Peter Posa
Did Viking Records arrange for you to go to the States?
"Yes they did, for six months."
How different was it in the States, coming from New Zealand?
"It was my first trip away from New Zealand. I had toured around New Zealand, but I had never been overseas before. This was 1964 and I did quite a lot of work over in Los Angeles and met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin over in Las Vegas. They were really nice guys. It happened at a record convention in Las Vegas and they were both there at the same time. But I went home after six months, it got a bit lonely being on my own, because I was still only very young."
Your first big hit was The White Rabbit. How did you come to record that?
"Two chaps from Auckland called Bill Ivory and Graham Rosserly brought a tape of just a piano and a guitar on it into the Viking Studios and they said 'we think we have a tune for you which you might like.' It appealed to me instantly, I thought it had it was hit material, so I used to my imagination with the arrangement that I would do. We went in and did it, with no rehearsal beforehand - just with the session musicians and we got it done in one take."
With White Rabbit being a hit in both Australia and New Zealand, I guess you must've toured Australia and the Pacific. What was it like there?
"It was terrific, the audiences were great over there. I must have done about six trips to Australia. I did about seven trips to Fiji, about four to New Caledonia and one to New Hebrides and one to Tahiti."
White Rabbit was 18th or 19th on a Worldwide Top 40. You must have been very pleased...
"I was very, very, very excited about that. It was a monstrous hit - I don't even know how many I sold in New Zealand or Australia but it would have been a phenomenal amount of records."
What would have been your favourite tracks that you recorded?
"The ones that I picked on the CD were most of my favourite tracks, ones that I did on stage and the ones that my fans liked. When I was putting together the album, I handed out a few demo tapes to my friends and fans to see what they thought of it. They
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