, I have at last seen them on the stage, watched them in action and knew, from time to time, which songs they were performing, when my daughter and her thousand-throated friends drew breath. ― Bruce Mason, Listener music critic, July 10, 1964 issue
Compiled by Russell Baillie. Photos from When We Was Fab: Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964. To read more about the ‘64 tour, go here.