In 1964, 7000 Wellingtonians made their way to Rongotai airport to greet The Beatles.
A few months before the tour, Lew Pryme, a young Auckland reporter for Truth and
an aspirant pop singer, went to the box office at the St James on Queen
Street see the reaction when Beatles tickets went on sale. Unlike
Australia, where Beatles fans had camped for two or three days, “We went
down to get the story and low and behold, we were the first in the
queue,” said Pryme. “The conditions were wet and cold, and soon there
were something like three or four hundred fans behind us.”
The Beatles in the Auckland Town Hall, play between 26 and 28 minutes a night,
rattling through a set-list that on this tour was usually ‘I Want to
Hold Your Hand’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘You Can’t Do That’, ‘All
My Loving’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Till There Was
You’, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘This Boy’ and finally
‘Long Tall Sally’.
The Beatles in the Auckland Town Hall
On Thursday 25 June, The Beatles flew to Dunedin. Their plane was 30
minutes late because a phone call had been received in Auckland saying
there would be a “germ bomb” on board. Suspecting it was a prank from a
member of the tour entourage, an Auckland police inspector reportedly
locked the bands’ stage gear up for the night at their headquarters, and
his men searched through the personal luggage of the party.
The incident that dominated The Beatles’ visit to Dunedin occurred
when they arrived at the City Hotel. The police were unprepared for the
hysteria among the 2000 people outside, who crowded the entrance and
climbed onto the verandah above. The police took 10 minutes to form a
gap in the crowd, and were jostled as they escorted the band. John
Lennon was the last out of the car and by this time the police and
security men had had enough.
Dunedin broadcaster Neil Collins remembers
the police picking up Lennon and throwing him through the front door. “I
mean that. He was airborne when he reached that lift, and he was
wearing leather pants and he cut his knee open on the iron of the lift.”
Lennon stormed up to his room on the third floor, and refused to attend
the press conference.
"Germ" bomb threats on the flight to Dunedin
An unfortunate incident at the hotel in Wellington
“The only unpleasant incident was when a girl who had booked herself into the hotel tried to persuade a security guard to let her into The Beatles’ room. When he said she had no chance, she threatened to cut her wrists. He didn’t think she was serious, but when he ignored her, she took out a razor blade and slashed her wrists. She rushed back to her room and bolted the door. But I noticed the window to her room was slightly open, so a policeman got out onto the fire escape, pushed it open and got inside. She was there with a towel wrapped around her wrist. We sent for an ambulance and she was taken to hospital.
“The only unpleasant incident was when a girl who had booked herself into the hotel tried to persuade a security guard to let her into The Beatles’ room. When he said she had no chance, she threatened to cut her wrists. He didn’t think she was serious, but when he ignored her, she took out a razor blade and slashed her wrists. She rushed back to her room and bolted the door. But I noticed the window to her room was slightly open, so a policeman got out onto the fire escape, pushed it open and got inside. She was there with a towel wrapped around her wrist. We sent for an ambulance and she was taken to hospital.
The Beatles in Christchurch
The Beatles stayed at the Clarendon in central Christchurch, a grand old hotel where the Queen used to stay. Once again, female fans used the usual tactics to get inside to meet them, such as hiding in laundry baskets, but the mania was such that as The Beatles’ car got near the hotel, a 13-year-old girl lunged at the vehicle and was knocked down. She was taken inside the hotel and, for her trouble, got to meet The Beatles.
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