Bruce Kaplan


Dispatches from the early days of New Zealand rock’n’roll are rare, especially from eyewitnesses able to capture events in vivid brushstrokes. Which makes the contribution of Bruce Kaplan all the more important.

By day, he was a teenage cub reporter on the Auckland Star; by night a crew-cutted, jug-eared music fan and fly-on the-wall at “nitespots” like Auckland’s pulsating Jive Centre and its Picasso jazz basement, hangout of the beatniks.

Bruce Kaplan, 17 year old rock'n'roll reporter, Joy, 16 February 1959
"The Bob Paris Story" as told in hepcat: Joy, 16 February 1959

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