Dunedin seemed well poised for the arrival of the Beatles. Headmasters of Dunedin schools were divided over whether to allow pupils to watch the Beatle motorcade as it drove past towards the centre of town. The manager of the City Hotel was suitably low key about the arrival of the Beatles. He anticipated crowds outside his hotel when the band left to perform at the Dunedin Town Hall, but beyond that it would be business as usual.
There were one or two warning signs, however. Four hundred fans from South-land, travelling in twelve buses, were scheduled to descend on Dunedin. Media hype was now intense, following events surrounding the Beatles’ visits to Wellington and Auckland. The relatively orderly airport arrival and trip into town led to a false sense of security. As the Beatles arrived at the hotel, over 2000 fans at the front of the crowd lurched forward. Hysteria reigned. The police were caught off-guard, as surging waves of humanity threatened to get out of control. Police and security guards were hopelessly outnumbered, and it took some time to force a way through the crowd to enable the Beatles to sprint from their car to the safety of the hotel. John Lennon was last to leave the car, by which stage the crowd were getting the better of the policemen. John found himself airborne, as he was picked up by police and security men and heaved bodily through the front door of the hotel.
It was a close call, the closest during the Beatles’ tour, and criticism of Dunedin’s security arrangements was loud. John, not surprisingly, was shaken by the incident, although he, along with the other Beatles, was gracious enough to appear, from the safety of the third floor, to wave to the very crowd that had come close to causing them real harm.
Bystanders stationed at the rear of the crowd, or viewing from vantage points in the vicinity of the City Hotel, were staggered at the way the large but apparently docile crowd turned into a beast once the Beatles arrived. In the staid, southern setting, such behaviour demonstrated that Beatlemania knew no bounds. Fans went sprawling as the mere presence of the Beatles incited mass hysteria. Dunedin had never seen a phenomenon to match it. Contingency plans were set in motion. After all, the Beatles would soon have to be spirited away from the hotel to the nearby Town Hall to perform two concerts that evening.
Max Merritt and the Meteors, a New Zealand band undertaking a South Island tour of their own, were staying at the hotel on 26 June when the Beatles descended. A plan was hatched whereby members of the Meteors would be used as decoys to divert the attention of the crowd. It was simply a matter of the now-deputised Meteors combing their hair forward, turning their collars up and hightailing it out the front door, through the throng and into a waiting car. What had seemed like a lark at the beginning became a hair-raising experience as the crowd, taking the bait, homed in on the substitute Beatles. Although the car carrying the decoys managed to ease away, once the car had stopped several hundred metres away, and the four extremely dishevelled non-Beatles emerged, members of the crowd turned nasty at such deception. A good deal of jostling ensued, although once the crowd realised the Beatles were supposedly still in the hotel, they turned their attentions elsewhere.
Meanwhile the Beatles had snuck out the back entrance, and before the crowd could regroup and resume their endeavours, the genuine articles had made it to the Town Hall.
City fathers and other authority figures had expressed the notion that once the Beatles arrived in the South Island, they would be greeted in a more decorous manner than that displayed in the north. The events in Dunedin put paid to such wishful thinking. In fact, the Dunedin concerts were as chaotic as anything Wellington or Auckland could muster. It was true. Beatlemania was real. Someone said that had the Beatles appeared in Invercargill, a similar explosion would have occurred.
Following the second Dunedin concert, the authorities took no chances and the Beatles were transported in a traffic cop car, complete with wailing siren, back to the City Hotel. This time they made it unscathed, but Dunedin and the rest of New Zealand had cause to contemplate the bizarre forces unleashed by the presence of four musicians who had themselves become both victims and prisoners of their own outrageous success.
By the time the Beatles hit Christchurch on 27 June for the final concerts of their New Zealand tour, the authorities and fans knew what to expect. Originally, the Beatles were scheduled to stay at the Shirley Lodge, a rambling establishment set on seven and a half acres of largely unpatrollable territory. Security fears led to the visitors being assigned rooms in the Clarendon Hotel, a more secure unit, where royalty stayed when they were in town.
Despite such security measures, determined females were still able to storm the barricades in laundry baskets. And no one could apply forward planning to the phenomenon of egg-throwing males who managed to splatter the Beatles with their missiles in a gesture of jealousy because the Beatles were deflecting their girlfriends’ attentions.
At the press conference held at the hotel during the afternoon, the Beatles themselves applied their ready wit to the egg-throwing incident, recognising that New Zealand was an agricultural country and eggs were very much part of the local economy. One journalist who attended the conference noted in his diary for that day:
Earlier, at the airport, comments were made regarding New Zealand’s rugby heritage. As a security fence collapsed under the weight of surging fans, one intrepid youngster broke through, only to be levelled in a flying tackle by a policeman. Thoughts were expressed that the policeman was probably an All Black in police garb.
Christchurch paraded its first fine day for weeks, and the Beatles and their worshippers warmed to the occasion. There was an added dimension to the Beatles’ two concerts at the Majestic Theatre in the evening – the realisation that the moptops would soon be departing. That didn’t prevent the usual, and now accepted, frenetic scenes and noise levels. Some concert-goers were forced to retreat from the venue when the din became unbearable. Once again it was impossible to ascertain whether it was the thunderous noise of the band or the shrieking of the audience that caused the back-off. Jelly beans and marbles rained down on the Beatles but, troupers to the end, they didn’t miss a beat. Support beams sagged as fans stamped their feet, but in an era when things had been built to last, the Majestic absorbed everything the Beatles and their followers could throw at it.
The following day the Beatles left Christchurch and New Zealand, bound for Brisbane. By now the New Zealand police had cottoned on to the measures that were required to spirit the famous Liverpudlians out of the city. A decoy car, complete with open doors and driver at the wheel, diverted the 2000-plus crowd, while the Beatles were whisked away in a car that had been stationed half a block away from the Clarendon Hotel.
Ideally there should have been some semblance of an official farewell, but the very nature of Beatlemania made such a gesture futile, even if it had been contemplated. At Christchurch Airport another 2000 fans provided a typical Beatle farewell, variously fainting and surging and, in the case of one girl, showing such distress that members of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade saw fit to administer a sedative. As the Beatles stood on the stairs leading to their aircraft (TEAL Electra, Akaroa), they waved goodbye to Christchurch and New Zealand.
Behind the security fence, the surging fans, contorted by the reality that the Beatles were leaving New Zealand for ever, went into spasm. It was bad enough being caught up in basic Beatlemania, but to realise you were participating in a Beatle farewell – well, it was just too much. It was almost too much for the security fence as well.
I remember the fame of a sixteen-year-old boy from Geraldine called Frank Tweedale who went to Christchurch to see the Beatles. Apparently he saw the Beatles outside their hotel and got close enough to touch George Harrison’s hand and subsequently didn’t wash his own hand for months. I considered that to be very romantic at the time, although I was not sure why. It was probably related to the song ‘I want to hold your hand’. It wasn’t anything sexual, more a religious experience.
JAN HEDGE, STUDENT/WRITER, HAMILTON
As a parting shot, a youth managed to clear security and was about to run up the gangway to the Beatles’ plane when an airport security officer very nimbly intercepted the runaway and returned him to the auspices of the Christchurch Police Department. The Beatles, by no means oblivious to the turmoil they had unleashed, settled back as their flight took them to Auckland, and then on to Brisbane.
New Zealand, like the rest of the western world, would never be the same. It wasn’t just the songs. After all, New Zealand experts had been totally perplexed that ‘good old rock ’n’ roll’ could cause such an upheaval. There was more to it than met the ear.
‘All they do really is sing and play two and a half-minute-long pop songs,’ one policeman declared. ‘I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about.’
I received a surprise phone call from the late Sir Robert Kerridge of Kerridge Odeon Corporation Ltd in Auckland, enquiring as to my willingness to take on the role of New Zealand manager for the Beatles during their New Zealand tour. Three other managers from the UK and Australia were also involved. It may have been a surprise call, but it was an extremely pleasant surprise. I was already a fan of the Beatles.
I travelled on four flights with the Beatles, joined their entourage through city streets teeming with screaming teenagers, and stayed at the Beatles’ hotels in the four main centres. I worked in conjunction with the New Zealand Inspector of Police and security guards from Wellington to develop strategies to control the crowds outside the Beatles’ hotels and the various town halls and other concert venues throughout New Zealand.
It was a frenetic and busy time. The Beatles, because of their tight concert schedule and the restrictions placed on them by Beatlemania, did not enjoy as many sightseeing ventures as they might have liked. They were not able to operate like regular tourists. Yet despite their inability to meet many New Zealanders face to face, their impact on the lives of young New Zealanders, in particular, was immense.
I was privileged to be able to welcome them when they first touched down in New Zealand, and was there when they bade us farewell. The Beatles’ tour of New Zealand created attendance records and turned the country on its ear. It seems unlikely that any similar tour by a rock band will ever match the excitement and upheaval.
TREVOR KING, NEW ZEALAND BEATLES TOUR MANAGER, CHRISTCHURCH