Evergreen

100 EVERGREEN Autumn
(continued)
Shaw, Dusty Springfield, Millie Small,
The Searchers, Peter and Gordon, Eden
Kane, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The
Hollies, Billy J. Kramer and the Dave
Clark Five.
I was always glad I didn’t pay to see
The Beatles because it was impossible
to hear anything above the hysteria.
Whenever Paul McCartney shook his
head a woman sitting in the row behind
would start waving her handbag around,
hitting the person next to me on the
head. After a while he got fed up, reached
back without turning around, grabbed
the bag as it was about to hit again and
tossed it into the theatre! Whether she
got it back or not we will never know.
Our group arrived at The Rolling
Stones concert early and found the place
alive with police. We took our seats in
the front row and a policeman stepped
forward saying: “You look like sensible
girls, you won’t give us any trouble will
you?” We certainly didn’t give them
any trouble, but when Mick Jagger sang
“Walking the Dog” he turned his back
to the audience, wiggled his bottom and
the girl sitting next to me grabbed my
sleeve getting tighter and tighter as the
song and the wiggling progressed! At the
end of the song and with the final wiggle
she pulled so hard my sleeve ripped out!
The police standing in front of us were
smirking.
A huge bonus was meeting some of
the stars after the shows. We didn’t get
to meet The Rolling Stones or The
Beatles as they were hurried off by
their managers, but we did meet The
Searchers. Chris Curtis, the drummer,
was particularly nice. Soon after meeting
the group I began their New Zealand fan
club and to this day have the photograph
they personally signed for me.
Millie Small was sweet but she found
the cold in Christchurch a bit hard to
deal with, plus she was very homesick.
Conversations with performers were
often brief, but what stays with me
is that many of them were a little
bewildered by their fame. Without doubt
though, they all knew those euphoric
A reader recalls British pop groups,
including The Searchers, touring New
Zealand in the Sixties. See this and
previous page.