John Lennon with Kiwi relatives (from left) Sue, Helen and Mark Parker, of Levin, during the Beatles 1964 New Zealand tour. Photo / Alexander Turnbull LIbrary EP/1964/2089-F
Before John Lennon and the Beatles were superstars, he was described as a "naughty" boy in family letters to his relatives in faraway New Zealand.
Annie Parker of Levin corresponded with her cousin Mimi Smith in Liverpool, an aunt of Lennon, who raised him.
"She had this boy and he was in this band, and always doing naughty things," says Sue Snaddon, Parker's daughter.
"She was always telling him he had to get a proper education and a proper job, but that didn't happen."
That naughty boy then brought eight days of mayhem to New Zealand, 55 years ago this month, and met several of his Kiwi rellies who today still get excitement from sharing their memories of the global superstar and songwriting genius.
Smith used her nephew and his band's concert as an excuse to meet the New Zealand relatives.
Smith and Parker's mothers were sisters and the latter moved from the UK to New Zealand with her young family.
Smith spent several months in New Zealand, including staying for weeks at the Parkers' farm with Annie, her husband and children Sue, Helen and Mark.
Beatlemania had broken out in the UK in late 1962, when high-pressure hoses were used to control crowds before a concert.
The fan hysteria intensified through 1963 after the band's debut album, Please Please Me, was released in March that year.
New Zealand wasn't immune to music hysteria.
Johnny Devlin, "New Zealand's Elvis", had inspired girls to scream at his shows with his Presley-style grinding and wriggling, or leg-shaking as he called it.
A fire hose was even used to control hysterical fans in Greymouth. Devlin would play as a supporting act or the Beatles.
The Fab Four began their New Zealand tour in Wellington, landing at the airport to a screaming crowd of 7000 fans, mostly young women and girls, 30 police officers and a Māori concert party.
Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr twisted and shouted and turned New Zealand upside down, playing in Auckland, Dunedin and Christchurch.
Snaddon remembers Smith staying with her family when she was 14 years old. She visited the Beatles at the Hotel St George, where they were staying, before one of their four concerts in Wellington, with Smith, her parents and siblings.
"We all sat around in one of their lounges and had afternoon tea and chatted; two photos were taken, then we went to the concert," she tells the Herald on Sunday.
She met only three Beatles — McCartney was "busy entertaining a lady".
"John wanted to give us stuff, he was very generous to all his extended family. He gave money to Mimi to take me to the jewellers and to get something to remember him by — bangles."
They are inscribed, "To Susan from John Lennon".
"I loved the Beatles growing up and still love their music," says Snaddon, now 69 and living on the Kapiti Coast.
But brother Mark wasn't inspired by the concert.
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"I wasn't into music. I'm still not into music. It didn't do a great deal for me.
"I was 12 and a boy and liked sport. If you said to me go and meet the All Blacks or go and meet the Beatles, I would have said All Blacks. I wasn't that keen.
"I didn't speak to John, I don't think. I sat down on the floor and Ringo, who seemed quite an open sort of fellow, came and sat down beside me and I talked to Ringo for a while. I don't remember what he talked about. Mimi stayed at our farm. She was in my bedroom for at least a few weeks."
Smith also stayed at the family farm near Eketahuna of Parker's brother, who was a baby when their parents moved to New Zealand.
His daughter Lynda Mathews was 17 and became part of a Wairarapa journalistic plan that took her to their hotel rooms in Wellington.
"Because I was John's second cousin, the local newspaper was able to arrange a meeting with John and the other Beatles," she tells the Herald on Sunday. "I had to be taken through the crowd of girls abusing me and spitting at me — the police had to take me through. It was quite frightening because it was so crowded and tight."
"Hello love," was Lennon's greeting to her, she says, and he asked about her family and Smith.
In Graham Hutchins' book, Eight Days A Week: The Beatles' tour of New Zealand 1964, Mathews wrote: "Derek Taylor, the Beatles' publicity officer, identified the family likeness when he met me."
"I remember sitting on a bed in the Beatles' hotel room, sipping whisky and Coke," wrote Mathews, who now lives in Upper Hutt.
"I saw the first evening show and, after John had given me free tickets, part of the following afternoon's session."
Meanwhile Ringo Starr — whose given name is Richard Starkey — met his Starkey relatives of Karori.
Historian and journalist Redmer Yska told the Herald on Sunday he was at school with a Starkey girl, who had "quite a lot of mana" through her Beatles connection.
The Beatles tour was a revolution: the moment young New Zealand plugged into global youth culture, says Yska.
The country was opening to the world as never before through television, then new, and the beginning of mass air travel overseas.
When the Beatles plane arrived in New Zealand on June 21, 1964, one girl's leg was cut as she tried to climb the fence, which was at risk of collapse. The fence was cut open and people were forced through it by people pushing from behind.
"We underestimated the whole thing badly," senior police officer Bill Brien recalled, according to an account written by Yska.
Te Pataka concert party performed a haka, giant tiki were presented and there was a hongi with the Beatles, eliciting quips from Ringo, "Hey fook. We come in peace," and from Lennon, "Me wife will kill me for this."
They toured the crowd in the back of a police ute and switched to cars for the drive to the city and the Hotel St George, where thousands of fans packed the streets.
To avoid the throng they were sneaked into the hotel through a bottle shop and taken to the third-floor balcony to greet fans.
"The balcony appearance by the group turned the crowd into a screaming frenzy," the Press Association reported at the time.
The shows typically consisted of 10 or 11 songs, including I Want to Hold Your Hand, All My Loving and Twist and Shout. The shortest show of the tour, at 26 minutes, was in Christchurch.
At the Wellington Town Hall, the audience's screaming was said to have been louder than the music.
Devlin complained about the sound system and Lennon joined in, reportedly shouting backstage: "What the f***ing hell is going on?"
McCartney too was unhappy: "We have sung through worse mics, but not very often; usually during the early days. We expected better here."
The band were trampled and mauled as they tried to get to their hotel in Auckland and Lennon later said the lack of security nearly led to the city's shows being cancelled.
Starr, after being slightly injured, was said to have refused to play more shows until assured of a sufficient police presence.
Lennon later said: "It got a bit rough in New Zealand. A big clump of my hair had gone and I don't mean just a bit. I was halfway on the ground. They put three or four police on for three or four thousand kids and refused to put any more on."
In Christchurch they were pelted with tomatoes and eggs on their Clarendon Hotel balcony, and with marbles and jelly beans in their show. Among the massive crowds out to see their arrival in the city, a 13-year-old girl threw herself at the bonnet of the car. She bounced off uninjured.
A crowd of 2000 was at the city's airport when they left, bound for Australia.
There was a wave of youth culture in the 1950s, says Yska, author of the book All Shook Up: The flash bodgie and the rise of the New Zealand teenager in the Fifties.
These pressures had been partly held back by the Government-commissioned Oswald Mazengarb report into juvenile delinquency and the related moral panic over teenage sex.
There was a current of mainstream conservative adult dislike of the Beatles because the Liverpool quartet were considered rough and tough and working class and "they had lots of rings and long hair".
"It was like they were from another planet," says Yska.
Former Auckland City Council member and Auckland Rugby president Tom Pearce, father of Waitākere Ranges Local Board member Sandra Coney, objected to Mayor Dove-Myer Robinson's holding a civic reception for the band.
"If we are going to pander to the hysteria, antics, adulation, rioting, screaming and roaring, and all the things these bewigged musicians engender, I think we should make a point of honouring any youths with a sporting background who are at least endeavouring to act in the best traditions of the young men of this nation."
Council colleague Sir Keith Park, a World War I fighter ace and a World War II Royal Air Force chief, wanted future civic receptions restricted to "very important people". "I have nothing to say against the Beatles," he asserted at the time. "They give an immense amount of pleasure and fun to thousands of young people. It is not up to us older ones to deny them this childish entertainment."
Yska said the police attitude to the Beatles appeared to be: "We didn't want them here and we can't be bothered with them … so they didn't look after them."
Snaddon and Mathews never met Lennon again, but cherish the memory of meeting him and his band. Snaddon stayed in touch with Smith and says she was sent Lennon's book.
After he was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building in 1980, Mathews says she was devastated. "It was unbelievable. It was just awful."
Lennon had sent her a telegram after she became engaged, and sent another to her wedding.
"I still have some excitement," says Mathews. "It's unbelievable. To think I'm actually related to him is a bit remarkable."
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