A new book paying homage to five decades of live music in New Zealand is proof, says one contributor, Herald entertainment editor Russell Baillie, that every generation has gigs to remember.
Every rock generation seems to assume theirs was the first and what went before doesn't matter. Then again, every passing rock generation also assumes it wasn't as good as it was in their day.
The book Live - a mammoth photographic record of rock 'n' roll tourists to New Zealand, which starts with Gene Vincent and ends with Lady Gaga - puts paid to both notions.
When its publisher and head writer Josh Easby got in touch to ask for my help to put a few words to some of the pictures, mostly those taken in the last 20 years of the 50 it covers, I was intrigued. The pictures were already largely collated and on the pages. And while the photos of the shows I ended up writing about brought back memories, it was the before-my-time sections that proved the more fascinating.
Sure, I had seen photos of the Beatles and their tikis, and the Stones causing civic mayhem from their 1960s visits. But I hadn't realised what other giants had strode our stages before. There were photos of Johnny Cash here in 1959 and again in 1971. There was Ray Charles, who I saw in 1997, playing at the Auckland YMCA in 1974. There was Led Zeppelin at their height in 1972 and James Brown in a Takapuna nightclub in 1978 ...
The pictures of those golden days, with co-author and former Auckland Star photographer Bruce Jarvis heading the work of more than a dozen lensfolk, also shows those were much different days.
Yes, they shot in black and white without motordrive or autofocus. But they also had more access to the visiting acts offstage while they were here - there's Neil Young windsurfing, Fleetwood Mac at one beach, Billy Joel at another. Back then, powhiri for the big stars weren't always dial-a-kapa-haka group affairs at the airport but the full marae salute - especially if you were a John Denver, a Bob Marley, a David Bowie, a Tina Turner or a Michael Jackson.
Come concert time, photographers then weren't restricted to the first-three-songs rule of so much live show photography today. So pictures like Jarvis' brilliant series of the Rolling Stones at Western Springs in 1973, or his shot of Marley at the same venue six years later, evoke an atmosphere and a sense that those sure were wilder sunnier times.
For us writers, including Easby, Phil Gifford, Rip It Up founder Murray Cammick (whose photographs also appear), Graham Reid and contributions from a dozen more, the book offered a chance to tell an old war story or two about the great gigs that we might have half-forgotten but which were restored to memory by the photographic evidence.
It's an I-was-there/Wish-I-was-there kind of book. And even if you were too young or too old for the vast number of shows it covers, Live is a volume that will have your ears ringing for days.
Live: Gigs That Rocked New Zealand by Bruce Jarvis and Josh Easby ($89.99, Hurricane Press) is published next week.
