Tag Archives: New Zealand

Sixty Years Since The Beatles Toured Australia and New Zealand

Posted on by
Reply

Here in Australia over the last week or so there’s been a lot of fond reminiscences of the time, sixty years ago now, that The Beatles came to this country.

Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC (kind of like the BBC in the UK) has just played a terrific hour-long documentary on The Music Show that is really worth a listen:

Click on the image above to stream. Or you can listen here:

One of the key guests on the show is Greg Armstrong, co-author with Andy Neill of a comprehensive new book all about the tour called When We Was Fab – Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964.

Greg is a Melbourne-born and based radio presenter, researcher and Beatle historian. He is a co-presenter on Australia’s Let It Be Beatles, the world’s longest-running radio show dedicated to the Beatles, on Melbourne’s WynFM. The show is now in its 31st continuous year, having broadcast over 1,400 episodes. Andy Neill is a UK-based music writer, researcher and historian, born in New Zealand. Alongside several other music biography books, he compiled and annotated Across The Universe: The Beatles on Tour and on Stage (2009) and Looking Through You: Rare and Unseen Photographs from the Beatles Book Monthly Archive (2015).

Their book is amazingly researched with a wealth of photos, memorabilia, stories and information. You can get a taste of what’s inside here.

When We Was Fab – Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964 is published by Woodslane Press.

Unusual New Zealand ‘All Things Must Pass’

Posted on by
Reply

We scored an unusual example of George Harrison’s 1970 solo triple LP All Things Must Pass the other day.

It’s an original, early pressing from New Zealand, and a couple of things set it apart.

Firstly the box. It has the familiar photograph of George and his gnomes in the garden of his home at Friar Park on the front, but the hinged box itself is not black, but a lovely deep blue colour which I hope you cane pick up in the images below:

As you can probably see, the front cover photo isn’t in great shape, having had something removed from the top left-hand corner, but otherwise the box itself is in reasonable condition. This box set is quite rare as only the first run of this album was shipped with the box made in New Zealand. After these ran out HMV NZ imported the Australian triple gatefold version of the sleeve.

Here’s the inside of the lid listing song titles and credits:

The three LPs inside come in the familiar inner lyric sleeves. However, these too are different in colour to other international versions:

And the orange Apple labels are also unique, done in that slightly washed-out colour tone common to New Zealand pressings:

These Apple labels don’t have the “cut” Apple on the flip side, while the third Apple Jam label is particularly nice:

Here are two close-ups of the New Zealand manufacturing credits:

And finally the box spine, with the gold lettering – this time on a deep blue background:(As usual, click on the images to see larger versions)

We also have an unusual Singaporean copy of All Things Must Pass that’s worth a look.

Who Is This Little Boy With John Lennon?

Posted on by
4

We received an email from a New Zealand reader named Mike who sent through the photograph below. A Pinterest post says “John Visiting A Long Lost Relative In New Zealand, 1964/5?”:
Mike writes:

“I am trying to find any information on who this little boy is with John in this photo. I have tried the below websites but have come up with nothing. I have asked Lynda Matthews, John’s second cousin living in New Zealand and she sure it’s not anyone on the New Zealand side of the family.”

See https://nz.pinterest.com/pin/301248662548914011/ and http://iheartthebeatles101.tumblr.com/post/95109795256/john-visiting-a-long-lost-relative-in-new-zealand

One response Mark has had said: “This would have been 1964 when The Beatles toured NZ! And it’s potentially in Levin, a small (pretty sleepy) town in NZ.“

Do any beatlesblogger.com readers have any further information? If so, please let us know.

We did a little bit of snooping around the Internet and found the same photo on the very interesting and informative Meet the Beatles For Real website. The consensus from those who made comments on the site is that this is not New Zealand at all. Rather, the photograph was taken in Scotland on April 30, 1964. The little boy is not a relative at all, but a boy who was staying at the same hotel as the Beatles and who also happened to be named John Lennon! That would seem to be backed up by this article on the Mersey Memories site (see the Lennon and Lennon section).

Do you have any idea who the child is?