Singers wearng sunglasses on stage

 Hi there.

When I was a kid in the late 50's and early 60s, I went to pop shows.  Kiwi entrepreneurs like Harry M. Miller were beginning to realise there was a market in New Zealand for overseas pop idols.  They started bringing in these singers by the plane-load.

I was miffed that two singers wore sunglasses on stage.

There was Roy Orbison. I found out later he truly had bad eyesight so I can forgive him now.  But it wasn't so much the dark glasses that were annoying, but also that he never moved.  Never so much as the proverbial inch (Inch?  Yes, come on, give me an 'out'; it was pre metrification!).  Orbison, in front of thousands of fans, was like a statue the entire time he was on stage which, in those days, was probably 20 minutes to half-an-hour. And every fan had paid about 30 shillings for a seat.

Fans want to see a singer's face.  They want to see movements, head turns, legs jiggling, greetings to the crowd, foot tapping.  They can see statues in their gran's front garden. Or at Zombie-Con.

Another star who wore sunglasses on stage was the singer Billy J Kramer ("Little Children").  I was young and impressionable, and when I couldn't properly see Kramer's face - the sunglasses plus dim lighting - I sprang from my seat and ran into the aisle of the Wellington Town Hall auditorium, along with hundreds of others.  We didn't want to rip him apart, we just wanted to see his face more clearly. Apparently, no overseas singer had caused such a commotion before.  Seat-leaving was a giant no-no at the Wellington Town Hall.

The show was shut down.

Later, I read that the reason Kramer had been wearing sunglasses and the lighting was darker more than usual for a pop show, was that the singer had got in an altercation the day before. The sunglasses and dim lighting were to cover up that he had a black eye.

I felt I never got my thirty shillings-worth at either Orbison's or Kramer's show.