Intermission.  

Ho hum - and then, at last, it was The Beatles.  
Time seemed to slow down as they sauntered on stage (Paul might’ve skipped) and so I had time to drink in the trademark black-collar, silver-grey suits, the Beatle boots (!) the Beatle guitars, the Beatle guitar leads etc. I was slightly shocked that their hair was much longer than I was used to seeing in the pop magazines. 
I don't remember there being any roadies. No fold-back wedges either - but hardly anybody in NZ had heard of fold-back in those days.  Paul was the ever-cheerful spokesman, but unsurprisingly he didn’t try and say a lot, other than to briefly introduce the songs.  
And so it began.  
 I Saw Her Standing There, I Want To Hold Your Hand, You Can't Do That, Till There Was You, All My Loving, Boys, (welcome back Ringo!), She Loves You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, This Girl, Long Tall Sally and finally an angry Twist & Shout.  
At a tour standard twenty-five minutes duration, The Beatles' set was pretty short anyway, but I think the Christchurch shows might hold the record for the shortest twenty-five minute sets on the tour by a good two or three minutes. I suspect that there was more than a little anger smouldering in John Lennon’s corner, due to the events earlier in the day at the Clarendon Hotel, when the regulation balcony appearance by the boys to the thousands of worshipful fans in the street below was interrupted by some unruly and churlish young men throwing ‘raw eggs’ at our Fab Four, possibly the first such time this type of behaviour had been directed at the band.  
But, back to the show. Paul sang the most songs and, by contrast with John, George and Ringo, was clearly enjoying himself for the entire performance – and I reckon that he could be quite a percussive player of his famous left-handed Höfner violin bass when he got excited.
The second-last song of the set was Long Tall Sally, a Little Richard song and so a bit of a screamer in a high register - in other words, meat and potatoes for Paul. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I suddenly became aware there was something hanging from the neck of Paul’s guitar.  
I didn't have binoculars, but I eventually I was certain it was a bass string. Paul had broken a bass string! 
I saw no expression of dismay on McCartney's cherubic face and, although Long Tall Sally has quite a busy bassline, he effortlessly winged it through both Long Tall Sally and Twist & Shout with only three strings.    
It was towards the end of the show when the screamers had begun to lose their voices that they found a variation on the theme to display their ecstasy at The Beatles actually being here in our little English tribute town 12,000 miles from Liverpool. 
It was The Stomp.  
This rhythmic thumping was not only ominously loud, but it started having a discernible effect on the structure of the theatre and the circle was swaying up and down like a concrete trampoline.  
Richard and I looked at each other wondering if our first concert was also going to be our last, but our mother Lois remained blissfully serene, maybe because she’d seen it all before, or perhaps she was busy planning another exotic dish to impress the guests at the next party at our Cashmere Hills' home.
Sixty years on I honestly can’t say if experiencing The Beatles live in concert made any difference to the trajectory my life was already taking. It possibly confirmed my then undefined compulsion to follow a musical path, because, although I was enjoying my first year at Art School, the various streams of the visual arts didn’t appeal to me in the same visceral way as did the listening to and the bashing away at pop music. 
There was the obstacle of ‘the bursary’, a modest stipend that would support me for the projected four years at Art School but would demand of me four years plus of teaching to reimburse the government their investment. 
Whoa! That’s a large slice of my younger years doing something I only agreed to do because I couldn’t think of anything else.  
Luckily for me my maternal grandmother intervened, and when I failed to return to Art School for my third year, it was she, sweet Granyips, that paid back my debt to the government. 
My distinctly amateur band, just recently branded The Chants, didn’t have many gigs under its belt, but had temporarily acquired the services of a very professional bass-player in Pete Hansen, (also a former Christ’s College student), who had a regular gig at The Plainsman Club and was looking for something to do in his spare time.
The Battle of the Bands was taking place at the Addington Showgrounds and, with Pete’s expert guidance and encouragement, The Chants entered the competition - and won!   
I’m sure we played a sprinkling of Beatle songs on that day too, but the scene had already begun to change and we were starting to tackle material from the Rolling Stones and other blues-influenced UK groups, while also grappling with songs from US soul artists like James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.
The Chants' first single, recorded at 3YA, the local Classical radio station, reflected this naively random eclecticism. The A side was an Otis Redding song, I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, backed with a wildly derivative Chants’ original, I Want Her.
The Chants were on our way somewhere, but we had no idea where. We were young and were living in the moment, but we hadn't envisaged having to leave our residency at Mod-Central at the Stage Door in Hereford Lane.
Events, however, have a habit of overtaking young dreamers with no plans and those events were soon to take us a long way out of our comfort zone.
But that, as they say in the classics, is another story.