50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEATLES' NEW ZEALAND TOUR

Next week marks 50 years since The Beatles toured New Zealand.

It was a tour that changed New Zealand pop culture, and anniversary celebrations have already begun.

They called it Beatlemania and New Zealand wasn't immune. On June 21, 1964 The Beatles arrived in Wellington at a time when few international bands came to New Zealand.

It was John Lennon's family connections that drew them here. 

"Yes, that's what we were told," says Lennon's second cousin, Lynda Mathews. "We had that close relationship with John and he'd always wanted to come to New Zealand, and the managers said that that's why."

Mathews was 17. Lennon's Aunt Mimi, who raised him, stayed at her Ekatahuna family home and Mathews was taken by a reporter to meet her second cousin for a newspaper article. No ID was needed.

"The manager just came straight over to me and said, 'I don't even need any proof. I can tell just by looking; I can see the likeness.'"

Getting into the building in the first place was the biggest challenge.

"We had to get a police escort to take us through the crowd, and girls were spitting and hissing and booing and carrying on because we were being taken through and they weren't able to get through."

She got to meet the whole band and got an insight into what their lives were like.

"John talked about how now that they'd become so famous life wasn't so enjoyable because they were shut in hotel rooms and life wasn't as great as he'd thought it would be when they became famous."

That was 50 years ago. Today in Wellington people met to share their memories of the tour. Trevor Morley was a police constable at the time and remembers it like it was yesterday.

"Someone once said to me, 'What was my most abiding memory of the visit?' And I didn't say the music, I said the noise that could be heard from 50,000 screaming girls in the town hall."

The music could hardly be heard above the screams, and Lennon nearly called the tour off because the sound wasn't up to scratch. Fifty years on there are still many who are glad he did not.