\u201cWe\u2019d been together probably a week, if that,\u201d Luck says as he casts his mind back 45 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m at a bus stop on Woodham Rd. This fellow approaches me with a pipe. His name was Pete Waller, and he said, \u2018are you in a band\u2019?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, I might have had a look, and I said, \u2018oddly enough, yeah, and we rehearsed over there\u2019. He said, \u2018well, I work for Jim Wilson\u2019, and my knees near dropped because Jim was beyond legend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson booked live music for some of the biggest live music pubs in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started promoting bands when I was 16 and running dances in the suburbs. New Zealand was very quiet at this point in time and I just wanted to bring a little excitement,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n
One of Jim Wilson’s earliest promotions. As a 16-year-old in the 1960s, he ran dances and did his own marketing.<\/p>\n
He describes the Christchurch live music scene as \u201cwild, crazy, genuine, heartfelt and producing the best music ever heard in New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Gladstone Hotel, the Hillsborough and the Star & Garter were all Jim Wilson venues.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, if you wanted to be getting a booking, you\u2019d probably want to be dealing with or at least know a pub manager that would be dealing with Jim,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
Christchurch’s Gladstone Hotel was one of the city’s best live music venues throughout the 1970s and 80s.<\/p>\n
To this day, Luck doesn\u2019t know how the bus-stop meeting came about \u2013 but it was certainly the genesis of their profound success. <\/p>\n
The manager<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met up with Jim and he said, \u2018yeah, I can get you some gigs\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first gig was well-documented, opening for the Zero Bars at the Hillsborough Tavern.<\/p>\n
\u201cOctober 15, 1981 \u2013 my 20th birthday and [guitarist] Steve Cowan\u2019s 22nd,\u201d Luck says, before recalling their own luck. <\/p>\n
\u201cTalk about falling on your feet. We\u2019ve been together just over a fortnight, and here\u2019s us opening for one of the big draws and probably played to about 500 that night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson liked what he\u2019d heard and seen in the young five-piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw The Dance Exponents playing and I was immediately impressed. They were having a wild, good time. The mood at the time for bands was quite depressive and here was a band getting people up and dancing. It was beautiful to see. The singer, Jordan Luck, was wearing a kilt,\u201d Wilson says. <\/p>\n
Soon, Wilson was representing the band.<\/p>\n
\u201cJim would be organising all the groups [touring] through. We\u2019d open for DD Smash, who were massive, Graham Brazier\u2019s Legionnaires, Dave McCartney and the Pink Flamingos. We opened for everybody that came through, basically at the Aranui [Hotel] or the Hillsborough,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all down to Jim. Easily the greatest manager we ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Wilson’s live music empire in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s most celebrated act as the band\u2019s manager was a phone call he made on their behalf.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that really swung us so quickly, why I\u2019m here speaking to you now, is because he called Mike Chunn,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
Chunn, the former Split Enz and Citizen Band bassist, had not long joined Mushroom Records and was eager to sign talent. He was also a very good friend of Wilson\u2019s. <\/p>\n
\u201cI got a phone call. \u2018Chunny\u2019! He called me Chunny. \u2018Chunny! Have you heard of Dance Exponents\u2019? This was in 1982 and I said no, even though I was lying,\u201d Chunn says.<\/p>\n
Mike Chunn, the man who signed The Dance Exponents, photographed at home in 2020. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t tell anyone I had a demo sent to me, I think by [Dance Exponents guitarist] Brian Jones, a green cassette. But I hadn\u2019t got around to listening to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s \u201churry-up\u201d led Chunn to hastily arrange a trip south.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018well, you need to see them, you need to hear them. You need to do something with them because the surname of their lead singer is Luck\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chunn says he came down on the pretext of seeing Dick Driver\u2019s band Hip Singles. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe minute Dance Exponents started, I was completely taken over by joy, by the thrill of emerging newness and great, great lyrics all of a sudden \u2013 and cool arrangements and the whole thing was wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was just as Wilson had promised.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thing about him was here he was in the room at the Hillsborough. And it wasn\u2019t a smug look or anything, but it was one of happiness, and so you could see that he had followed a hunch \u2013 but knowing deep down in his heart that he was right and all around the hundreds and hundreds of people in Christchurch had proved it to him and us,\u201d Chunn says.<\/p>\n
The Dance Exponents, pictured in 1986. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
The Victorian era<\/p>\n
Next came the business. <\/p>\n
\u201cI went backstage and I said, \u2018hey guys, are you interested in signing with Mushroom Records\u2019? They all looked at me like, \u2018are you an idiot? Of course we do\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next day they talked about a single \u2013 Chunn wanted it to be Victoria.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich really surprised us, because most of our stuff is kind of fast tempo. Whereas Victoria, no drums basically at the front \u2013 it would often be the song where people would sit down in our set. Dave and Harry would go for a drink,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo everything kind of came together and it was like a rocket taking off. Jim was always there. Jim would be the one to advise me about where they should be playing, what the audience is most likely to be because he understood and had unearthed [them].\u201d<\/p>\n
Roger Shepherd, founder of Flying Nun Records.<\/p>\n
On the outside looking in was Roger Shepherd \u2013 the founder of the great Kiwi record label Flying Nun. Shepherd\u2019s memories of Wilson go back 50 years. In 1982, he was championing Dunedin group The Clean as Wilson pushed the Christchurch-based Dance Exponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really believed in them, I don\u2019t think he was particularly interested in being a manager,\u201d Shepherd says. History would support that notion.<\/p>\n
The beginning of the band\u2019s commercial success also marked the end of their formal relationship with Wilson.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictoria happened and at that stage, well, Jim just sort of let us go, that was that,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably picked the right time to be getting out of it and into the poster business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phantom Billstickers founder Jim Wilson.<\/p>\n
The birth of Phantom<\/p>\n
For as long as Wilson had been booking bands, he had been promoting them through posters, beginning in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
By 1982, he launched Phantom Billstickers.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople started coming to him and saying, \u2018can you do my posters as well\u2019? So he turned into an actual business,\u201d current Phantom CEO Robin McDonnell says.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s business ventures could blur at times. Luck remembers being deployed to the front line of guerilla marketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did poster runs, not for ourselves, we did poster runs for other artists that Jim would have. We would be up there glueing, and it was kind of a tricky business \u2013 there\u2019d be another company running around glueing after you\u2019d glued. This is 3am, because a lot of spots were illegal,\u201d Luck says.<\/p>\n
Wilson sold Phantom sometime around 1985-86 before heading overseas. <\/p>\n
He bought the business back again in 1992.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I could make a difference, and John Greenfield, who I had sold it to, was collapsing under the weight of it all. It has always been a very busy company and we often put up more than 100 campaigns a week. I was as passionate about the poster company as I was about the bands I was promoting,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n
Poster hangers for Phantom Billstickers working in Auckland in 2017. Photo \/ Greg Bowker <\/p>\n
The innovator<\/p>\n
Wilson returned with a vision of legitimising the poster and outdoor advertising industry, but what he did next was closer to revolutionising it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the first person in New Zealand to actually pay for space. He made approaches to councils around New Zealand, Christchurch being the forerunner, to put in poster bollards, which are just a part of the cityscape around New Zealand these days. And, for the most part, [he] paid to put those bollards in,\u201d McDonnell says.<\/p>\n
Wilson was changing the face of the industry with every stroke of his glue brush.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems simple to us now, but things like having an agreement with the landowner where you say, \u2018okay, you\u2019re allowing us to put posters on this building and we\u2019ll pay you money for it\u2019, whereas previously it had been done all as a kind of as a guerrilla thing and sort of under the cover of darkness and on derelict buildings,\u201d McDonnell says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a number of larger commercial operators that probably don\u2019t realise the impact that Jim\u2019s had on the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim and Kelly Wilson.<\/p>\n
Kelly Wilson, a director of Phantom and the wife of Jim Wilson, has seen first-hand the impact her husband has had on the industry. <\/p>\n
\u201cJim\u2019s company, Phantom Outdoor Advertising, laid the foundation for large-format out-of-home [advertising] in Christchurch,\u201d Kelly Wilson says. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that Jim\u2019s success, innovation, longevity, and willingness to support and mentor other players in the industry have been foundational to the creation of the out-of-home industry in New Zealand.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jim Wilson looks over the company that he started almost 45 years ago with enormous pride. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe work we are doing now has gone to the next level,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
The man<\/p>\n