Bowie in NZ, ’83, Bowie’s Waiata

A new extended edition — running to thirty-five minutes and incorporating additional material — was produced and broadcast on Radio New Zealand on 6 February 2024. The programme is available to listen to in full via the RNZ website.

“Maoritanga and Bowie-mania got to know each other better at an historic meeting on the Ngati Toa Marae at Porirua this week. David Bowie, currently at the end of a world tour, requested the visit to the marae because he wanted to get to see a carved meeting house and meet Maori people. Ngati Toa elder Horata Solomon said Bowie’s request was a complete surprise. “We didn’t seek him out, he just came to us – but we knew this must be significant for our people”.

Lucy Rakete, Times Correspondent, 1983

Bowie in New Zealand:

Radio New Zealand / Radio Hauraki · 2008 & 2023

Bowie's Waiata

Radio New Zealand · September 2008

In 1983, David Bowie became the first rock star to be officially welcomed onto a Māori marae. Twenty-five years later, this documentary looked back on an occasion Bowie himself described as "one of the most hospitable experiences of my life."

Contributors include members of the Ngāti Toa tribe of Porirua, New Zealand, who were present at the welcoming ceremony, alongside Serious Moonlight tour manager Hugh Lynn, Bowie backing singer Frank Simms, and saxophonist Lenny Pickett. As is Māori custom, visitors to the marae are invited to sing for the tribe — waiata being the traditional term for song or singing. Bowie and backing singers Frank and George Simms performed a song composed specifically for the occasion, recorded on location by Greg Ward, then a reporter for Radio New Zealand News. That recording features in the documentary and is listed in O’Leary’s (2011) Pushing Ahead of the Dame as an official entry in the Bowie canon.

Bowie's Waiata was broadcast on Radio New Zealand in September 2008 to mark the 25th anniversary of the visit. The accompanying audio-slideshow features exclusive images supplied by the Ngāti Toa tribe. The documentary was a finalist at the New York Radio Festival in 2009, in the categories of Culture & the Arts and Community Portraits.

Down Under The Moonlight

Radio Hauraki / Radio New Zealand · 2008 & 2023

David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour in 1983 played to huge audiences around the world - fuelled by the immense success of the accompanying Let’s Dance album. International demand for tickets ensured that Bowie received record-breaking appearance fees for these concerts, which were often sold out. The concert at New Zealand's Western Springs Stadium (Nov. 26th '83) drew an audience of approximately 80,000 people - the largest ever recorded for an Australasian concert. However, contributors to online Bowie fan sites have labelled official figures as conservative, given that the perimeter fence of the stadium was pulled down during the concert, allowing thousands of non-paying fans to pour into the stadium. The spectacular stage set was Bowie's most elaborate effort since the Diamond Dogs tour of 1974. Its memorable design featured large neoclassical lintels accompanied by four translucent polythene columns and a large crescent moon and hand, positioned at either side of the stage.

The remarkable success of the Serious Moonlight tour in New Zealand was not entirely surprising. Bowie’s previous tour of Australasia was the Low / Heroes concerts of 1978. These shows played extensively across New Zealand and Australia and helped to build his already sizable fan base. At the Auckland concert at Western Springs Stadium on the 2nd of December 1978, Bowie set a new national attendance record. At the time, the audience of 41,000 was reputed to be the largest in New Zealand’s history. However this record was well and truly smashed, five years later, with the Serious Moonlight tour.

The concert in ’83 represented the largest single crowd gathering in New Zealand and was credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the largest crowd gathering per head of population anywhere in the world”. A NZ newspaper article at the time noted that the size of the Auckland concert was enough to make it New Zealand’s fifth largest city in terms of population.

A radio documentary was broadcast at 7pm on the 26th of November 2008 to mark the exact 25th anniversary of the concert. It was originally a 2 two hour show (with full music tracks) for the Radio Hauraki network. However, a revised version was produced for Radio New Zealand with additional interviews, archival content, and Otago University’s David Bowie scholar, Dr Ian Chapman, as presenter.

This half hour edition was first broadcast on the 25th of November 2023 on RNZ’s ‘Music 101’ show - to mark the 40th anniversary of the concert.