Don Mills - Keyboards

Don was born in Christchurch and began his music career at the age of 8 learning the piano accordion. As a youngster, he won many awards including New Zealand Accordion Champion in 1961. Don left school at 16 and worked in Sedley Wells music shop for 4 years. It was at this stage that he turned to playing the organ, which is still his main love today. He has fond memories of sneaking out the back door of Sedley Wells on a Friday night to play at Chequers nightclub which was in the same building. Don then joined Pete Ward and the Prophets at the Caledonian Ballroom and later the Premiers and then a band called Beam who toured the North Island and backed many top artists. BEAM performed at many of the Xmas / New Year holiday shows together with the entertainers from the hugely popular Happen Inn and Popco television series before securing a slot themselves on the top television show Freeride which featured Ray Columbus and saw them performing every second Saturday night.

In 1975 Don joined the heavy metal band Think who wrote and played almost all of their own material as well as covering numbers by Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. Think played at many of the top hotels and clubs in the country and won the 1975 New Zealand Battle of the Bands in October of that year.

Some of the highlights in Don’s career were supporting the Doobie Brothers and Deep Purple at Western Springs in Auckland in front of 35,000 people, winning The Grunt Machines original song contest and recording the album “Think We Will Give You A Buzz.” for Warner Brothers. Members in the band were Don (keyboards), Phil Whitehead (guitar), Neville Jess (drums) and Alan Badger (bass). The band was later joined by Ritchie Pickett on vocals and left for a 12 month stint in Australia performing in many top Sydney and Melbourne clubs.

Don returned to Christchurch in 1978 and gigged for a while with the Chateaux Regency resident band before joining Guilty and playing at the Bush Inn. This band was to eventually become Paris and play regularly at the Carlton Hotel and dominate the Christchurch pub scene for the next four years before being reborn as the Party Pros.

1995 saw Don playing electronic music with the band with 42nd Street and the start of his teaching career. He continues to teach keyboards in several local schools and in 2005 returned to the live music scene playing in the top Christchurch Rock‘n’Roll band About Time and in Don’s words “is loving it”.