Pretty Things 47-Year New Zealand Ban For Plane Fire Ending This Week

Posted on Dec 10th 2012 3:00PM by Jason MacNeil
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BBC

To go 47 years without touring a certain region is a long time, but this week fans of '60s British rock band The Pretty Things will finally see that incredible streak end when the group performs at The Power Station Club in Auckland, New Zealand after being banned from the country for their antics on a 1965 trek.

"We were getting done for playing rock 'n' roll having girls screaming and throwing underwear at us, it was just very strange there was this sort of denial," singer Phil May told New Zealand television outlet 3News.

"The image that had been presold to New Zealand was we were going to appear with pink beard and make strong men faint," guitarist Dick Taylor added.

The ban -- which came with the warning to "never darken our shores again" -- was reportedly the result of drummer Viv Prince setting a bag ablaze on a New Zealand commercial flight with a crayfish inside of said bag.

"Well, there was a very small instance which the press blew up into things far beyond what actually might've occurred," Taylor said in a recent interview with Australian outlet Faster Louder. "I think they'll probably let us back in but you never know."

A book entitled Don't Bring Me Down Under was written about that fateful '65 trek.

"The whole trip for me was like waking up in a Dali painting with no exit to reality," Taylor wrote in the forward for the 2006 book. "If I was ever to have a nervous breakdown it would have been there."

The Pretty Things -- perhaps best known for the song "Don't Bring Me Down" -- will play Auckland before a Melbourne date later in the week. The group also have a string of 2013 dates slated for Britain and Europe.

Watch The Pretty Things' "Don't Bring Me Down" Video