Cliff Richard Tickets

Short Biography

CLIFF RICHARD RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND IN 2013
FOR THE STILL REELIN' AND A-ROCKIN' NATIONAL TOUR

Sir Cliff Richard OBE, with global record sales beyond 250 million and a ceaseless performance schedule spanning the 54 years of his career, is set to return to New Zealand with a hit-packed national tour Still Reelin' and A-Rockin'.

Celebrating his 54th anniversary in the music business this year, Cliff Richard is indisputably Britain's all-time greatest hit-maker - the ultimate pop star!  No other UK band or solo artist is even close to equalling his 123 single hits.

As the sixties got underway Cliff was dominating the airwaves with such indelible  hits as Living Doll, Please Don't Tease, Bachelor Boy, Lucky Lips, When The Girl In Your Arms Is The Girl In Your Heart, Don't Talk To Him, Do You Want To Dance, On The Beach, I Could Easily Fall, The Day I Met Marie, The Minute You're Gone, All My Love and Congratulations, his constant presence in our lives bolstered by smash box office films The Young Ones, Summer Holiday and Wonderful Life. In the seventies he continued as a primary chart force with hits such as Devil Woman, We Don't Talk Anymore and Carrie then into the eighties with Dreamin', Wired For Sound, Daddy's Home, Living Doll (with the Young Ones TV cast) and Some People.

New Zealand was reminded of those hits in 2003 when our leg of his global tour saw him play to a sellout crowd at the spectacular Mission Vineyard in Hawkes Bay; then again in early 2010 when he marked the Reunion Tour of the venerable Shadows, giving audiences here the precious opportunity to bid farewell to the crack outfit that was so much a part of his enormous appeal for so very long.

There reaches a point where the recounting of the man's achievements is too towering a task to attempt. So let it be said that the singer born Harry Rodger Webb in Lucknow, India on 14 October, 1940, recorded Britain's first real rock'n'roll record (Move It) and has gone on to lodge more than 130 other releases in the U.K. charts, that he holds with Elvis Presley the honour of having made the UK singles chart in every one of its first six decades, that he is the third biggest selling recording act in the UK ever, that he has notched up almost two score British number one hits, that he has been included on the new century listing of the 100 Greatest Britons, that he conceived and starred in the stage musical Heathcliff (written by Sir Tim Rice and Australian John Farrar) which played to audiences of more than half a million and that he has had eight top forty America hits, including the million-selling Devil Woman and We Don't Talk Anymore.

Do not miss Cliff Richard's Still Reelin' and A-Rockin' Tour which will travel New Zealand in January 2013.

In-depth Biography
Britain's answer to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard (born Harry Webb) dominated the pre-Beatles British pop scene in the late '50s and early '60s. An accomplished singer with a genuine feel for the music, Richard's artistic legacy is nonetheless meager, as he was quickly steered toward a middle-of-the-road pop direction. Several of his late-'50s recordings, however, were genuinely exciting Presley-esque rockers -- especially his first hit, "Move It" (1958) -- and gave British teenagers their first taste of genuine homegrown rock & roll talent. Backed by the Shadows -- clean-cut instrumental virtuosos who became legends of their own -- Richard embarked on a truly awesome string of hit singles in Britain, scoring no less than 43 Top 20 hits between 1958 and 1969. One of these, although it was by no means one of the more successful, was an actual Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition (the ballad "Blue Turns to Grey").

In his homeland, Richard's popularity was diminished only slightly by the rise of the Beatles, but in his prime, he had a much rougher time in the U.S., hitting the Top 40 only three times (with "Living Doll" in 1959, "It's All in the Game" in 1963, and "Devil Woman" in 1976). Richard belatedly cracked the U.S. Top Ten in 1976 with "Devil Woman," and racked up a few other hits ("We Don't Talk Anymore," "Dreaming," "A Little in Love") in a mainstream pop/rock style. He remains an institution in Britain, where he is one of the nation's most popular all-around entertainers of all time. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi