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[♪♪♪]
[John Lennon] I wanted the Beatles thing to end.
I felt as though I couldn't breathe
if it went on any longer.
[telephone rings]
We got this phone call from Toronto
on a Friday night...
It's John Brower calling.
[Lennon] ...that there was a Rock & Roll Revival show
with 100,000 audience, or whatever it was...
[crowd screaming]
[♪♪♪]
...and that Chuck was gonna be there.
Let me hear you say "peace!"
[crowd screaming] Peace!
[♪♪♪]
[Lennon] ...and Jerry Lee was gonna be there...
[Jerry Lee Lewis] It's a great pleasure to be here
at the revival of rock 'n' roll,
and I'll guarantee you,
if it ain't revived today, we'll never have it revived.
[Lennon] ...and all the great rockers
that were still living...
[Bo Diddley] Right now, we're gonna take you back
to the year of 1955! Have mercy.
[Little Richard] Ladies and gentlemen,
you are listening to the true rock 'n' roll!
[Lennon] He added The Doors were top of the bill.
[Claudja Barry] It was monumental.
I did feel like I was a part of a bigger moment.
It was something that I would not forget.
[Kim Fowley] The ninth wonder of the world,
Alice Cooper!
[Alice Cooper] It was upsetting the system
on every level.
A lot of tension going on.
[Shep Gordon] It was a social phenomenon.
For Toronto, this was their Woodstock.
[Geddy Lee] The combination of people on the stage
at that particular point in time
is, without question, historic.
You can't see a seismic shift happening
when you're a kid in the middle of it.
This was far too much
ahead of its time.
Okay, we're just gonna do a number that we know, you know,
'cause we've never played together before.
[crowd roaring]
[♪♪♪]
[John Brower] The Rock & Roll Revival,
did it really happen?
Did John Lennon really--
was he really here last night?
It was so under the radar, it was almost a non-event,
until all of a sudden,
it was the biggest thing in the world.
[crowd roaring]
[♪♪♪]
[heavy traffic, cars honking]
[♪♪♪]
This is the office
of two of the most unlikely show-business impresarios
you're likely to meet.
Ken Walker, 23, Business Manager...
[♪♪♪]
[telephone ringing]
[Ken Walker] We are thinking right now
of maybe doing something in the fall.
[reporter] ...and John Brower, 22,
producer and talent scout.
[John Brower] They're now in Toronto,
and they're just changing,
and getting ready for the concert tonight.
Brower-Walker
had been the principal concert promoters in Toronto
for about a year.
A lot of people coming and going.
That office was all about rock festivals.
[reporter] No wall-to-wall carpets,
no mahogany desks,
and for the visitor,
instead of the big cigar in the humidor,
you can just reach
into any number of a group of crates around here,
pick yourself an apple, a pear, an orange...
[Brower] There was this excitement in the air
that, like, we have an office.
You know, we have a clubhouse.
They said in the ads for the festival,
"If you want tickets, send bread."
Well, some people did just that.
White and sliced.
The surprising thing is, they got the tickets.
What are you going to do with the bread?
Well, I can't bank it,
so I guess I'll have to eat it. [laughs]
[Shep Gordon] Promoters weren't corporate
like they are today.
They were kids who had passion for music.
They were looking to have some fun,
get some people in,
and make a few bucks and eat lunch.
[typewriter clacks]
[typewriter dings]
[Brower] Back then,
we started out just for the music.
This was so new.
[Gordon] In the '60s, it wasn't the music business,
it was just music.
It was really about A) eating lunch,
and B) not working in a normal job.
[Brower] This was after penicillin
and before AIDS.
You know, free love was free love.
It was out there.
Agents were talking about,
"There's gonna be big rock festivals
for the summer of '69,"
and we were putting on the pop festival.
You've seen the news footage.
Well, it's the first pop festival in Canada,
and I think it's got a talent lineup
that hasn't been beaten.
[crowd cheering]
[Gordon] John Brower had a spark.
He could turn a really difficult negotiation
and conversation--
he'd always have a little twist.
We're bringing in 28 groups
and over 200 performers.
[crowd cheering]
[Brower] The Toronto Pop Festival
was the first festival of 1969.
There were probably 25 bands.
Not a bad show.
It was amazing that Chuck Berry,
one of the greatest rock 'n' rollers of all time,
ended up the magic of the show.
He brought just incredible joy to the afternoon
when he played.
There was this excitement in the air.
We sold that show out,
and made a ton of money on that show.
It created such a phenomenal buzz
in Toronto.
[newscast] It's been called the first real pop festival
Canada has ever seen.
[Brower] I think we felt invincible.
Kenny and I could've gone out and played the ukulele,
and we would have sold out Varsity Stadium.
We needed a show for the fall.
My thought was,
"If Chuck Berry can do this,
what would it be like to have Little Richard..."
♪ Tutti frutti oh, rootie, woo! ♪
♪ Tutti frutti oh, rootie ♪
[Brower] ...Jerry Lee Lewis...
Shake!
Shake, honey, shake!
[Brower] ...Gene Vincent...
♪ All right You get your gal... ♪
[Brower] ...Bo Diddley...
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] All of them on the same stage
at the same time,
and that was the seed
of the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival...
[♪♪♪]
...and in a meeting,
the concept was created,
"Let's put all of these guys together on the same bill."
We called around, and lo and behold,
Little Richard,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley,
Gene Vincent,
all available on the same day as Chuck,
and that became September 13th.
The definitive sound of the '50s,
and there probably isn't a musician
in the whole wide world
that hasn't consciously or unconsciously
been influenced by his music.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chuck Berry!
[applause]
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
and I shall do for you first
a song that I first recorded...
[Robert Christgau] I was a rock critic.
I respected and cared for the artists of the '50s.
The idea that Chuck Berry was a great artist
was one I started selling to my editors in '64, '65.
[♪♪♪]
A great performer, a great guitarist.
The Beatles,
they told everybody that they came out of Chuck Berry.
I like Chuck Berry, Elvis,
and Little Richard, Eddie Cochran. Many.
Bo Diddley.
[Christgau] Let me tell you,
sitting across the table from John Lennon,
it's very impressive,
and what we discussed there
is that we talked about many of the other artists
of the '50s.
He made "Hound Dog" real.
And then there was Gene Vincent.
♪ Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe ♪
♪ Be-bop-a-lula She's my baby ♪
[Lennon] Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula",
one of the first songs I ever sang,
and the first day I sang it in public with a real band
is the day I met Paul,
and it's always been one of my all-time favourites.
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] We needed a back-up band
for Gene Vincent.
[Christgau] The people who put on
the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival
did hedge their bets.
Not only did they hire
many of the other artists of the '50s,
they hire Alice Cooper,
who at that time was completely unknown.
[Gordon] When I met John,
they had this idea of a big festival.
In order to get the gig,
John said, "You have to back up some of the bands."
[Alice Cooper] When we got with Shep,
it was always just, "Get us on stage,
and we will build that audience."
[Kim Fowley] Alice Cooper!
[crowd cheering]
[Gordon] Alice was an unknown quantity.
We couldn't get work anywhere.
We had zero money.
So Shep wanted to get as much money as possible,
so he got us to book them on the show as Alice Cooper,
and then to pay them again
to be the backup band for Gene Vincent.
Totally unknown band,
and they said, "Okay."
So, off we went.
[Brower] We were full-tilt boogie
on the Rock & Roll Revival.
Everybody was talking about
this was gonna be earth-shattering,
ground-breaking.
A few weeks later,
tickets were not selling.
It was a terrible shock,
and it was a personal blow
because I was the one that created this show.
[♪♪♪]
Truth be told,
the kings of rock 'n' roll
were playing hotels and motels
along the Vegas strip.
There was a sense that many of these artists,
while they may have been living legends,
were no longer of contemporary relevance--
what would today be called a meme.
The notion that rock was dead
in the hippie artistic community.
Their artistic heyday was gone.
[bus honking]
[Brower] I looked at the show,
and said, "That's what's wrong."
We did not have superstars.
"We need somebody big here,"
and that's when we got The Doors.
[Robby Krieger] ♪ People are strange ♪
♪ When you're a stranger ♪
♪ Places look ugly ♪
♪ When you're down ♪
Take two.
[Krieger] '69,
"Hello, I Love You" had just come out
and made number one.
♪ Hello, I love you Won't you tell me your name? ♪
♪ Hello, I love you ♪
♪ Let me jump in your game ♪
We were playing, like, the big places.
That was kind of the top of our career at that point.
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] Kenny did not want to spend any more money.
"We don't need anybody else.
Things will pick up."
The Doors wanted $25,000.
That was a lot of money,
and the only person I knew that had that kind of money
was Edjo,
the leader of the Vagabonds Motorcycle Club.
[motorcycle rumbling]
[♪♪♪]
I don't remember as much as I should about that era.
Gotta remember,
there was a lot of marijuana smoked in them days.
[chuckles]
At that time, there was 105 Vagabonds,
plus about 25 guys that wanted to be in the club.
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] Kenny said, "Go ahead,
borrow the money from whoever you want,
but if it's a bomb, it's on you."
Your word's your bond in my business.
You say something, you mean it.
You don't need a contract, or you never did in them days.
[Brower] There were no limit to what Edjo would do.
Nobody needs enemies.
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] I thought The Doors would be huge,
so I called New York...
It's John Brower calling.
...and got a contract for The Doors.
Everybody was very excited.
The Doors were coming to Toronto.
[Christgau] I don't know exactly how
Brower got The Doors on his bill,
but it was a coup.
The Doors were a real draw.
They were legendary at that moment.
[Krieger] Right about the time that Toronto happened,
just before, we had to play in Miami.
It turned out to be kind of a weird night.
Jim got a little bit too drunk before the show,
which wasn't that unusual.
As the show went on,
he starts berating the audience.
[Jim Morrison] You're all a bunch of fucking idiots!
[crowd shouting]
Oh, you guys didn't come here just to-- for music, did you?
You just, you want to see something, right?
You want to see this?
[crowd shouting and jeering]
[Morrison] What do you want?
[crowd booing]
[Morrison] Huh?
I can't hear you!
[Krieger] I didn't think he was serious,
and he never did whip it out,
but it was a crazy show.
Three or four days later,
they arrested Jim--
indecent exposure,
indecent language.
That was the first night of a tour,
and we had at least 10 or 15 dates after that.
Every one of them cancelled,
but luckily,
we got to do the Toronto show.
The publicity around The Doors in Miami
and the felony charges,
that did not translate into ticket sales in Toronto.
Of course, there were some newspaper ads.
There were flyers.
There were posters.
It was a very tough sell.
Tickets just were not moving.
Everything was just frozen.
A week before the show,
we had 2,000 tickets sold,
and we needed almost nine to break even.
It was my brilliant idea,
that turned out to be not quite so brilliant.
It needed a little help.
[Ritchie Yorke] I was a journalist
working for The Globe and Mail in Toronto,
and John Brower was trying to call
about the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival.
[Brower] Ritchie Yorke was the top rock writer in the city.
He was one of our confidants.
He said, "You've gotta bring Rodney Bingenheimer,
the Mayor of Sunset Strip.
Rodney's famous."
♪ Talking about the Mayor of the Sunset Strip... ♪
[Rodney Bingenheimer] Got your radios on?
It's time for Rodney on the ROQ.
[Brower] And Kim Fowley,
who was a legendary madman.
[Fowley] Ladies and gentlemen, I hear some applause.
Start applauding now! Now! Now!
[Brower] "You've gotta bring them up here
to be the MCs
and let them do promotion.
They do great interviews,"
and so, for a couple of plane tickets,
we had two certifiable Hollywood legends on the bill
promoting the show.
Even that didn't help.
Didn't make any difference at all.
You notice I got the Toronto shirt on?
[♪♪♪]
[Fowley] Rodney Bingenheimer!
[crowd cheering]
I think the promotion
wasn't as strong as it should've been.
Ticket sales weren't doing that well.
[Brower] Investors were saying, "We're out.
Cancel everything.
The deal's off,"
and it just came out of nowhere.
All of a sudden, the show's gonna be cancelled.
"This is a disaster.
Stop it now."
Who's gonna pay Edjo?
Where's the money for Edjo if the show's cancelled?
The pressure that night was intense.
It was just beyond anything I could imagine,
and going to the hotel
to tell Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer
that they may as well get packed
because we're going to fly them back tomorrow...
Kim Fowley went into a tirade,
storming around the hotel suite.
"You can't cancel this show!
This is a classic show!
This is ridiculous!
If it was in Dodgers Stadium, it would sell out!
Here's what you need to do.
You need to call John Lennon tomorrow at Apple
and invite he and Yoko to be the MC,
because he loves Chuck Berry and Little Richard,"
and I mean, Kim Fowley was walking around the room
preaching to me,
and he got me.
There was so much tension that night
because I had to hold off until the next morning
and see if we could get John Lennon on the phone.
So, before we start,
can I just get a tiny bit more red wine?
-Mm-hmm. -If that's okay.
Is that a cigarette? No.
-Mm-hmm. -No, it's not, no. [laughs]
Toronto Rock & Roll...
19... Was it 1969 or '70?
When was it?
It was a long time ago.
This is Anthony Fawcett in Bag Productions.
How can I help you?
[♪♪♪]
[Fawcett] London in the mid-'60s
was really colourful.
We all mixed together.
You know, we'd go to the same clubs,
we'd go to Tramp,
and The Stones would be in one table, and...
Anyway, you need to edit me
and get me back to John and Yoko, so "cut."
[distant crowds cheering]
I grew up with The Beatles,
never even imagining that one day
I would be one of the closest people in the world
to John Lennon,
and actually living with him, literally.
They always used to say, "Anthony is the only one
that comes between John and Yoko."
Lucky me.
You know, 20-year-old art critic.
Can you imagine?
Just tell us what's going on today.
It's all Japanese today.
Yeah, and what about the evening?
When do we finish?
Two more Japanese.
[Fawcett] John was in a really bad state.
He was very depressed.
I think he missed playing live.
I mean, actually, for John, playing live,
probably in his whole life,
that's what he loved best, on the stage.
He'd thrown off the mantle of The Beatles.
[Lennon] Ringo's left once.
George had left once
for a couple of days or something. Yeah.
Complete chaos.
[Fawcett] You have to imagine Bag Productions
in the Apple building.
There's a big black leather desk.
John and Yoko behind it.
I'm sitting here on the side.
We have a fire going in the office,
a burning log fire.
So I'm screening everything for John Lennon and Yoko.
[telephones ringing]
It was really weird
for a 20-year old to be the conduit
to John Lennon and Yoko.
So if I get a phone call from the prime minister,
if I get a phone call from Salvador Dali,
if I get a phone call from John Brower in Toronto,
I take the call.
[Brower] The next morning,
I've gotten Kenny and myself
down at the office at 6:00 in the morning.
It's now 11:00 in the morning in London.
[beeping]
[telephone rings]
Hello.
"This is John Brower.
I'm calling from Toronto.
You need to tell John Lennon
all these people are playing on the same bill
this Saturday in Toronto,
and we would like to invite John and Yoko
to come and be the MCs."
So I told John right away,
"Hey, we just got a call in from Toronto.
They want you to play in a rock 'n' roll festival.
There's someone on the line from Canada
inviting you to cur this weekend
at some big rock concert in--
[Lennon] In Canada?
[Fawcett] Yeah, for a big rock concert.
[Lennon] Well, get a bit more detail.
Find out who's on.
He says, "Well, find out more,"
so I start getting calls from Ritchie Yorke.
Ritchie was a writer like me.
[Yorke] I happened to be at Apple
because I had an interview planned for the Monday morning
with George.
John was being hassled by John Brower on the phone
to come over and be at this Rock & Roll Revival.
Was that John Brower that just phoned?
-John Brower. -Was it?
John Brower, yes.
It was John Brower?
Yes.
Okay, and he's the organizer, isn't he?
He's the producer of it, yes.
The producer. Great, okay.
Basically, John wanted to know
if they were good people doing it.
Could he trust them?
Would it be okay to go?
[Brower] Had Ritchie Yorke not been at Apple,
John Lennon might've thought
that we were just a couple of crazy kids
calling him on the phone.
[knock on door]
[Fawcett] I've got Ritchie Yorke outside.
[Lennon] Maybe he knows a bit about Canada, then.
Hi, how are you?
A-ha. There's a Toronto Rock & Roll Revival
on tomorrow,
which has Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent
and Little Richard, and all--
you know, they've got them all together,
and Kim Fowley and The Doors,
and, you know, it's a nice little scene.
I know the two guys who are running it. John Brower.
[Lennon] Oh, he's the one that was on the phone just now,
John Brower. -[Ritchie] Oh, really?
[Lennon] Find out how much, too.
[call ringing]
[Brower] And there's a pause.
Now, this is on a speaker phone.
We are looking at each other,
like, "Are you hearing this?"
Now Kenny starts going like this...
and I go, "You know, we can't pay you,"
and he says, "Oh, no, no, that's okay,"
and Kenny starts going like this,
and I go, "But we'll get you plane tickets,
first class,"
and Kenny goes...
[Lennon] They'll give us a chartered plane of 30
to go and play at a rock concert.
We could get a group together to take over.
[Yoko Ono] George and Eric might go.
[Lennon] Could you ring George and ask,
could he get me a group together
for tomorrow night in... for Canada?
It sounds about good, this Canadian thing.
[Ono] Yes, it does.
To cut a very long story short,
John said, "Yeah, we'll do it.
[scanning through radio stations]
...on the CHUM News Watch
for Sid Silver formal rentals.
Apparently...
[Brower] Of course, where were we running?
Right up to CHUM radio with the news.
♪ C-H-U-M 1050 Toronto ♪
[Brower] The radio support was CHUM radio.
That was it.
It was radio, radio, radio.
"I just got off the phone a few hours ago
with John Lennon.
He's coming over on Saturday.
They're gonna play,"
and they're just, like,
looking at us, like, "Your show's bombing here,
and John Lennon's coming,
and you want us to go on the air with that?"
[elevator dings]
At which point, they threw us out of the station.
Now, Kenny's going, "We're in trouble."
I said, "Look, John Lennon is gonna tell us
who's in his band.
We will tape that phone call.
We'll come up here, and we'll show these guys."
Kenny goes, "Okay, good."
So now we have to wait 24 hours.
[Klaus Voormann] The start of the whole story,
I'm gonna start right from the very start,
which is John called me.
"Klaus, we have a band called the Plastic Ono Band.
There's going to be a rock 'n' roll festival,
and the Plastic Ono Band's gonna play there,"
and I thought, "Oh, shit. Plastic Ono Band?"
and I thought maybe you have to get up on stage naked.
So I was a little hesitant,
then he started saying,
"Eric already said yes.
He's gonna be in the band,"
and then Yoko was in the background
saying, "Yeah, we're gonna go there for peace,"
and I said, "When's that?"
"Well, tomorrow morning."
[telephone ringing] [Alan White] He called me up
at my house in London.
[Lennon] And I said, "Look,
there's this thing on in Toronto, you wanna come?"
[White] I didn't think it was him,
so I kinda put the phone down,
and then he called back ten minutes later.
He said, "No, no, no, really, this is John Lennon."
"I've gotta do a show in Toronto.
Can you be at the airport tomorrow?"
I said, "Sure."
[Fawcett] John Lennon was incredibly fast.
Everything happened in a split second.
He just liked the idea that, "I can play live again."
We have to remember,
John hasn't played live for a long, long time,
and he had to decide who he would play with.
John asked me to try and find Eric Clapton
to see if he'd come or not.
Literally, the day before.
[Brower] Having Klaus,
and Eric,
and Alan White there,
that was the first time
that John really had a Plastic Ono Band.
[Lennon] The band is our Plastic Ono Band,
which Yoko and I formed.
The band will expand
depending on how many people want to play with us,
so the Plastic Ono Band
could be four people or 10 people.
Only the Plastic Ono Band will be constant.
John and Yoko are bigger than John Lennon.
John and Yoko are bigger than George Harrison.
John and Yoko are bigger than Paul McCartney.
So that's our power now,
and the power is for the people
instead of for The Beatles,
and we destroyed the myth.
[Dan Richter] I was over in the kitchen at Ascot.
John came down the stairs
and said, "They've just asked us
to go over to this Rock & Roll Revival
in Toronto,
and it's tomorrow.
You wanna come with us?"
[Richter] Yoko was one of the founders
of the Fluxus Movement,
which is pretty rarified air.
The avant-garde of the avant-garde.
People like George Maciunas
and Jonas Mekas.
[Fawcett] She had worked with Ornette Coleman.
She'd worked with Andy Warhol.
When she came to London,
she was very well established in the art scene,
so we all knew her.
[Richter] The '60s opened all these doors,
and behind one of the doors was Yoko Ono.
She believed in her art totally.
[Ono] I, myself, in my own way,
was coming to a point where I was feeling that
I'd explored all the things that I could explore
in the avant-garde world,
and I was looking for something else.
[Richter] Really,
it wasn't until she did her Film No. 4,
which is also known as "Bottoms."
That film created some notoriety.
The world found out about her at that point.
[Ono] And every day,
I was talked about in the newspaper.
In fact, in a way,
I was ostracized by the avant-garde world
by then.
At that time,
Yoko really didn't get much respect from anybody.
[Ono] Because I was getting too famous
for a serious artist,
but I wasn't famous enough
for the Lennon league, I suppose.
[Richter] He wanted to be around real artists,
and Yoko was as real an artist as you can get.
Yoko said to John,
"When you sing I wanna hold your hand..."
[Beatles sing] ♪ I want to hold your hand... ♪
[Richter] "100 million people around the world
hear those words,
so why don't you say something important?"
He said, "Yoko can give me the words
through conceptual techniques.
We can do this together."
John would do his rock 'n' roll kind of thing
in one,
and Yoko would do her conceptual thing as one.
[♪♪♪]
They just fell head over heels, uh, for each other.
It was like they'd been missing a part of themselves,
and they found it.
[Brower] The next morning,
we're back down at the office,
the tape recorder ready.
Call Apple Records.
[call ringing]
"Hello, this is John Brower.
I'm calling for John Lennon.
He's expecting my call."
The phone is picked up.
"Hello, it's Anthony Fawcett.
I'm Yoko's assistant,
and I've got the names for you."
Okay, what am I gonna say?
"Well, no, I need John Lennon on the phone"?
I mean, we're kinda stunned,
but we got a guy on the phone,
he's giving us the names.
John Lennon.
Yoko Ono Lennon.
Eric Clapton.
Klaus Voormann.
Alan White,
and this guy, Anthony Fawcett,
and the next morning, Kenny and I go up to CHUM.
We're pretty smug now.
Punch the button, tape plays.
Hello, it's Anthony Fawcett here in London.
I've got the names now
coming on the travel to Toronto.
[Brower] Now the program director stands up.
"You know something?
We've been promoting shows for you guys here,
and you would come up here with this bullshit on this tape,
with a guy with a pretty good English accent,
and you want us to go on the air with this?
I don't even wanna look at either one of you,"
and they just walked out.
Well, now Kenny is about ready to faint,
and I have one last thought--
"I need to get Russ Gibb in Detroit on the phone."
[Russ Gibb] Russ Gibb, jumping up and down,
and we're inviting you to hang in there.
I dial him from the boardroom,
and I play him the tape.
[Fawcett on recording] Do you have a pen?
I've got the names now.
John Lennon, Yoko Ono...
[Brower] Russ Gibb is promoting this
as the Second Coming.
This is the greatest thing to happen in rock 'n' roll.
The next day, all the tickets in Detroit-Windsor are gone.
[traffic, horns blare]
In New York...
[telephone rings]
...D.A. Pennebaker,
who had made two brilliant documentaries...
[♪♪♪]
[Brower] Pennebaker contacted our office and said,
"I wanna come up and film the Rock & Roll Revival."
Well, this was amazing.
Not only were we gonna have John Lennon,
now we're gonna have a movie.
[D.A. Pennebaker] I went up there
because those four guys were playing.
I thought it was a great film to do,
and I was happy to do it,
because I think
that's an extraordinary history of rock 'n' roll.
[♪♪♪]
[Christgau] A brand-new magazine
called "Show"
asked me to write a profile of Pennebaker.
Pennebaker gave me the journalist's dream,
total access.
Nothing off the record?
That's a very rare privilege for any journalist to get,
and I took advantage of it.
The Show agreed to pay my airfare.
I was following the story.
That was what I was supposed to do, and I did.
They didn't paste any limits on what I could report.
[Chris Dalrymple] When Bob Christgau
arrived in the office
to do the profile of Penne,
I had never met a rock journalist before.
My first and only impression of him
was him trying to gain my confidence,
and possibly give him some inside dirt.
You know, once he couldn't get anything out of me,
he was through, and moved on to somebody else.
[film set bell rings]
[Molly Davis] All right, quiet on the set!
[cameraman] Camera speed.
[Davis] Everybody somehow met at the airport.
There were a lot of people that came.
If there was a plane ticket provided, you just went.
I mean, it wasn't like you were gonna get paid.
Molly filming.
Roll 4A, wild sound.
[Dalrymple] Very quickly, it was, "Pack everything up,
and we're leaving."
Penne would use his friends.
If he called, they'd go.
'Cause everybody wanted to go everywhere with Penne.
Why not?
And Penne said, "Take a Super-8 cam,
and then maybe get some backstage stuff,"
and I'm going, "That's great, I'll go," you know, so...
Yeah, I just went.
[Dalrymple] So off we flew to Toronto.
Pennebaker was in town.
They were getting ready to roll.
Pennebaker had been given
these little movie cameras,
and he'd given them out to people.
[Davis] Penne didn't do anything on the fly.
[claps]
Penne had rented practically an entire motel.
[Davis] Saturday morning, hotel.
Outside hotel with Penne.
[Dalrymple] Got to the hotel,
just dropped everything,
went right to the stadium.
[Davis] Entering stadium at gate.
Stadium, Penne.
[Dalrymple] It was just like a weekend in the country.
[Pennebaker] One started at half.
Okay, ask him to bring 'em up to three-quarters.
That's what I want to see.
I just want to get 'em even.
[Dalrymple] We're just gonna set up,
we'll have daylight,
we'll have spots on the stage, and we'll do it.
What could be simpler?
After that, it was just a matter of waiting around
till the sun went down.
[Pennebaker] We just raised it,
just raised it.
I know that, but just see where the light's coming from.
That's the end of your spots.
You can't see the spotlight.
[Brower] I called Edjo,
and I said, "Ed, I've got a great idea.
John Lennon is coming.
He's bringing a band.
They're gonna play at the show.
How about you get some of the bikes
and we escort him in?
Bikes in front, bikes in back."
Edjo loved it.
So Edjo organized 80 motorcycles,
but, of course, during the week,
the talk all around Toronto
is that John Lennon is not coming.
In fact, CHUM had called Capitol Records,
who called Allen Klein,
The Beatles manager in New York,
who told them,
"John Lennon doesn't do anything I don't know about.
It's not true.
He's not going to Toronto."
Some of the Vagabonds sold pot
to some of the people at CHUM,
and they heard that story,
and they go back and tell Edjo.
[kissing]
So Friday night,
Edjo comes to my place,
and he's had a few drinks, and he's had some smoke,
and he pounds on my door,
and he just barges in,
and I go, "Ed, what's up?"
and he goes, "Look, man, I'm really pissed off.
How could you bullshit me?
I've been backing you up all week on this thing."
"John Lennon is coming.
We got him plane tickets."
Ed goes, "Look, if I have 80 bikes out there tomorrow,
and there's no John Lennon,
there's guys that are gonna come here,
and they're gonna fucking beat the shit out of you."
[Fawcett] As always,
I go up to the bedroom
to see if they're ready to come out to the airport,
and they're in a really bad mood.
"We're not feeling so well.
I don't think we can do it.
I think you're gonna have to cancel it.
Send some flowers."
[exhales] Deep breath.
Klaus, I think, had said yes, was at the airport.
Alan White was at the airport.
We hadn't heard back from Eric,
whether he even knew about it, whether he could come,
he hadn't replied.
So at 4:00 in the morning,
my phone rings,
and it's Anthony Fawcett.
He's trembling on the phone right now,
and he's just talked to John Lennon
at Tittenhurst Park, where John lives,
who has told him that he and Yoko can't make it,
and that he's to send flowers to the festival,
"Love John & Yoko."
I don't know what to say except, "No.
If John Lennon doesn't show up,
I have to leave my city.
I have to leave my country.
I am ruined."
[church bell tolls]
I said, "He has to come."
After that first call,
I went back downstairs to the kitchen.
I decided not to do anything.
[Voormann] Terry Doran went up to Eric Clapton's house.
They called and tried everything.
He didn't hear the telephone,
and he banged on the door,
and he got him.
So he turned up at the airport at the last minute.
[Fawcett] And I said, "John, you know what?
Eric got the message, and he wants to come,"
and John, he suddenly, "What? Eric said yes?"
I said, "Yeah."
I said, "He woke up. He was sleeping late.
Eric's on his way to the airport,
so what shall I say?"
and John suddenly got excited,
and he looked at Yoko, he says, "Okay, let's go.
We're doing it."
[call dialing]
[call ringing]
So I call the airport,
and I say, "We're coming.
Get us on the next flight."
So suddenly, it's on.
[Brower] So he and Yoko get out of bed
and get in the limo--
[car honks]
--and they arrive at Heathrow Airport,
and, of course, they're mobbed,
and John, he gives a little press conference.
"Yes, we're going to Toronto.
We're going to play at a rock show.
It's gonna be the Plastic Ono Band's
first show."
[fanfare sounds]
So this goes out immediately.
"John Lennon. Heathrow Airport.
Announces on his way to Toronto for a rock festival."
[Fawcett] We get on the plane.
We're with the band.
[Voormann] We're all sitting in the back.
We got the last row.
So this one's the Toronto flight.
So this is Eric,
this is John,
that's Alan White,
and me trying to play bass in an airplane.
No amplifier.
Very, very difficult.
[Fawcett] We're on the way to Canada
to play at a rock 'n' roll concert,
and no one actually knows what we're gonna play.
They had to make the playlist on the plane.
[Lennon] Now, we didn't know what to play,
'cause we'd never played together before.
On the airplane,
we're running through these oldies
with electric guitars.
They just grabbed the guitars,
and we went down to the back of the plane,
and I was playing on the seat.
[Voormann] And Alan was hitting on the headrest
[imitates drum beats]
When you sit there, and you play,
and you hear John,
he's a fantastic rhythm guitar player,
and then Yoko's gonna do her thing,
and then she came down the aisle of the plane,
and said, "Can we do my song now?"
and John got up and said,
"Let's go and have a cup of tea."
So no rehearsal with Yoko.
He kept it really away from us.
He just wanted us to be surprised.
[Fawcett] I can't imagine
what the air hostesses were thinking.
They must have thought they were in heaven.
For the first time in his life,
coming to play live with a new band,
not The Beatles,
he was so excited about that.
[Geddy Lee] We were all suburban kids still.
We didn't live downtown.
Even coming downtown to see a band
was an adventure.
Especially when you would normally drop acid,
as we would, quite often.
That was the vibe of the times...
[♪♪♪]
...which is how I came to be at the Rock & Roll Revival.
I got a call from John Rutsey, our drummer,
and he said, "Let's go to this show.
It should be great."
We literally got together,
dropped acid,
and went down to the show.
[crowd cheering]
[Claudja Barry] The Toronto Rock & Roll Revival
was something that you'd never heard about before.
It was, like, "What?
I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go."
[crowd cheering]
[♪♪♪]
And I heard about Little Richard,
and I thought, "Oh god, yes,"
and I said to my brother,
"Oh, come on, we gotta go,"
so we both snuck out,
primarily to see the Black guys.
[crowd cheering]
The excitement was amazing.
I had not experienced something like that before.
I don't remember ever being in such a big crowd before.
We were just laughing and having a grand time.
I was thinking, "My god, this is very scary,"
because there were so many people.
I'm pretty sure my brother and I
were the only two Black people there.
[Lea Harper] On the day of the festival,
we hopped on a bus not far from where we lived.
We had our cigarettes and our lighters,
and that was about it...
[♪♪♪]
...and the whole place was on their feet.
We never sat down.
We were on our feet for 12 hours.
These four guys whose names we never learned,
we took turns sitting on their shoulders
and swaying to the music.
The show was on, everything was going.
The stage is good.
Everything was set up. We're all good there.
There were thousands of people down there.
Edjo,
who had been given an entire section in the stadium,
and it was now filled with about 300 bikers
and their friends
who were partying absolutely madly...
[Christgau] Then I spent the entire day in the press pit,
right up front
on a very hot day in Toronto,
and I watched the whole thing.
It was a remarkable experience.
[crowd screaming and cheering]
[Lee] Everyone was so nice that day.
It was one of the few acid trips I ever did in my life
where I actually had a good time.
We tripped the whole day.
Walked around, and around, and around
listening to all these amazing bands,
getting more and more high.
The music was incredible.
[Brower] We had a great show,
we had great bands.
Chicago had a hit record, "25 or 6 to 4."
[Kim Fowley] Ladies and gentlemen,
this group said they wouldn't play
until they hear some applause,
so start applauding now.
Now! Now!
Chicago!
♪ Searching for something to say ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ Dancing lights against the sky... ♪
[Danny Seraphine] That original band
was an amazing force.
We could do things that nobody could do.
[crowd cheering]
[♪♪♪]
We released a couple of singles,
"Questions 67 and 68."
[Chicago performing]
[♪♪♪]
It was just a great song. I love it.
Yeah, I love the drum part. I mean, it was high energy.
I still love playing it.
♪ Can this feeling that we have together ♪
♪ Ooh, suddenly exist between... ♪
[Seraphine] "Questions 67 and 68"
to me, was an important song for the band.
It's got an amazing Peter Cetera vocal,
at the very top of his range.
♪ Appears in my mind ♪
♪ As a beautifully mysterious thing ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[♪♪♪]
[Lee] Chicago Transit Authority,
they were a different sound for an outdoor rock show,
'cause of all the horns.
[♪♪♪]
[Seraphine] I was one of the architects
putting that band together.
We were really not a revival band.
We were futuristic, we were modern.
[♪♪♪]
[song winding down]
[song ends]
[Fowley] Well, let's hear it for Chicago!
[crowd cheering]
Hey!
[crowd screaming and cheering]
[taps microphone]
[Bo Diddley] Right now,
we're gonna take you back to the year of 1955!
Have mercy.
[starts playing guitar]
[♪♪♪]
[tambourine tapping rhythm]
[strumming same rhythm]
[tapping tambourine rhythm]
[backup singer] Let's get those hands together out there.
[Diddley] Come on, get it together now, come on.
[strumming in rhythm, crowd clapping along]
[backup singer] Do anything you feel like doing.
This is your day!
[Diddley] Getting good as I go on, come on!
Tasting all right. Ha!
Come on!
[♪♪♪]
[Alice Cooper] If you watch the old guys,
when they hit that stage,
they brought it
like it's the last show you're ever gonna do.
♪ Hey! Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Hey! Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
[♪♪♪]
[Davis] I just couldn't believe I had the good fortune
to see Bo Diddley...
of course, the guys that originated everything
that anybody ever did.
The heroes, you know?
Yeah!
[strumming]
[♪♪♪]
♪ I called the other night on the telephone ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Your mama said you're not alone ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Yeah! ♪
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley! ♪
♪ Yeah! ♪
[Lee] The music was important.
Your ears pricked up over artists like that.
You could see they were digging it.
♪ Yeah! Yeah! ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ Yeah, let's be together ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ Let's get together ♪
♪ Oh, yeah! ♪
♪ Oh, let's be together! ♪
[crowd cheering] ♪ Yeah! ♪
[♪♪♪]
[song ends] Peace!
[crowd cheering and roaring]
Yeah!
Yeah! Yeah!
[crowd cheering]
Yeah! Yeah!
Have mercy.
All right.
[crowd cheering and screaming]
And the day just went on...
and on.
All these great bands kept coming out.
[crowd screaming and cheering]
[microphone feeds back]
[crowd cheering]
[Jerry Lee Lewis] Whoo!
Thank you very much, neighbours.
I'll guarantee you one thing.
It's a great pleasure to be here
at the revival of rock 'n' roll,
and I'll guarantee you,
if it ain't revived today, we'll never have it revived.
[crowd cheering]
Whoo!
Look out, child!
[rolling tongue]
Here's one we done pretty good with.
[playing piano]
♪ Hmm... ♪
♪ I got a woman mean as she can be ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ Whoo! I got a woman mean as she can be ♪
[playing piano]
♪ Oh, sometimes I think she's almost mean as me ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ I ain't braggin' but it's understood ♪
♪ Everything I do I sure do it good ♪
♪ I got a woman... ♪
[Christgau] Jerry Lewis did some wonderful stuff.
Absolutely superb showman.
[♪♪♪]
♪ I drink coffee I drink tea ♪
♪ Jerry, Jerry You're the thing for me ♪
♪ I got a woman mean as she can be ♪
♪ Now, my gal, I'm-a braggin ♪ She's almost mean as me... ♪
Jerry Lee Lewis made his best record
performing his hits.
[starts to play "Great Balls Of Fire"]
♪ You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain ♪
♪ Too much love drives ol' Jerry insane ♪
♪ You broke my will ♪
♪ What a thrill ♪
♪ Goodness gracious great balls of fire... ♪
[Barry] I wanted to see Jerry Lee Lewis.
I heard his music.
I really liked Jerry Lee Lewis,
because he was different.
[♪♪♪]
[crowd cheering]
[Christgau] He was a hit man.
Magnificent.
Vital rock 'n' roll.
[Barry] He was so commanding.
He was so in control.
[crowd cheering]
Whoo!
Look out, child!
I love you like a hog loves slop,
and I need you.
I couldn't do it without you.
God bless you.
[crowd cheering]
[Fowley] Ladies and gentleman, are you ready?
[crowd cheering]
[Christgau] Chuck Berry,
who was renowned for going to the airport,
getting his Cadillac,
and playing with a pickup band
that he'd never see again...
a great performer, a great guitarist.
[crowd cheering]
[Lee] Chuck Berry was awesome.
We were kind of glued to him.
I think it was Chuck Berry
who was backed up by some of the guys from Nucleus.
I think maybe Hughie Leggat played bass for him that day.
[Hugh Leggat] I had no idea
that I was gonna end up playing the bass
for Chuck Berry.
I said, "Give me your bass
and get out of my way," you know?
[laughs] That was it.
[♪♪♪]
[Danny Taylor] I didn't go to the Rock & Roll Revival
with the notion that I was gonna play with anyone.
Danny Taylor interview, take one.
Common mark.
When we were in the dressing room area,
our management said,
"You guys wanna play with Chuck Berry?"
I was nervous,
and I said, "Hughie, make sure you cue me.
I'm not sure of the arrangements
of some of these songs,"
and he goes, "Well, you know, don't worry."
He's like, "I'll cue you."
I go, "Okay, great."
[crowd cheering]
Are you ready
for the Guitar King of Rock and Roll...
Chuck Berry!
[crowd cheering]
[Taylor] The first time I saw him that whole day,
he came walking out of the side of the stage
with his guitar.
I hadn't even talked to him before that point,
and he walks up, doesn't even look at the band,
and goes, "Olé!"
Olé!
[crowd cheering] Olé!
Olé!
[cheering] Olé!
-Olé! -[crowd cheering] Olé!
Let me hear you say, "Peace."
Peace!
-[Chuck Berry] Peace! -[crowd cheers] Peace!
-Peace! -Peace!
Oh, that was beautiful, that was beautiful.
Let's-- With no further ado,
let's go on with a little of this stuff.
[strumming guitar]
He didn't tell us what key he was in or anything, you know?
[chuckles] One of my band members said,
"What key is it, baby? What are we playing?"
I said, "I don't know yet."
All you heard was "Oh, give me some of that..."
♪ Rock 'n' roll music ♪
♪ Any old way you choose it ♪
♪ It's got a backbeat you can't lose it ♪
♪ Any old time you use it ♪
♪ It's gotta be rock 'n' roll music ♪
♪ If you wanna dance with me ♪
♪ I have no kick against modern jazz... ♪
[Taylor] All of a sudden, we're on stage,
and I'm sitting behind a kit of drums
that I had never played before...
♪ ...and change the beauty of the melody ♪
♪ And make it sound like a symphony ♪
♪ That's why I go for this rock 'n' roll music ♪
Man, it was like the rollercoaster ride
was about ready to begin,
and we didn't know what was coming next.
[laughing]
I just was hanging on, like, petrified.
You know, "Wha...
What's gonna happen next?"
♪ ...hear 'em play a sambo ♪
♪ Way too late for the congo ♪
♪ You're too early for the mambo... ♪
I'm looking around at Hughie and the other guys, going...
and they're all looking at me
like I'm supposed to know what's going on,
and then, all of a sudden, I got it.
♪ Any old way you choose it ♪
♪ It's got a backbeat you can't lose it, child ♪
He looks at me and he goes--
And at that point in time,
he realized that, "Hey, man, these little kids--"
'cause we were 18--
"They can play."
♪ If you want to dance with me ♪
[ends song]
[crowd cheering]
Thank you.
[crowd cheering]
Thank you.
I kinda think we're tuned up now.
We'll open the show...
[crowd cheering]
we'll open the show with a cool one.
Yeah, now, this is a cool one.
Dig it.
Modern rock 'n' roll is based on Chuck Berry.
They were the architects.
Even then, we bowed to them.
That's royalty.
[crowd cheering]
Ah, have we shook a groove?
[crowd cheering]
Now, do we dig this groove?
[crowd cheering]
Shall we lay in this groove?
[crowd cheering]
Did I hear "Maybellene"?
[crowd cheering]
♪ Oh, Maybellene why can't you be true? ♪
♪ Maybellene ♪
♪ Can't you be true? ♪
♪ You done started back doing the things you used to do ♪
[♪♪♪]
It's John Brower calling.
The Doors have arrived.
They're now in Toronto,
and they're just changing
and getting ready for the concert tonight.
♪ Oh, Maybellene can't you be true? ♪
♪ Oh, Maybellene ♪
♪ Can't you be true? ♪
♪ You done started back doing the... ♪
[Leggat] While we're doing that groove,
you know, "doo-doo, doo-doo,"
I look to my right, past Chuck Berry,
and right next to him was Jim Morrison.
Standing watching us.
[♪♪♪]
♪ You started back doing the things you used to do ♪
[♪♪♪]
♪ Maybellene why can't you be true? ♪
♪ Oh, Maybellene... ♪
Chuck Berry, and he was just on fire, man.
That was, like, amazing.
[Christgau] His show was one of the best live shows
he'd given in that era.
♪ The motor cooled down The heat went down ♪
♪ That's when I heard that highway sound ♪
Clearly, at that moment, he was putting out.
It was a great performance.
A thrilling performance.
♪ ...sittin' still ♪
♪ Oh, Maybellene ♪
♪ Why can't you be true? ♪
[Krieger] Besides the fact
that he was duck-walking all over the place,
he was just really on that night.
I'm so lucky to have seen that show, I think, you know.
That was one of the best rock shows I've ever seen.
[audience cheering]
[cheering]
[Lee] Throughout the day,
Kim Fowley,
who was making announcements about a special guest...
"Well, the special guest is boarding a plane,"
and "The special guest is getting close to Toronto,"
and "The special guest is landing."
[Davis] Penne said I had to go out
to be with the motorcycle people.
That took a large part of the day.
It was kinda scary, 'cause I was 24.
Roll 3A.
Wild sound.
Motorcycles outside airport.
We were waiting and waiting and waiting out there,
so more and more drugs were being done.
[man] I'm getting a buzz.
Edjo?
[Davis] And that's when Edjo--
he's the kind of person that's an innate gentleman.
He looked a little scary to me at the time,
but he's a defender, a gentleman by nature.
I sorta fell in love with the camera girl.
[chuckling]
She says, "I wanna go with him,"
so she jumped on my bike.
It was a pretty bike,
nice pink metal flake and white.
Probably the prettiest bike there.
She shot a lot of footage, let's put it that way.
[Davis] It's kind of cool
to be riding in with a motorcycle gang.
[Brower] Edjo and I meet,
and we have a little drawing of the airport.
We're gonna meet on the service road.
He's gonna have the bikes laid out there.
My whole agenda
was getting Edjo's bikes to the airport,
but I was mostly focussed
on getting John Lennon at the airport,
getting him to the stadium.
[Fawcett] And then, of course, we land.
We get off the plane,
and immediately, there's a huge crowd.
[Richter] When we got to Toronto,
we got out at the airport,
and the driver said,
"We've arranged for you to go into a special entrance.
Nobody knows about it. We'll get you in."
[Brower] We get John and Yoko in the limo.
Pulled up with our bikes out in front of the airport.
[Brower] John looks up and he sees all these motorcycles,
and he reaches over
and he pushes down the two door locks,
and I said to him, "Well, John,
this is your escort into Toronto,"
and he looked at me, his eyes wide,
and Yoko looks at him,
and we pull slowly into the centre,
where Edjo has left a big space for the limo.
[Leslie] Then John Lennon pulls up.
Made him roll down the window and made sure it was him.
[Brower] The window goes down, and Edjo looks in,
and sees the real John Lennon and Yoko.
[Leslie] John Lennon would roll down a window and wave.
It sorta confirmed it in my own head
that it was for real.
[Brower] He gave me a look like,
"I don't know how you did it, man,
but that's the real people."
And he just goes, "John, Yoko, welcome to Toronto,"
and he puts his hand up in the air,
and goes around like that,
and vroom, 80 bikes fire up,
and off we go into Toronto.
We come in high spirits, airport, motorcade, fans.
[Leslie] Away we went with the procession.
[Brower] So when the bikes came into the city,
it was two by two by two,
so they could proceed safely...
'Cause now, you've got John Lennon in this limo.
[Voormann] And they had all those motorbikes coming up,
and you're sitting in a big limousine,
and you're looking out of the window, "Hello." You know?
[Davis] I do have a camera in my hand,
shooting the guys riding next to me,
my friend on the back of a bike,
because she had striped pants,
so that looked good against the silver.
[Leslie] I couldn't see what she was doing,
'cause she was on the back of the bike.
I just seen the lens of the camera the odd time.
[Brower] It was complete pandemonium on the highway
because these bikes
were just riding right through red lights
and driving around cars...
snaking down through the city,
and the police having traffic stopped
so they could proceed safely through.
[siren wailing]
[Leslie] John arranged
a whole section in Varsity for us,
a big long line of bikes pulling up.
We escorted John Lennon in.
People went nuts.
They were all cheering and everything when we rode in.
[Fawcett] When our car's coming up into the stadium,
it's very hard for the car to get in,
'cause there's all these crowds of people and kids
and they're, "Oh, it's John Lennon."
And a girl yells out, "It's one of The Beatles!"
You always see in those newsreels
people banging on the window, people on top of the car, even.
People were going crazy.
I got to witness all that.
[Brower] When we pulled into that northwest gate,
I felt a feeling I'd never felt before in my life.
It was a thrill of a lifetime.
We actually have John Lennon and Yoko Ono sitting here,
and I know Eric Clapton and the band are down the hall.
[crowd screaming]
[Voormann] And we went into one of those dressing rooms,
just a barren room.
You know, only took our suitcase and the guitars
and went in,
and one amplifier for all three of us.
In the middle of the room, you had a half a drum kit,
which was a hi-hat, a snare, that was the drum kit.
And a bass drum.
No, no bass drum.
Was there a bass drum?
So we had to write down the lyrics
to put in front of everyone, you know?
[Lennon] And that's what we did. We just wrote this list.
I hadn't got the words to any of the songs.
I said, "Once we get onto Yoko's riff,
just keep hitting it."
John and Yoko are sitting on the bench.
John was nervous, and, you know, edgy,
just got off a flight from England,
so I said, "John, what can we get you guys?
What do you need?
Something to drink? Food? What do you want?"
So John said to me, "Can you get us some coke?"
and I turned to Dennis and I said,
"Dennis, let's get some Cokes in here for these guys,"
and John looks at me
with this unbelievably hopeless look on his face,
and looks at Yoko,
and she looks at me,
and she goes, "No, coke for the nose,"
and she puts her hand up to her nose.
I just looked at them and I said,
"I'll be back in a minute."
[Gordon] And came back with this terrible dope,
which we all took...
[Brower] ...and they looked at me like I was Jesus,
and John reached over and got it
and he goes, "Thanks, man. Would you ask Eric to come in?"
[cheering]
[♪♪♪]
[Gordon] The band had never met Gene Vincent,
but they were really big fans.
They were overwhelmed that they were gonna back him up.
Traffic was backed up coming into Varsity Stadium,
and I was getting really nervous,
'cause they weren't there,
and they were supposed to go on with Gene Vincent
in about 30 minutes,
so I remember running out and running down the road,
and I found them.
They were dressed in their really crazy stuff.
Our stage clothes was our street clothes.
Our stage clothes were like Barbarella.
It was all this space kind of thing,
and at that time, that just seemed very normal to us.
And we didn't really have to get ready for the show.
We were dressed like that.
I got him out of the car and we ran into Varsity Stadium,
and it was on that walk
when we were running back to the stadium
that there were feral chickens--
don't know why, don't know how--
and I went over to the security guys.
I said, "Can any of you throw one in a pillow case
and tie it up and bring it back here?
And I just kept it in a room that nobody was in.
I brought them into the backstage area
to get together with Gene Vincent,
'cause they were very late.
That was the first time they ever backed anybody up.
[cheering]
[Fowley] You wanna hear more?
-[cheering] -Okay!
[cheering]
Hey!
[Gene Vincent] Here we go.
[♪♪♪]
Thank you.
Thank you so very much.
Love...
Here we go.
[cheering]
Thank you.
Thank you so very much.
I was just talking to ol' John Lennon backstage,
and I was kinda thinking
on these old songs we used to do, you know.
First, I'd like to thank
some of the members of the band here.
There's old Neal back here on the drums.
Lead guitarist's name?
I'm reading it, love, you know.
And the bass guitar is old Dennis.
And the last one, but not the least,
he's been so very kind to me
since I've been here rehearsing with you,
Mr. Alice Cooper.
-Thank you. -Whoo, whoo, whoo!
[Cooper] Backing up Gene Vincent was a very cool thing.
It was really kind of a feather in our cap.
Nobody ever asked us to back them up before.
It kind of made us into a, "Wow."
And we were a pretty good rock 'n' roll band,
so we went, "Sure."
You know, "Be-Bop-a-Lula," "Woman Love," all those songs,
that would be a privilege for us.
♪ Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe ♪
♪ Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby ♪
♪ Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe ♪
[Cooper] I always really dug Gene Vincent.
He was sort of the dark side of the '50s.
Even then, he was an older greaser.
The bad boy.
♪ She's the woman that I know ♪
♪ She's the woman that could love me so ♪
♪ Be-bop-a-lula she's my baby ♪
[♪♪♪]
[Davis] And then, for some reason,
we were all up on the stage dancing.
I'm not sure when that happened.
That was probably later at night.
It was a long day.
[Leslie] I think a lot of people partied a little bit too much,
myself included.
[chuckles]
Time flies as long as you're having fun.
Thank you, good night.
[Fowley] Gene Vincent and Alice Cooper,
ladies and gentlemen.
And the Vagabonds!
And the Vagabonds from Toronto.
And the Vagabonds, Gene Vincent, and Alice Cooper.
Thank you.
[cheering]
[Leslie] And I started being backstage
when all my friends were out in the crowd.
I got to meet Little Richard.
Chuck Berry and The Doors were all sociable.
I sorta ran around backstage and kept my eye on things.
[Cooper] When you're surrounded by that many stars,
and you're just the fly on the wall,
we just sat and watched the big stars.
We'd never actually been in a thing that big
where we were backstage.
We just were like little kids sitting there waiting,
and the day just went on and on,
and we just went, "This is great,
just sitting here watching how people work the backstage."
[Brower] Alice Cooper was next to us.
He looked very diminutive and shy
with these raccoon eyes and stringy hair hanging down.
[clucking]
[cheering]
[Fowley] The ninth wonder of the world, Alice Cooper!
[♪♪♪]
[Cooper] We were always the underdog,
so when we get on the stage,
you're never gonna forget this show,
musically and visually.
We were just sort of this thing that existed
that nobody could define,
some sort of dark, hard rock vaudeville.
We were an affront to everybody.
We were the future.
[♪♪♪]
So much of Alice's stage show
comes from his love of Salvador Dali.
For them, it was like a Dali painting.
It was art.
It was abstract.
I think in their brains, it was performance art.
We did this thing
where it revved up into basically white noise.
It was mayhem up on stage.
I just remember he had a...
a half a watermelon,
and I just didn't know why.
It was so chaotic.
It was energetic, but so chaotic.
I thought, "Somebody's gonna die."
They're fighting and hammering,
and it's like when you're in a scary movie sometimes,
you don't wanna see the--
the axe murderer's coming,
so you had your eyes covered most of the time.
[Gordon] That show is very historic
in Alice's career.
At the end of the show was a feather pillow
that got sprayed across the stage
and blew the feathers up,
'cause it gave a beautiful effect
on the lights.
[Cooper] Feathers everywhere, it looked like a snowstorm,
and then you hit it with CO2,
and it even becomes more of a snowstorm.
So The Doors are over here, and John and Yoko's over here,
and they're like, "Yeah!"
You know, they're seeing this as art.
It was truly art.
The music was [imitates playing guitar]
and the feathers are flying, the CO2.
When I saw the chicken, I said,
"Let me just surprise Alice, and we'll see what happens."
I just picked up the pillowcase,
went up to the side of the stage and let it loose.
[Cooper] And the next thing you know,
there's a chicken on stage.
[makes sounds]
It seemed, in the mayhem,
that it had feathers and wings, it should fly,
and I picked up the chicken.
I figured, "Well, I'll throw this in the audience,
and somebody will catch it,
take it home,
and it'll be a pet and they'll call it 'Alice.'"
Chickens don't fly as much as they plummet.
Everybody knows chickens don't fly,
but Alice is from Detroit.
He claims to not know anything about chickens.
Somebody bit a chicken's head off or something.
Of course, the next day in the paper,
it said, "Alice Cooper Kills Chicken."
[Brower] So of course, the story went out around the world
that Alice had bitten a head off a chicken,
and this created the myth of the chicken incident.
[♪♪♪]
[Cooper] Toronto Rock & Roll Revival,
that show, in particular, was what launched us.
They gave us the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket.
Now we had to back it up with music,
and that's really what started Alice
becoming this personified villain.
There was no villain in rock 'n' roll.
There was all these Peter Pans and no Captain Hook,
and I went, "Well, I'll gladly be Captain Hook.
I love the villain part."
[Fowley] Alice Cooper, ladies and gentlemen.
Alice Cooper!
The group of the future!
Alice Cooper!
[cheering]
Thank you.
[Gordon] That moment lighted the path
for the next 25 years of the career...
which I get a lot of credit for,
but it was very lucky.
[Cooper] He never copped to it.
He never ever said, "No, I threw the chicken on stage."
For 53 years, he's never copped to that to me.
I just said, "Where'd the chicken come from?"
"I don't know." [laughing]
[Davis] John and Yoko.
[Bingenheimer] Backstage, everybody was hanging out.
I was hanging with John and Yoko,
and John Lennon pulls out a briefcase,
and he had some postcards,
and he autographed a postcard,
one for Gene Vincent and one for me.
Gene Vincent did the same thing.
He autographed pictures of himself
to give to John Lennon,
'cause it was a classic show.
Everybody was hanging out in a communal dressing room area.
Everybody was there,
and all of a sudden, the doors burst open
and it's John Lennon with Yoko Ono,
and all the police and all the flashbulbs going.
It's the press, you know?
And Little Richard yelled out...
Are you enjoying Little Richard tonight?
[cheering]
When I'm finished, I wanna hear you!
Let me know by round of applause!
My, my, my, my. Are you ready...
[Davis] Little Richard was getting ready to perform,
and he didn't wanna go out.
He said, "I can't go out 'cause I don't have my light."
He then puts on a mirrored vest,
and he said he's not gonna go out
until he gets his light.
So there's quite a little bit of interaction,
"You gotta go on. You gotta go on."
Little Richard.
Live filming.
No beginning signal.
[Little Richard] See, my outfit is not effective
without, you know,
with the lights on, my outfit just does nothing.
[man] I just have the feeling
that the guy who knows how to turn 'em off
isn't even listening. He's probably asleep.
Could you turn out the lights on the stage, please?
Could you turn the lights out on the stage?
The lights on the stage, would you turn them out?
No lights on the stage at all.
Just the spotlight.
All the lights out.
[cheering]
[Davis] And so then they finally did get that organized.
Way up in the top of the stadium,
a giant spot came down and hit him.
[cheering]
[cheering continues]
Thank you.
Are you having a good time?
Let it all hang out!
My...
Let all the womenfolk say, "Whoo!"
Whoo!
And all the men say, "Uh!"
Uh!
Oh, my soul.
♪ Good Golly, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball Whoo ♪
♪ Ooh, golly, Miss Molly, sure like to ball ♪
♪ You're rockin' and a-rollin', yeah ♪
♪ Can't hear your mama call ♪
♪ Whoo! ♪
♪ Golly, Miss Molly sure like to ball ♪
[Barry] The excitement was amazing,
and I wanted to see Little Richard.
I'd never seen a Black guy with a pompadour.
I mean, he had a big pompadour.
I looked at my brother
and I said, "You need hair like that."
Ow!
[Barry] His presence was so commanding.
"Ow!"
♪ Well, I'm going to the corner ♪
♪ Gonna buy a diamond ring ♪
♪ Hug me, kiss me ♪
♪ Make me ting-a-ling-a-ling ♪
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Whoo, sure like to ball ♪
♪ When you're rockin' and a-rollin' ♪
♪ Can't hear your mama call ♪
[horn solo]
[Barry] He was like a train
going at a million miles an hour.
He really was a personality
that I'd never experienced close up and personal.
[♪♪♪]
When I saw Little Richard,
I said, "Ah..."
You know, I sort of exhaled,
because I said, "Yeah, I feel now.
I see where I'm supposed to be."
[♪♪♪]
[Krieger] Little Richard just tore it up.
I remember he did the last couple of songs
standing on the piano.
[♪♪♪]
I was standing with Jim,
and he goes, "Man, we gotta follow that?"
[chuckles]
[♪♪♪]
[song ends]
[cheering]
[Fawcett] I noticed very quickly
John has a very nervous disposition.
[Voormann] Here you have John Lennon,
a member of The Beatles,
going out there for the first time
playing by himself.
He's the front man, which he never was.
Through all his life, he was not the front man.
There he was, suddenly in that situation.
I was nervous too, I must admit,
and Eric was nervous too.
I could see it in his face.
[Davis] End of John and Yoko.
[Brower] Kim Fowley created a moment at that show
that has become iconic in rock 'n roll history.
So Kim goes out on stage
and says, "When they come out here,
I want everybody to get your matches and lighters out,
and let's give them an incredible welcome."
[cheering]
Ladies and gentlemen, the Plastic Ono Band.
Get your matches ready.
Toronto welcomes the Plastic Ono Band.
Toronto,
Brower and Walker presents the Plastic Ono Band.
Give peace a chance.
[cheering]
They all lit candles or lights up,
and it was really beautiful,
you know, and the vibes were fantastic.
Little tiny lights going on, and on, and on.
He changed the history of rock 'n' roll
that everybody's doing now.
And I ended up on stage on the side,
and you can just hear the crowd.
John and Yoko were getting ready to walk on stage.
If you notice Yoko,
that's the set list she's holding.
[Voormann] We went up to the stage and John went out.
"Just hang on a second, boys."
Went in a corner, and he puked,
and then we plugged into the amplifiers.
Good evening!
[crowd cheering]
Okay, we're just gonna do a number that we know, you know,
'cause we never played together before.
[cheering]
[Christgau] I would say that, historically speaking,
the John and Yoko performance
was the most important thing that happened in Toronto.
John and Yoko decided
that that was where they wanted to debut their band.
As a statement, it was historic.
And the aura was there,
especially for somebody like me.
I was only 40 feet away.
♪ Well, it's a-one for the money ♪
♪ Two for the show ♪
♪ Three to get ready now go, cat, go ♪
♪ But don't you step on my blue suede shoes ♪
♪ Well, you can do anything... ♪
[Lee] The perspective of a stoned kid
standing in the audience,
being surprised by the presence of John Lennon,
Eric Clapton,
Alan White,
Klaus Voormann,
and Yoko Ono
was a kind of awe.
The light shining from John Lennon
left you kind of with your jaw dropping.
He was a Beatle,
and that had an aura about it,
imbued everyone with a kind of awe,
the fact that we were in the same vicinity as him,
and he was playing for us.
At the time, we didn't have any idea,
you know, what we were gonna do.
We just played whatever came to our mind.
But then, John said, "I've got this song.
It's called 'Cold Turkey.'"
[Ono] This is the newest song that John wrote.
It's called "Cold Turkey."
[Lennon] We've never done this song before,
so best of luck.
It's called "Cold Turkey."
[♪♪♪]
♪ The temperature's rising ♪
♪ Fever is high ♪
♪ Temperature's rising ♪
♪ Fever is high ♪
I said, "Whoa, what a great song."
Ah...
-Ah... -Aah!
And "Aah!"
This scream came.
"Shit, you must have stepped on a nail or something."
-Ah... Ah... -Aah!
And Eric looked at me, "What's this?"
[laughs]
Aah!
And the audience didn't applaud,
and then he said, "Wake up."
Come on, wake up.
And then Yoko came along.
[Krieger] I really thought it was cool
that Yoko decided to do the whole show
in a laundry bag.
I really gained respect for her for that.
You know, it sounded like shit, but...
[laughs]
First of all, she got in a bag,
and I thought, "Now, that's interesting.
She's in a bag."
[Fawcett] One of Yoko's conceptual pieces
was called "Bagism."
It's a very conceptual art idea.
Getting in a bag, you lose yourself.
When you're inside a bag, are you John Lennon and Yoko?
But, anyway, it's part of the whole event.
[White] All of a sudden, I was on stage
on this drum kit I'd never played before,
with all these people,
and Yoko lying in a bag on stage in front of me,
and I'm going, "Whoa, this is way over my head."
♪ Oh ♪
♪ That's what I want ♪
[song ends]
John and Yoko did "Give Peace a Chance,"
and it was the first time that he did it live on stage.
This is what we came for, really.
And you too!
It's "Give Peace a Chance,"
so sing along with it.
[Ono] Yeah, let's sing together.
I've forgotten all those bits in between, though.
I know the chorus, so...
Eins, zwei,
eins, zwei, drei, vier!
[♪♪♪]
♪ Everybody's talking 'bout ♪
♪ Bagism, bagism, bagism, bagism ♪
♪ This-ism, that-ism Ism, ism, ism ♪
People were jumping up and down waving the peace sign
when they were singing "Give Peace a Chance.
♪ All we are saying ♪
♪ Is give peace a chance ♪
Peace was the most important thing
they wanted to promote.
The peace campaign had already been in full swing
for many, many months.
John got to love Canada.
Canada became his mouthpiece
to spread the peace message all over the world,
especially to America, via Canada.
♪ All we are saying ♪
♪ Is give peace a chance ♪
[Cooper] Everything was revolutionary.
Everything about that generation
was upsetting the system.
Toronto Rock & Roll Revival just happened to be
right in the pivotal crosshairs of that.
[cheering]
Now Yoko's gonna do her thing all over you.
[Fawcett] Yoko used to sing in this very primal voice.
She trained classically.
Yoko's voice is like an instrument.
[vocalizing]
[Voormann] Funny thing is that when I was up there,
I suddenly was behind Yoko,
and I felt suddenly what she was doing.
She was actually telling the people, in her way,
that all those people are dying.
Those tanks and bombs falling
and dead bodies lying about.
[vocalizing]
What she was doing was really,
really felt like a dying bird.
[weak caws]
[vocalizing]
She couldn't have stood there
and talked about it,
and said, "Yeah, peace.
Just think of Vietnam." No.
[vocalizing]
This was far ahead of its time.
The audience didn't understand a fucking thing.
A lot of the audience walked out,
but the ones that stayed,
they were in a trance, man.
They just all came to the front.
[cheering]
[Gordon] I don't know if the audience got it at all.
Like, I think they were just, like...
But they stayed with it, and he supported her.
It was her show.
But I was very impressed by his love for her
and his dedication to her.
[Voormann] The two twins being together, John and Yoko,
so when she was doing her song,
John went up to her, and he hugged her.
Yoko's thing at the end was so ballsy,
and John is out there
daring anybody to yell out and complain.
I mean, he's like a wild man.
He's like a warrior, you know?
The whole thing was an amazing production.
[vocalizing]
When John said, "What we do
is we tune my guitar on an open chord,
and we just put them in front of our amplifiers
and let it feed it back."
[vocalizing]
I just said, "Look, at the end.
Lean your guitars on the amps
and let it keep howling,"
because you can't very well go cha-ching like The Beatles
and bow at the end of screaming.
He left those amps full out,
so it sounded like a 707 about to take off.
It was such a fantastic ending.
It was like that was the end of The Beatles.
[vocalizing]
The Toronto rock 'n' roll festival
gave John Lennon a completely new lease on life.
"This is my future.
The Beatles is yesterday."
He was a new man with a new band,
and I think he loved Toronto for that,
and I think Toronto loved John.
[guitar feedback]
I told Alan I was leaving.
I told Eric Clapton and Klaus that I was leaving.
I announced it to myself and to the people around me.
"It's over."
[guitars feeding back]
Having John Lennon there was amazing.
We'd been signed up as the headliners, so he said,
"No, you guys go last," you know.
I'm trying to find out who decided not to film us.
It might've been Jim's idea.
He was pretty particular about getting filmed.
We changed our setup a bit.
We actually did The End first,
as an opener,
because Jim wanted to talk about the guys.
He was just trying to tell people
about how he was affected by those guys
when he was a kid in the '50s,
and that was the perfect place to do it.
I can remember
when rock 'n' roll first came on the scene,
and for me, it was a very liberating experience
because it burst open
whole new strange catacombs of wisdom
that I couldn't remember,
and I didn't know about,
and I couldn't see any equivalent for
in my surroundings.
That was the whole reason for the concert
was to give them their due.
They were the true beginners.
And that's why, for me,
this evening has been... really a great honour
to perform on the same stage
with so many illustrious musical geniuses.
[Fowley] Are you ready
for the guitar king of rock 'n' roll,
Chuck Berry?!
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Yeah! Yeah!
[Lewis] It's a great pleasure to be here
at the revival of rock 'n' roll,
and I'll guarantee you,
if it ain't revived today, we'll never have it revived.
Here we go!
Ladies and gentlemen,
the legend to the rock 'n' roll.
The 1956 rock 'n' roll with Little Richard.
[Brower] At the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival,
The Beatles broke up,
and they broke up in front of our eyes onstage,
and it was only by a set of unforeseen circumstances
that it happened at all.
[Lennon] Sounds about good, this Canadian thing.
[Ono] Yes, it does, you know.
It's just like,
it's a trip that we went through.
We both suffered
because people didn't appreciate what we were doing,
and we were always sort of inspired by each other.
I wasn't gonna fold up on that film
because I knew that film
was going to be a hard film to sell.
I never made any money on it at all.
I lost a lot of money on it.
I love that film, so I don't care.
This was a moment that transformed rock 'n' roll.
This was history.
[♪♪♪]
The fact that I was part of this band...
to this day,
I can't believe that this happened to me, you know?
I've been listening to The Beatles
since I was, like, 11, 12 years old.
It was all going by so quickly,
and I was only 20 years old,
so I was kinda, like, in awe.
I was just so lucky to be there.
It's one of the most memorable nights of our life.
That's the only time
I ever saw John Lennon perform live.
This was a moment of history,
and that part was understood.
This was a last-minute thing,
and an opportunity for John and Yoko
to show off the Plastic Ono Band.
One day, Yoko came over
and said, "John wants to meet you,"
and there's John and Yoko with sort of, "Well,
I'm gonna introduce my boyfriend," kind of thing,
and we're going, like, "Oh, my god,
it's a fucking Beatle."
For me, Toronto was a very significant moment.
I was thrilled to be in the middle of it,
but not quite aware of what I was in the middle of.
It brought Toronto into focus.
A lot of historic things happened that night.
There's a few reasons
this concert stands out in my mind.
One was, of course,
it was the last time we were gonna see The Doors.
We didn't know that.
That really was a memorable night.
Getting to play with all those guys.
Having Lennon there and Clapton, and...
and to be met by a gang of motorcycles.
If I had not seen the madness of Alice Cooper,
if I hadn't seen Little Richard that day,
I might be, today, a... a schoolteacher.
It was the golden years of that era
in music and culture.
When you played, they listened,
and when you did something that was really unique and cool,
they reacted.
It was just the fact
that I was lucky enough to be there,
and I was honoured enough
to be able to play with a legend,
even though he scared the living daylights out of me.
[Leggat] We were with Chuck Berry,
and Chuck said, "Come on, I'm gonna take ya
and get ya a burger and a Coke."
Chuck Berry took us,
and we went to Harvey's directly across the street.
I remember after the show, the stadium emptied out.
It was a great day.
We were all exhausted.
I'd never worked so hard in my life.
[Davis] At the end of the set,
Yoko and John walked off past where we were sitting,
and Chuck Berry said, "Wow, that's John Lennon."
My immediate response was,
"But you're Chuck Berry."
[Leslie] The camera girl, she was wonderful.
[chuckles]
Say hi to her for me.
I think of her often.
[laughing]
I don't remember how I got home that night.
I don't even remember if we ate food.