Goneville by Nick Bollinger

Author:Nick Bollinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Awa Press

But there were musical rewards, such as working with Ricky May. This virtuoso vocalist had played nightclubs around New Zealand - including a residency at Wellington’s Sorrento, with Bruno Lawrence on drums - before moving to Australia in 1962 when he was just nineteen. Holden brought May home in 1974 for a tour of the Lion circuit. ‘We had three hired Hillman Avengers,’ Davies remembers, ‘and Ricky always came with me. Somehow he’d got the impression that whatever town we were in I’d know somebody he could buy pot from.

‘We both loved jazz and we both liked Sinatra. I sort of grew up on jazz - my mother was a fan - so Ricky and I connected quite well. We’d play an opening piece, then anything could happen, anything at all. One night at the Lion Tavern while he was singing he came up and said into my ear, “Don’t you fucking know ‘Roll Over Beethoven’?” I said, “Of course I do.” “Well sing it!” He took over the drums and there I was, out front in a dinner suit and sandshoes. He was a bugger like that. But a brilliant musician.’

The Distillery was not the last alcohol-themed band on the Breweries’ roster. Over the next two years the circuit would see names such as Auckland group Beam (as in Jim Beam bourbon) and Pilsener, a six-piece combo from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, renamed by Holden to promote Lion’s latest lager.

By the mid 70s Richard Holden was managing an entertainment budget upwards of two million a year, roughly $22 million in today’s money. As well as providing our younger patrons with the best musical entertainment there is available, we are assisting to foster professional music in this country,’ Lion’s general manager, John Macfarlane, announced in Brewnews, the company’s bimonthly publication. ‘For the first time we are offering a secure and continuing opportunity for professional groups, who no longer have to concern themselves with trying to fit in part-time outside employment with their musical commitments.’

Holden’s approach didn’t always win him friends, particularly among the other booking agents. Mike Corless had started out in the late ‘60s as a drummer in Hawke’s Bay before founding a series of agencies that would keep him in the music business for more than four decades. These days he is wiry, greying and goateed, with a twinkle in his eye and rock ‘n’ roll teeth.

‘I can’t remember anything, Nick,’ he says. ‘I’m hopeless. But come on, you can jog my memory.’ We are sitting in St Kevins Arcade on Auckland’s Karangahape Road waiting for coffee. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘how did you get started in the management business?’

‘It started with ten o’clock closing,’ he says. ‘People like Bobby Davis, Ray Woolf, Bunny Walters, all the television stars who used to work the cabarets started working the pubs. I started Topline Entertainment in Hastings. We were booking them to come and play with a local band. They would have to rehearse first of all, then work the pubs for two or three nights.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.