The Rolling Stones arriving in West Berlin on tour, in September 1965. Photo: AFP/ DPA - Konrad Giehr
This weekend marks 60 years since The Rolling Stones toured New Zealand. It was the band's first visit to New Zealand and Australia and at the time the longest travel they had undertaken in their career.
The tour included stops in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch, and their first New Zealand stop: Invercargill, in February 1965.
Dave Hogan grew up in Invercargill and was there to meet the Stones at Invercargill airport in 1965 - wearing his Marist Brothers High School uniform - and later bumped into the band and sat down for a drink with them.
He joined Music 101 to talk about his memories of their legendary performance at the town's Civic Theatre and the impact the visit had on the town.
"I was infatuated with the Rolling Stones because the year before their first release in New Zealand - I believe they'd had a couple of singles out in the UK before then - was a song called 'Not Fade Away', and it's with a really incredible harmonica, and I just fell in love with it.
"My grandmother had died recently, and there as a little bit of money and we were all allowed to choose a gift in the family - my brother and my sister and myself - so I chose a harmonica and a copy of the Rolling Stones' 'Not Fade Away' - and I drove my family mad by trying to learn to play it."
"And lo and behold, a few months later, there they are playing at our beautiful Civic Theatre."
The Rolling Stones 1965 NZ tour poster. Photo: The Brian Jones collection, sourced by John Baker
Hogan's older brother got tickets to the gig, which also starred Roy Orbison - who was a huge international star at the time - and announced they were going to the show.
"The Rolling Stones ... in 1965, they were not the celebrities that they are now, their big song 'Satisfaction' was yet to be written, and they were effectively a little blues band," Hogan said.
"There was a radio announcer on 4ZA Invercargill whose name was Jim Healey ... and he announced what plane, the time of the flight that they were arriving on, and all of the fans should go out and meet them - can you imagine anything like that happening now, that's insane!
"So I said to my mother that morning - it was a school day - 'I'm not going to school today, I'm going out to see the Stones'."
Hogan's mother, knowing how obsessed he was with the band, agreed to take him to see the Stones if he would go to school for the rest of the day.
"Here I am, absolutely mortified - out at the airport with my mother, in my Marist uniform with short pants, waiting to meet these long-haired scruffy idols of mine - at the time that seemed totally uncool, but now I love it," he said.
"There was no-one really there to meet them, I must have been the only person who wanted to. I was cowering in the corner like I was just gobsmacked, couldn't speak and looking on saying 'they're there, they're there' ...
"And mum said 'what are you doing', so she bowled over to them as they're in the foyer waiting for their luggage and says ... 'I've brought this boy of mine out here, he plays your music day and night. I've brought him out here on his way to school to meet you and he won't even come and say hello, can you come over and talk to him?'
"And they're all standing round talking to mum, and they all come over and start chatting."
The Stones signed Hogan's magazine poster, and he proudly pinned it inside his desk once he got back to school.
But luck struck again, and on his way home from school that day, Hogan saw Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and their manager Andrew Oldham having a drink in a coffee bar in Essex Street.
"They were so friendly and down to earth, that was the unbelievable thing," he said.
The Rolling Stones playing in Stockholm in April, 1965. From left, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones. Photo: AFP/ KB - Owe Wallin
They invited Hogan to sit down and bought him a coke, after which Richards said to him: "How the **** do you live here? - There's nothing here".
At the gig, Hogan estimates the crowd was about a 60:40 split of Roy Orbison fans and people there to see the Stones.
"The Stones certainly were not booed, like a lot of people have said. They went down well.
"They played 'Little Red Rooster', it was the first time I'd seen slide guitar, they did ... 'Not Fade Away', and I saw the harmonica use, and Chuck Berry songs 'Around and Around' and 'It's All Over Now'.
"They were just like the records - they were every bit as good, but a bit more exciting because it was just loud and right in your face. I'm like in heaven."
The Rolling Stones, not long after their tour to New Zealand, captured by Kiwi photographer Frank Habicht. Photo: Frank Habicht
Hogan has followed the Stones through the years, and bought every album they've released: "And I still play them, they're not just sitting there as a collection, they get played."
"I still am in touch with a lot of people who went to those shows, and a lot of people out there's grandparents - their grandmas were there in miniskirts and their granddads were there with hair hanging halfway down their back. And it was a free and easy wonderful time, I loved it. It can't think of a better place to grow up."
The Rolling Stones, in 2022. Photo: AFP
Many years later, Richards was infamously quoted as describing Invercargill as the arsehole of the world, which Hogan has sometimes been accused of repeating, by locals - though he said that is somewhat unfair, as that was not the quote he was responsible for.
Hogan went on to form a band with four friends, inspired by the Rolling Stones and The Pretty Things, another British blues rock band who visited New Zealand soon after.
"It was a very conservative town, but after learning to play the harmonica and seeing the Stones ... myself and four dear friends had formed a band that we called The Unknown Blues," Hogan said.
And the Unknown Blues also had their turn playing at the Civic Theatre, in about 1967.
"We stood out, because up until then all the bands wore suits and shirts and ties - as did everyone else who went to the dances - and we were dressing like the photographs we'd seen of the Stones, and ...we would get stared at in the street for what we were wearing and for daring to grow our hair down to our shoulders.
"And I think we broke the mould down there doing that - it wasn't an innovation in other parts of the world, but it was in Invercargill."
