Between 1960 and 1962 Peter Grattan was enrolled at St Peter’s College in Cambridge, a boarding school renowned for its music curricula. Singing in Guyon Wells’s famed choir cemented a love of music for life. At Oratia District School, Grattan’s music teacher was big-band leader Ernie Butters.
Before he hit his teens Grattan had a guitar and a set of bongos. In 1963 at Oratia District School, he played both at the school’s Xmas concert. “‘Blame It On The Bossa Nova’ was my bongo debut and I strummed ‘Tom Dooley’, ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ and ‘If I Had A Hammer’. Not long after that my dad came home with a copy of The Beatles’ Twist & Shout EP. My fate was sealed.”
Peter Grattan as a young boy with his first drum kit which cost £29 from Beggs. "5000+ gigs ago in Whangārei, March 1966". - Peter Grattan collection
In 1966 the Grattan family moved to Whangārei, briefly as it turned out, but it gave Peter Grattan a lifelong connection to Northland. At Whangārei Boys’ High School, bashing a “thirty quid mish mash of white drums,” Grattan helped form his first band, Cliff & The Clan. Guitarists Cliff Andrews and John Leigh Calder were both two years ahead of him at Whangārei Boys’ and bassist Gary Williams was closer to Grattan’s age. Later, when Andrews departed, they called themselves simply The Clan.
Playing the hits of the day, any musical deficiencies were offset by sheer enthusiasm. Young and energetic, they certainly looked the part, wearing a stage uniform which included matching tartan pants made by Grattan’s mother. The foursome shared the vocals but, Grattan says, “they only let me sing lead on two songs, ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Hang On Sloopy’.”
The Clan quickly became one of Northland’s top teenage bands. They opened for their heroes, The La De Da’s, and they backed Maria Dallas. They played a three-week summer residency in Kaitaia, and they were the opening act at a pop show in Okara Park, featuring Sandy Edmonds and Larry’s Rebels.
Cliff and The Clan, Whangārei, 1966. From left: Garry Williams, Peter Grattan, Cliff Andrews, John Calder.
Grattan recalls a small but vibrant music scene in Northland in the late-1960s: “Billy Taitoko aka Billy T James was starting out, and Reg Ruka, Hammond Gamble and Jimmy Lawrie were all kicking off their careers around the same time.
“Reggie Ruka was already a star, he was a star before he left school. He’d won a talent quest and he had heaps of ambition and talent and confidence. In the beginning, when we first started, Reg would loan us his bass amp in return for me doing his French homework.
And it wasn’t just the musos creating this scene, it had its own entrepreneurs, it wasn’t all youth clubs and church groups. Grattan specifically mentions Paul Newberry, “a Whangārei funeral director-cum-dance promoter who ended up with two venues in town, Club 46 and The Sky Lounge. Visiting groups from Auckland would sleep in the morgue!
“And in Kaitaia there was Monty Knight, a genius signwriter who now owns a vineyard up there. He was young himself back then, 21 I think, but he was married with a young daughter. He hired us for the Christmas ’66 residency, held at the Kaitaia Bowling Club pavilion, and again the following year when he had his own place, which he named Sergeant Pepper’s, which gives an indication of the era. We all slept in the whānau home.”
Not totally unexpectedly, young Peter’s academic endeavours suffered with the lack of focus but in 1967 his life was upended when his father suffered a major heart attack, prompting a shift to Auckland.
“I was still just 15 but there was no way I was going back to school in Auckland. Through The Clan gigs, I’d managed to save £300 and I bought my first set of Ludwigs [drums]. In Auckland I auditioned for Ray Woolf & The Avengers and also for The Fair Sect. I got the gig both times but I had no transport so I couldn’t get around, and playing at The Embers until 2am was a definite no-no to my parents.”
The Marble Arch, briefly renamed The Saint Ludwig Group for Peter Grattan’s debut with them at the Mount Roskill War Memorial Hall, 1967. Left to right, David Pou, Rangi Williams, Peter Grattan, Paul Hewson, John Hewson.
His first Auckland band was Marble Arch, who had formed at a Mormon youth club and featured Paul Hewson. “A genius even then,” says Grattan. A few months later Grattan joined The Green & Yellow, but he would later reunite with Paul Hewson.
Poster for Battle of the Bands at Auckland Town Hall, August 1967. Out of 50 bands competing, The Green & Yellow won the contest that year. - Peter Grattan collection
The Green & Yellow had already enjoyed some success, having won a battle of the bands at the Auckland Town Hall (the Aussie promoter scarpered with the takings, no prizes, but that’s another story). Throughout the year, Peter Grattan would divide his time between his own musical aspirations and a day job, of sorts.
With his folks expecting a more secure occupation, Grattan’s mother came to the rescue with what must have been any teenager’s fantasy job. She was friends with Sadie Miller, mother of promoter Harry M. Miller, by then based in Sydney, who needed an Auckland assistant. With no experience but an awful lot of enthusiasm, Grattan was hired. Before the year was out, he had toured with some of his musical heroes, including the Animals, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, Roy Orbison, the Walker Brothers, and the Yardbirds.
“It was all an eye-opener for a 15-year-old,” Grattan says. An observer rather than a participant, young Peter was present during the Animals’ tour antics with groupies at Rotorua’s Geyserland Hotel, which led to the tabloid headline “Monkey House Morals Of Pop Fans”. He watched Gene Pitney beat everyone else at poker on the tour bus, and there were backstage dramas with diva Shirley Bassey. And then, in January 1968, there was the tour which resulted in Harry M. Miller turning his back on rock’n’roll altogether, and subsequently ending Grattan’s association with the promoter.
The Who-Small Faces tour in January 1968 created controversy on both sides of the Tasman. “It’s not the negative headlines that I remember most,” says Grattan, “but the personal things like helping to set up Keith Moon’s mega drum kit and loaning Kenney Jones (Small Faces) my own drum kit. At the 6pm show in Auckland Phil Stebbing’s woefully inadequate PA system was smashed to pieces so at the 8pm show both bands shared Marshall and Sunn amps. This was still very much early days for rock’n’roll production.”
Following the last New Zealand show, in Wellington, Keith Moon engaged in his already-customary hotel room-smashing activities, which included two television sets thrown onto the street below. NZ Truth reported the antics and bid the bands good riddance, told never to return, labelling them “unwashed, foul-smelling, booze-swilling no-hopers.” Ouch, said Harry M. Miller, and from that point on he promoted MOR acts and stage shows. It wasn’t where Peter Grattan saw his future.
In mid-1968, Grattan was employed by PYE/RCA, initially in the sales and promotion department. “We released quite a lot of Kiwi music on PYE and RCA,” he says. “‘Rain & Tears’ by The Hi-Revving Tongues was huge, absolutely huge, we pressed about 30,000 copies. I remember we signed a band called The Smoke to RCA, and Human Instinct was signed to PYE.
“There were other New Zealand acts but it was mostly overseas releases: Elvis, Neil Diamond, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Guess Who, The Kinks, Petula Clark … My boss was Fred Noad and Rob Guest worked in the warehouse. PYE had the option of dozens of overseas recordings every month, not everything was released. Fred Noad gave himself the final say on what was released in New Zealand and he didn’t always get it right.
“The one I remember is Mungo Jerry, ‘In The Summertime’. Fred hated the song and refused to release it until a telegram from London asked what was going on. It had become one of the biggest hits in the world. There was a mad rush as the Waihi plant went into overdrive to print special sleeves and press 10,000 45s.”
Meanwhile, Grattan was still drumming at every opportunity. He rejoined The Clan at the end of 1968, driving north on weekends to play. “State Highway One was no fun back then,” he says.
In the new year The Green and Yellow reformed, with Grattan on drums, after they scored a three-week summer residency at Ōhope Beach near Whakatāne. Auckland promoter Benny Levin was a fan of The Green & Yellow. He booked them as a support act to Larry’s Rebels and sent them on a North Island tour under their own steam. They performed on C’mon, Grattan’s first television appearance, and won the Auckland heat of the Battle Of The Bands, Benny Levin’s annual promotion.
The Green & Yellow at the 1969 Auckland Battle of the Bands. From left: Bob Patient, Rex Smith, Peter Grattan, Whymond Opai, Paul Collecutt. - Peter Grattan collection
“It was held at the Auckland YMCA in front of 2500 pop fans,” Grattan remembers. “We played Steppenwolf and Deep Purple and our singer, Rex, was mobbed and had his shirt ripped off. After that the band turned pro, except Rex, who quit to retain his boring government job.”
There were other bands after The Green & Yellow. Indeed, by the end of the decade, Peter Grattan had considerable experience as a drummer-for-hire, competent, holding down a beat, nothing too flash. In an eight-month period he played with Apparition (featuring the young Rob Guest), Disraeli Gears, The Motivation and The Soundells, bringing him in contact with ace musicians such as Roger Skinner (The Motivation) and Bob Wynyard (The Soundells).
His next band was a definite step up, playing behind one of New Zealand’s genuine superstars. “Mum and Dad used to buy cheap plonk from the Posa vineyard in Henderson,” Grattan recalls, “and it was Ma Posa who told mum that her son needed a drummer. So I quit PYE to record an album, and to perform with Peter Posa.”
The album, released in 1970 as Guitar Pops on the Salem label, was recorded in a small Te Atatū studio owned by Lew Smith. Recording every Sunday over a six-month period, over 40 songs were produced. Posa cut it down to 14 tracks for the album, which also featured Kevin Haines, Len Whittle and Bob Wynyard.
“Peter Posa was a genius,” says Grattan, “a perfectionist who could play anything, very versatile. I learned a lot. I introduced Peter to rock music, to Creedence Clearwater and to the wah wah pedal, but he was the teacher.”
For the promotional tour which followed Posa recruited guitarist Robin Ruakere and bassist Peter Skerrett to complete the line-up. The tour took place in Australia and the Pacific Islands. Grattan maintains that “in Noumea, Fiji, and Tahiti, Peter Posa was bigger than Elvis.”
In 1971, back in Auckland, Grattan was briefly employed at Stebbing Recording Studio as a sound engineer and during his tenure he convinced Eldred Stebbing to release a single by his former band, The Arch. Over a year earlier, during Grattan’s absence, The Arch had recorded several tracks at Stebbing, including two Paul Hewson originals, ‘Sit By Your Window’ and ‘Dear Madeleine’. There were only 100 copies pressed and the record would have little consequence except that these are the first recorded compositions of the great New Zealand songwriter.
Towards year’s end Grattan was lured away by an offer from Sydney, an Australia-wide tour with a “rock showband” called Musik, fronted by hard rocking English-Australian bluesman Chris Turner. “It sounded great on the phone,” says Grattan, “but it was a disaster. We travelled over 3500 miles in three weeks, the band van crashed in Taree and it finished during a bad residency in Darwin.
“Playing behind a drunken Bon Scott at a party was a bit of fun and I discovered that Queensland mushrooms really are magic but after the Darwin gigs I loaded my precious drums onto a road train, and me and Andrea, one of the singers, had to hitchhike down to Melbourne.”
Left: Peter Grattan with First Impression in the early 70s. Right: The Charlie Brown Band in 1976. Charlie on organ, Gary Bayer on guitar, and Peter Grattan on drums. The band would play six nights a week at Toby Jug in Titirangi. - Peter Grattan collection
Back in Auckand in December 1971, Grattan started a three-year six-nights-a-week residency at the Travelodge, drumming with First Impression. Next came two years with the Charlie Brown Band, residencies at Troika in Fort Street and the Toby Jug in Titirangi.
Grattan proudly says, “Between 1972 and 1976 I clocked up over 1500 performances. There were plenty of gigs back then, lots of professional musos, lots of work, clubs, pubs, restaurants, there were a dozen resident bands or more, just around Auckland City.”
Throughout the 70s Peter Grattan positioned himself as a resident covers-band drummer. He was constantly in work, restaurant residencies mostly, but a working musician nevertheless. He’d flirted with fame, and recorded and toured with one of the greats, Peter Posa. During his first “proper job” he rubbed shoulders with some of the greats and witnessed the emerging rock’n’roll lifestyle close at hand. He’d had brief associations with a record company and a recording studio.
Grattan says, “I’ve never seen myself as anything more than a pommy stickman who was lucky to be in a few right places, and I got to work and play with some greats.”
In mid-1975 Mum thought that Peter, now 23 years old, still needed a proper job and, once again, she found him one, drawing his attention to an advertisement in the NZ Herald, seeking staff for New Zealand’s second television channel, South Pacific Television (aka TV2). There were over 300 applications for three positions. Peter Grattan had lucked upon another vocation and he would put his musical background to good use in this new career.
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