Gig Review: Andrew Fagan @ St Peter’s Village Hall, Paekākāriki – 16/11/2025

Andrew Fagan is a unique individual: musician, poet, sailor, writer… and probable survivor of alien interference.
One of the country’s most iconic pop stars in his heyday, he’s surely capable of holding his own on any stage. So, why has he sent his identical twin “brother Phillip” to play St Peter’s Hall?

When a completely masked and hooded figure creeps onstage accompanied by the backing track from Band of Rain, he’s so unrecognisable that no one greets him. Beneath a black frock coat, the man is barefoot, in torn white jeans, a white hooded skivvy, a white knit cap on his head. Chipped black nail polish is a trademark giveaway – possibly applied sometime in the 1980s. Strapping on an amplified acoustic guitar that – like the set – is adorned with an abundance of Gombolic icons, the stranger rips noisily into Blisters tracks Just Landed and its single Jerusalem.  

He introduces himself as Phillip – although (now that the mask is off) the resemblance to Andrew really is striking – explaining that Andrew is suffering some “mental health problems”. Phillip has things well in hand, employing the DIY aesthetic that has served “his brother” so well all these years: performing to backing tracks and samples, enthusiastically handling light and AV duties, and moving through a series of iconic costume changes. 

He comes on all teacherly, explaining he will be reading some poems, and elucidating the syllabic count method he employed to write them as favoured by Dylan Thomas. There are rules to be observed, and a hand bell signals when applause is welcome. He warns there will be a test, and anyone scoring lower than 80 percent will not be allowed out of the hall. Drawing from four slim volumes of poetry – he reckons a combined volume could best be titled Bleak Poems – he reads with explanatory preambles and backing tracks. Subject matter ranges from relationship advice conveyed in sailing terms (Sail The Other Way), the paradox of time (The Beginning of Time), and musings on the vastness of open water (The Watchkeepers). LCD (lowest common denominator) verses like Supping From The Chalice of Insanity [And He Quite Enjoyed The Taste] and Your Sheltered Place, wrap around at least one LSD one (Shouting The Clouds Down). 

Professing a desire to be the bedroom songwriter who puts the words in the mouths of the big money singers, he reads Shift In The Wind That Blew Me Away From You, which he tried to sell to Bob Dylan. He received no reply, but does a wee imitation of how the result could have sounded. Another great singer/songwriter’s spirit is invoked in his moving reading of Teeth and Gums, written for his friend the late, great Mahinārangi Tocker. 

The next segment of the show brings a writers festival element to the proceedings, uncommon for a rock gig. He prefaces it with a passage from the sailor and writer Charles P Kunhardt (circa 1885), which encapsulates his feelings about solo sailing, and the pleasures of self-determination. We are treated to a series of gobsmacking slides of his adventures on the legendary 5.1-metre plywood yacht Swirly World in Perpetuity, and the thrilling tale of his last moments with her (no spoilers – buy the book Swirly World: Lost At Sea).
Fagan is a passionate storyteller with a jaw-dropping adventure to relate, and he reeled the full house in all the way to intermission. 

He returns to the stage sporting a Gombolic adorned crown and brooch, black sequinned shift, and a long black cloak. He looks like he’s stepped out of the wild rumpus part of Where the Wild Things Are, affecting a series of very Max stances as he sings over backing tracks, vocalising and lip-syncing to the instrumental parts. 

“I went into a trance – I forgot you were all here,” he says at one point, before whipping out a spray bottle of holy water for a quick spritz. Like everything from his mic stand to his backdrops, it too is covered in Gombolics, prompting him to explain this esoteric “cult of one” to the uninitiated. He spirits us back to a night circa 1974, on the coast near Lyall Bay. Twelve years old, he was out camping alone, and woke up with one elongated nostril. Apparently this was the passageway through which aliens implanted the Gombolic history Fagan has been the sole guardian of ever since. It’s all in the fine print of the massive Gombolic collage projected behind him. 

Every cult needs a messiah, and the power of the one we are in the presence of begins to ramp up at this point. Lofting a horn-pronged staff to the sky, he tears into the really quite spooky I’m Your Messiah, from Andrew Fagan and the People’s 2021 album Admiral of the High Seas. It’s a bravura performance, which he ends on his knees. 

Following the dark cabaret mood of Between The Day (Who Am I?), things stay melancholy but move to the middle of the road (if the middle of the road was a karaoke club circa 1978). He takes a seat to croon covers of a couple of the songs that shaped him. The Carpenters may have taken Paul Williams’ I Won’t Last A Day Without You to the top of the Billboard Easy Listening Charts, but Fagan brought it to Paekākāriki. Randy Goodrum’s Bluer Than Blue also gets the parlour treatment. It’s weird and lovely – an incredibly random moment.

He plays the 1995 Lig track Empty, and the Blur buzz is real. It’s easy to see how it caught John Peel’s attention. And yet… world domination remained a slippery fish for its writer. The weather of the gig is modulated like this… cresting highs, dumping lows. 

“Any requests?,” he asks. 

“Play some Chisel!,” a good-natured meta-heckler (there are a few) tries. (And, it’s true, there is a similarity between this show and the book tours of Jimmy Barnes). 

“Cleopatra!,” someone else aims, closer to the mark. 

“I’ve blown my mind on booze and drugs, so I can’t do those old ones,” Fagan says, to a perceptible intake of breath from the gathered alumni of the Class of ’84.

At this point amiable tour manager Kurt Shanks (Stellar*, Delete Delete…) ambles onto the stage. Apparently he’s just had a call from Andrew, saying he’s worried Phillip won’t play any of his commercial tunes; that Phillip has a penchant for the Avant Garde. Some mildly corrosive banter is exchanged, but Phillip is pulling on Andrew’s original 1983, pink fun fur coat, while Shanks tunes up an acoustic. Mockers magic ensues.

Shield Yourself, One Black Friday, and Swear It’s True (around 40 years after the fact) set my time machine to Teenage, traversing a heady mix of pathos, nostalgia, and fun. 

“That’s enough of that closet we’ve opened like Narnia,” says Fagan, “or is it?”

Someone shouts a request for Forever Tuesday Morning.

“Just because you say it, doesn’t mean it happens,” faux-recalcitrant Fagan calls back (perhaps two brothers really do battle within him). 

But then he and Shanks make it happen, the former beatboxing any instruments not present (i.e. most of them). 

“That was beautiful,” one bloke yells, and it really was. 

With the vibe surely peaking, and the audience in the palm of his hand,  it’s time for Fagan to showcase the entire reason for the tour, its title track Passage of Time. With majestic fill from the backing track, and Shanks’ support, Fagan morphs from jester to king – the loftier tilt of his head lending a Statue of Liberty effect to his crown. And he really is a beacon – for misfits, lone wolves, poets and rockers.
I doubt I’ll ever witness a gig quite so strange again, and I value that.

Photos with thanks to Precision Photography.
Taken: 07/10/2025 @ Southland Musicians Club, Invercargill