Inducted to rock‘n’roll heaven

Rock‘n’roll legend Ray Columbus.

'Til we kissed, I never knew the years that I has wasted…

'Til we kissed, I never knew the kisses that I had tasted…”

What an aphrodisiac those lyrics were for a red-blooded Kiwi teenager in 1965? Or was it 1966?

And how I loved that song. Then and now. And as I was absorbing the news of Ray Columbus' passing I held my own spontaneous and personal requiem in the office.

Ray and the Invaders on Youtube, and me as back-up, belted out a few of those enduring lines.

'Will you please tell me why this took so long to begin,

'Darling where have you been, all my life…MMMmmmm!!!”

Ray Columbus died on Tuesday this week. Those of a vintage in the office smiled sympathetically and knowingly. A 26-year-old was completely befuddled. 'Ray, Ray…no!!” Of course you should know Ray Columbus. He was so good the Australians even claimed him as their own.

Step back again to the mid-1960s. The venue was the Ag Hall in Cumberland St, Dunedin. The city was fizzing because Ray and his Invaders were in town and the Ag Hall was pumping. Admission was 12/6 – 12 shillings and sixpence – a year before decimal came to town and confused us all – and Dad – 'the old man' in the vernacular of the time – gave me a 50 per cent subsidy for the ticket. That was the way he worked.

Reporter Hunter Wells circa 1966.

Special occasions demanded special dress code – black watch, tartan bellbottoms with a white belt, a black corduroy, collarless Beatles jacket. I was a 'boss cat” and everything was 'a gas” that Saturday. I would deserve to be arrested if I stepped out like that today.

I ‘showered' in my older brother's Old Spice, he called it his ‘love elixir', disguised my latest full face breakout with Clearasil and got the 6:15 into town.

Ray Columbus was a wee guy with a big voice and a huge presence. And those were the days when the stars had a uniform – dark suits, white shirts and floss-thin ties, drainpipe trousers hugging skinny legs and winkle pickers. Unfeasibly pointed shoes that turned up beyond the toes because they weren't designed to contain feet.

Ray had a mop top of Beatle proportions. Parents of the time despaired but today it would pass muster at any private boys' school. I recall Columbus doing his trademark bow and vigorous shaking of that wonderful nut of hair in the middle of ‘She's a Mod'. It sent the girls into a frenzy. Nothing I ever did had the same impact on the girls and I was mildly envious and disappointed.

We stood shoulder to shoulder in the 1960s version of the mosh pit but of course we didn't know we were moshing then. Columbus and the Invaders emerged from stage left and the darkness, and I experienced mass hysteria for the first time – men screaming, girls weeping. It's a powerful and infectious concoction and I remember fighting the urge. And in the heat of the night and the occasion we perspired like a rugby scrum in injury time.

Columbus loved it, played the crowd. Always, always smiling. And two hours later we were sated, drained and I caught the last bus home, the 12:10 to Lookout Point.

I know I had a brilliant night because as I lay on my pillow my ears were popping from the vibrations pumped out by those big Marshall towers and I was singing to myself.

'I am waiting girl, till we kiss again, I was waiting.”

And I reeked of cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, Old Spice and people smells, not necessarily my own.

And on the Monday I went to town and invested 7/6 – seven pounds and sixpence – in a single called ‘Till We Kissed' even though we didn't own a radiogram.

A mate remembers seeing Columbus at the Wellington Town Hall.

'He was warm-up for either Bo Diddley or Muddy Waters. And the reason I can't remember which one it was is because Ray Columbus was better.”

The dates, styles and thoughts maybe a bit scrambled with time but regardless, Raymond John Patrick ‘Ray' Columbus, with an Order of the British Empire, thanks for a magical night. You will be well received in rock‘n'roll heaven.

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