A major North Shore music venue wants back in.
A major North Shore music venue wants back in.
It once hosted the world's biggest artists. Now, Eventfinda Stadium wants to do it all over again.
On May 1, 1997, I was psyched.
I was 19 years old. I’d just moved to Auckland. That night, across town, one of the world’s biggest nu-metal bands was playing.
Don’t hate me.
I was going to see KoRn.
We were late. My mate parked his packed car on a grass berm. We ran into the venue. The band was already on stage. Giant silhouettes outlined a white sheet hanging over them.
Within seconds, that sheet dropped, the opening notes of ‘Twist’ started, Jonathan Davis began screaming, and we dived straight into a completely disgusting, steaming, heaving moshpit.
When I came up for air, I struggled to breathe. Something was in my mouth. It was thick and chewy, like rope.
It was a dreadlock.
I was chewing on someone’s sweaty dreadlock.
They’re my core memories of my first concert at the North Shore Events Centre, one of dozens I went to over the following years.
That venue, a dedicated sports centre with a huge carpark about five minutes off Takapuna’s motorway exit, hosted some of the world’s biggest bands of that time.
Massive Attack played there. So did Portishead. Björk, Blur and the Black Eyed Peas all played shows there too.
When Moby, Alanis Morrissette, Ben Harper, Bob Dylan, Jack Johnson and John Mayer arrived in town, they all headed straight over the bridge to perform at the North Shore Events Centre.
Many of those acts performed there multiple times.
I remember the Beastie Boys jumping around the stage so much they kept making their DJ’s records skip.
I saw three Tool shows there, one with Maynard James Keenan lit up like a human mirror ball, another with contortionists hanging off ropes, and a third so brutally loud I suffered hearing loss for a full week afterwards.
Shirley Manson got so mad at a Garbage show she kicked out a fan.
Darcy Clay’s opening slot for Blur is considered the highlight of his short, influential career, a set immortalised on his Jesus I was Evil EP.
The Chemical Brothers played several shows there, one with a dedicated surround sound system with towering speakers placed at the back of the venue.
Back then, the North Shore Events Centre performed the exact same function that Spark Arena does now.
But it was never supposed to be a music venue.
None of those shows – not a single one – were ever supposed to happen.
“It was wildly outside of its resource consent,” says Brian Blake, the venue’s CEO. “They were breaking the rules every time.”
Many of those shows I went to were over capacity, broke noise and age restrictions, or utilised the venue in a way it was never built for.
But promoters were in a bind. To play a big indoor show in Auckland, there were limited options.
“If you go back and think about Auckland in 2005, there was the Logan Campbell Centre, the St James, and this,” says Blake. “Everyone turned a blind eye to certain things.”
For about a decade, between 1995 and 2005, the North Shore Events Centre was the shining star of New Zealand’s live music scene.
Then came Deep Purple. A 2004 show by the elder statesmen of rock was brutally loud. Six neighbours decided they’d had enough. They took the venue to court.
“Deep Purple is just a wall of guitars [and] you could hear it for miles,” says Blake. “That was the iceberg.”
It took more than a year, but those neighbours won their court battle.
The last recorded concert at North Shore Events Centre was a punk-rock double-bill by Green Day and A Simple Plan on March 5, 2005.
Ever since, the North Shore Events Centre has pretty much been used exclusively as a sports venue, exactly as it was intended.
But things are about to change.
Since he was announced as CEO in 2018, Blake’s been slowly plotting to return the North Shore Events Centre to its roots.
He renamed the venue Eventfinda Stadium.
He tracked down all those old tour posters on eBay, and bought them in bulk.
In 2018, a double-header of Slayer and Anthrax tested the venue’s abilities out again. “It was a really good shakedown,” says Blake.
It was all going to plan.
Then Covid came along, causing concert disruptions for two years.
Things were getting back on track when Cyclone Gabrielle hit. The storm flooded the building and destroyed the floor. In total, it caused $5.9 million of damage.
With the insurance money, Blake’s had time to rethink and rebuild, adding bigger food and beverage areas, digital displays and improving disabled access.
A $250,000 stage has been ordered and is weeks away from delivery.
Giant black drop cloth curtains are on their way too, allowing the venue to operate on an intimate scale with 1500 people, or at capacity with 5000.
Now, here in 2024, Blake’s ready to commit: Eventfinda stadium is ready to rock again.
He’s met with promoters to tell them the venue is back in action.
Just a few weeks ago, Eventfinda Stadium hosted its first show in ages when Auckland Sounds packed in crowds again.
Blake’s hoping there’ll be many more big gigs this year, and while talks are underway, he refuses to drop any names.
“There’s a gap in the market, capacity wise,” he says.
He’s right. Once an act sells out the Powerstation, they have few options to progress. The Logan Campbell Centre is out of business. The St James is being restored but remains years away from hosting shows again. The Auckland Town Hall is available, but it’s pricey and doesn’t work for some acts. A cut down Spark Arena just feels a little hollow.
To me, it makes perfect sense.
“Where we sit is [for] the artists that have just outgrown the Powerstation, and we ride with them until they’re big enough for Spark,” says Blake.
When we talked recently, it was my first time in the venue in 20 years. (My last show there was Live, er, live, and the less said about that, the better.)
Being there was a strange experience. The merch stand has been turned into a cafeteria, but the venue has the same configuration: the foyer and toilets are in the same places, and the hallway I used to slump in after those moshpits remains intact.
It is, Blake says, the same venue it always was back when it was hosting those illegal shows.
“It’s still that venue. If you pump it full of 4000-5000 people on the hottest day of the year, it's gonna get warm. That's the deal,” he says. “There’s a simplicity to this place. It’s just big dirty rock and roll.”
How about those pesky neighbours?
Blake says that’s no longer an issue. Thanks to Auckland Council’s Major Recreation Zones, Deep Purple, along with anyone else who wants to, can play as long and as loud as they can.
“They are the places in our city that are designated to [be] fast, loud, and fun,” says Blake. He swings his arm around his venue and declares: “This is one.”
Got a tip, some advice, a piece of gossip, an anecdote or something to get off your chest? Contact me at iamchrisschulz@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you…
Ice cube and Cypress Hill '94 was pretty rad .....a hotbox basically
I was at that Tool show in 2001 - one of my favourite concert experiences ever. My sister's friend and I bussed down from Whangarei together and met my sis there. I also saw Live there; I was at their 2000 show with Sugar Ray and Tadpole opening.