Paul said: Okay, it's time for a big one, the pinnacle of the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, even though it wasn't the final musical act. The star was John Lennon, supported by his wife Yoko Ono and a great band that included famous lead guitarist Eric Clapton.This is probably going to be one of the longest write-ups I ever did, if not the longest. But I find the story behind Lennon's involvement in this concert to be very fascinating, and I hope you will too. Seriously, someone could make an entertaining movie out of this, especially if you add in the drama of how Lennon got invited to the festival in the first place, which I discussed previously.
I think, after several decades, it's hard for anyone to imagine just what a big deal it was for Lennon to perform at this concert. He was still a member of the Beatles, though he wouldn't stay one for long (and this concert would have a major impact on that, as we shall see). The Beatles stopped touring in 1966. Since then, Lennon had only performed a couple of times. He played one song in 1968 as part of the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus show. He performed as part of the Beatles on the rooftop of their recording studio in London earlier in 1969. And that was it for the last three years. None of the other Beatles had performed in public since 1966, and nobody expected Lennon would.
In the first album I posted from this festival, the Chicago set, I explained how the festival came to be, and how the recruitment of Lennon at the last minute saved the festival from cancellation due to poor ticket sales. Let me pick up that narrative, of what happened to Lennon after he agreed to perform in the festival, over the phone, and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, just one day before the festival was due to happen.
The first thing Lennon had to figure out when he got off the phone was who would be in his band, especially on such short notice. His first idea was to include another Beatle, George Harrison. But Harrison turned him down, saying it would seem too much like a Beatles concert with both of them in it, and the popular demand would be that they just play Beatles songs, when he knew Lennon wanted to do something different.
Lennon didn't push back too much on that. He knew Harrison had brought up valid points. Besides, he had someone else in mind he also was very interested in: Eric Clapton. As mentioned above, Lennon performed one song ("Yer Blues," from the Beatles' "White Album") in the 1968 Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus show, and Clapton had been the lead guitarist for Lennon then. Lennon had a very good rapport with Clapton in general at the time. In fact, during the Beatles' contentious "Get Back" sessions in early 1969, when Harrison quit the Beatles for a few days, Lennon suggested they might replace him with Clapton.
Unfortunately, the call asking Lennon to take part in the festival came at the last minute, almost literally. It was already the evening before the festival when Lennon got the phone call! Immediately, Lennon had people at the Apple Records office he was at try to call Clapton to see if he wanted to take part. The assumption was that Clapton would be willing if he could be reached, but nobody could reach him. People not only repeatedly tried calling Clapton's house in the middle of the night, but they tried calling his friends, as well as night clubs and any other likely places he could be late at night. But nobody knew where he was.
Meanwhile, Lennon had to figure out who the other members of the band would be. The choice for bass player was easy: Klaus Voormann. Voormann, a German, had met the Beatles when they were struggling and playing small clubs in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 1960s. He'd stayed friends with them ever since then, even designing the cover of their 1966 album "Revolver." He'd also become a very talented bass player, joining the band Manfred Mann from 1966 until 1969 and working a lot as a session musician. Lennon would use him a lot as bassist in future years.
The choice of drummer, though, was a very surprising one: Alan White. At the time, White was a teenager and essentially a complete known. He was drumming in the obscure band Griffin. But, by chance, Lennon and Ono attended a Griffin concert at a small club the night before. Lennon had been very impressed by White's drumming. (Indeed, White was a talented drummer who was destined for bigger things. In 1972, he would join the prog rock band Yes and stay with them for about 50 years.)
Somehow, Lennon was able to find out the name of the Griffin drummer, then get his telephone number, and called him. But White later recalled, "I hung up on him. I thought someone was playing a prank. John Lennon's not going to call me." However, Lennon kept calling him back and managed to convince him that he really was John Lennon and he really did want him in his new band, to perform on a different continent the next day! White agreed, even though that meant cancelling a Griffin concert scheduled at the same time. "What was I going to say? No, to a Beatle? I don't think so."
Meanwhile, Lennon was desperate to get in contact with Clapton. He stayed up until five in the morning with an assistant, calling everyone they could think of, to no avail. The airplane to take Lennon and his new band to Toronto was due to fly out of London at 10 in the morning. However, around 9:30, Lennon called festival promoter John Brower from the airport and said he would have to cancel his role in the festival. Clapton couldn't be found in time, and Lennon wasn't willing to perform without him.
Brower was incredulous, and horrified. He'd borrowed $25,000 from a man named Edjo, who was the head of a biker gang, to pay the fee for the Doors to headline the festival. If the festival ticket sales bombed or the festival was canceled altogether, that biker had promised to severely beat Brower, for starters. Brower considered fleeing Canada just to save his life!
But luckily, with Lennon and others waiting at the airport, he was given the word that Clapton had been found after all. It turned out that Clapton had gone to bed early and slept during the entire search, far from his phone. A telegram had been sent to his house as part of the desperate search to find him. In the morning, Clapton's gardener saw the telegram, opened it, saw the urgency of it, and woke him up. Clapton was very willing to perform with Lennon at the festival. Still, there was no way Clapton could make it to the airport in time to catch the flight overseas. It seemed all was lost. Lennon said he would send Brower a bouquet of flowers as an apology.
Brower later recalled, "I saw Edjo [the biker gang leader] putting the flowers on my grave; everything was destroyed." He decided to try to call Clapton, now that Clapton was awake, and beg for help.
He claims he told Clapton on the phone, "Listen man, you've gotta help me. If John Lennon does not show up today, I am ruined. I have to leave my city. I have to leave my country. In fact, I'm going to come over there and move in with John Lennon, with my wife and kid, okay? You need to get him back on the phone and tell him he has to come.' Clapton started yelling, 'I don't get up at this time of the morning for anybody. Fucking Lennon gets us out here and then sends fucking flowers?'"
Clapton then immediately phoned Lennon back. Brower recalled, "He was furious. He just [told Lennon], 'What the fuck are you doing? There's some guy on the other end of the phone who is ruined if we don't go over there. He said he's going to come over and move in with you!' We later found out... that Lennon was mortified that Eric Clapton was mad at him. I mean, you just don't get Eric Clapton mad at you."
So Lennon scrambled to come up with a new plan. Arrangements were made to book a flight to Toronto that left at 3:15 in the afternoon, London time. It would be a tight schedule, but that would get them in Toronto in time to perform at the end of the festival, thanks to the time zone difference. While waiting at the airport, Lennon held an impromptu press conference, announcing to the world his involvement in the festival.
Now, Lennon had his band and the ability to get to the festival in time. But the band hadn't practiced whatsoever. They tried their best to do that during the plane flight. But it wasn't easy, because they didn't have amplified instruments, and White had to "drum" using the seat back in front of him. They could barely hear themselves over the noise of the airplane. At least they agreed on the songs they would play. However, while Lennon told the other band members that Ono would be singing a couple of songs, they didn't practice those at all. Voormann later said, "So, no rehearsal with Yoko. He kept it really away from us. He just wanted us to be surprised."
I normally don't add pictures to my write-ups, but since this one is so long, here's a photo of Lennon and Clapton trying to practice while on the plane flight. The drama continued when Lennon and his band arrived in Toronto. To their surprise, they were met at the airport by a biker gang led by Edjo, the same gang leader who had loaned Brower $25,000. There was a limousine waiting. Edjo and about 100 of his bikers led a motorcade from the airport to the stadium where the festival was taking place. Police joined the motorcade, redirecting traffic so Lennon's motorcade could blow through all the red lights, just as if he was a president or prime minister.
Lennon arrived at the stadium while Cat Mother was performing, and word somehow spread throughout the crowd, raising the anticipation. But Lennon and his band went to a grubby back room and essentially stayed cooped up there for a couple of hours until it was time for them to go on stage. They tried to practice some more, but they still didn't have adequate instruments to practice on. They apparently spent most of the time trying to figure out the lyrics to the songs they had chosen to sing. They wrote them all out so Lennon could read them on stage. When their performance actually began though, Lennon would forget about the notes and just winged it, except for reading the lyrics to his one new song, "Cold Turkey."
Speaking of "cold turkey," in 1969, Lennon had become a heroin addict. So had Clapton. Both of them didn't dare sneak drugs on the plane. So they were very worried about falling apart if they couldn't find some drugs in Toronto - if not heroin, then at least something similar. Soon, Lennon asked Brower, "Can you get us some coke?" Brower later recalled that he replied, "Let's get six Cokes over here right away.' I looked back at the two of them like, 'No problem. No problem,' and they just had this horrified look on their faces. They were looking at each other like 'Where are we?' And Yoko goes, 'No, coke for the nose.'"
Brower was determined to do whatever it took to make sure the festival would be a success. He remembered he had a friend who did drugs and was attending the festival. He actually arranged a stage announcement to call that friend backstage. The friend soon showed up, and was able to find some cocaine. Brower said, "I went backstage to give it to John, and I swear to God he looked at me like, 'You're Jesus and this is the Lord's water.'" Lennon made sure Clapton got some of the cocaine as well.
That problem was solved. But still, Lennon was in a bad way. He was repeatedly throwing up due to nervousness from giving his very first concert as a solo performer. He even threw up again a few minutes before getting on stage. He also was tired from getting almost no sleep, due to spending most of the night trying to find Clapton.
Kim Fowley, a famous music producer, was the emcee for the festival, so he was the one to introduce Lennon to the stage. According to Fowley, shortly before Lennon was due to go on stage, he asked Lennon how he was doing, and Lennon replied something to the effect of: "I'm terrified. Imagine if you were in the Beatles as the only band you've only been in your life. The first time you are to step on stage with people that weren't in the Beatles. You’re about to go on stage with your wife, a friend, a friend, and a complete stranger with songs you had learned acoustically on an airplane on the way over from England with jet lag. You would be terrified. Do something so the kids don't know how scared I am."
Fowley came up with an idea to boost his spirits. He remembered a scene from a movie, "Our Lady of Fatima," where a bunch of children had held candles up together, and he asked everyone to do the same, to show their support and encouragement. You can hear Fowley doing this at the start of this album. It seemed to have really helped. Lennon later commented, "They all lit candles or lights up and it was really beautiful, you know, and the vibes were fantastic."
Remarkably, it appears this was the very first time lights were held up like this at a major concert. Due to the prominence of the festival, as well as a movie documentary about it, the practice spread, and it soon became a fairly common concert ritual. So kudos to Fowley for that.
Finally, the time came for Lennon to start playing music. He and his band ran through some classic rock songs from the 1950s, which was very much in keeping with the overall theme of the festival. They also played one Beatles song, "Yer Blues." Then they played "Cold Turkey." Lennon had just written this song about his recent heroin addiction (which, thankfully he was able to kick about a year later). This was the first time it was performed in public. Lennon would release it as a single a month later, and it would make the Top Forty in both the U.S. and Britain. Then he performed "Give Peace a Chance," which he had released as a single in July.
Overall, the band sounded ragged due to lack of practice, but they made up for it with enthusiasm. Plus, they played the kinds of simple, rocking songs where being ragged actually fit. Most people in the audience, which filled the stadium by now, probably were disappointed not to be hearing Beatles classics. ("Yer Blues" was a relative obscurity.) However, it seems they were in awe to be hearing Lennon sing anything, and they were very enthusiastic overall.
Lennon later recalled, "I can't remember when I had such a good time. Yoko was holding a piece of paper with the words to the songs in front of me. But then she suddenly disappeared into her bag in the middle of the performance and I had to make them up because it's so long since I sang them that I've forgotten most of them. It didn't seem to matter."
(Indeed, Ono spent most of the first half of the set inside a big white bag on the stage floor! That was an example of her performance art that helped attract Lennon to her. Robby Krieger of the Doors, who was watching from the side of the stage, later said, "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.")
Clapton also recalled, "It was really refreshing to do these songs because they are very simple and uncomplicated. John and I really love that music. That's the kind of music that turned John on initially, and it's the same for me. In fact, I could go on playing 'Money' and 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy' for the rest of my life."
So far, everything was going great. Lennon was particularly pleased at how the audience responded to his new song "Cold Turkey." He said, "The way that we got it together was like we'd all been playing together for years. Then, 'Give Peace a Chance,' which was just unbelievable."
Then it was time for Ono to sing her two songs. Keep in mind that not even the other band members other than Lennon knew what was going to happen next. For the first song, Lennon had merely told the others that he'd start playing a riff on his guitar and they should all repeat it over and over.
Nowadays, Ono is rather notorious for her screaming style. But at the time, the audience was in for a shock when she began her screaming singing. There hadn't been any concerts or albums with her singing like that, at least not that the wider public was aware of.
Voormann, the bassist, later recalled, "This scream came [from Ono]. I said, 'She must have stepped on a nail or something.' And Eric [Clapton] looked at me, 'What's this?!'" But the band gamely rolled with the punches and kept playing.
Ono's first song was somewhat palatable to the audience, since there at least was a kind of rock and roll beat to it. But her second song went on for much longer, and it was all Ono's wailing and guitar feedback. (The other band members kept rolling with the punches, with Clapton even singing some backing vocals to Ono.) Lennon said, "Yoko's first number had a bit of rhythm, but the second number was completely freaky. It was sort of the thing she did at Cambridge [earlier in 1969], but it was more like Toronto 1984."
Some people seemed to "get it," and others didn't.
Voormann later said, "The funny thing is that when I was up there, I 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 [in the Vietnam War]. Those tanks and bombs falling and dead bodies lying about. What she was doing was really, really felt like a dying bird. She couldn't have stood there and talked about it and said, 'Yeah, peace. Just think of Vietnam.' No. This was far ahead of its time. The audience didn't understand a thing."
By and large, it seems the audience was baffled by Ono's performance, but were fairly tolerant just because Lennon was involved. There was some booing, but it seems accounts of this were later exaggerated. Few people left, especially because the Doors were still due to perform next.
Lennon was encouraged by the crowd's reaction, overall. He later said in an interview, "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." In a different later interview, he felt even more encouraged. ""All I can say is that there were maybe 25,000 people there and maybe 15 didn't like it. I didn't hear any booing. It's always the man from the daily paper who does!" He further added, "It gave me a great feeling, a feeling I haven't had for a long time. It convinced me to do more appearances, either with or without the rest of the Beatles. Everything went down so well."
Lennon was so excited about this concert performance that he wanted to immediately release it on album. However, his record company, Capitol Records, initially resisted the idea. "They said 'This is garbage, we're not going to put it out with her screaming on one side and you doing this sort of live stuff.' And they refused to put it out. But we finally persuaded them that people might buy this. Of course, it went gold the next day."
The album was released later that year under the title "Live Peace in Toronto 1969," and it sold over 500,000 copies (which is gold status). This recording here is essentially the same as the official release. I'm including it so one can have the full recording and story of this festival in one place.
The songs sung by Lennon were on one side of the album and the songs sung by Ono on the other. At the time, the Lennon songs were praised by music critics and the Ono songs were panned. But interestingly, over time, some famous musicians claim they were more inspired by Ono's songs. For instance, Iggy Pop said that Ono's side of the record is "the part that stands out. The rest of it's just kinda pedestrian." Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction has made similar comments, stating that Ono's sound experiments were a cornerstone of his musical education.
Personally, I think Ono's songs here make for an interesting listen once or twice, but it's not something I'd want to hear more often than that. Of course, you can choose to keep or delete those songs.
I have one final note to make about Lennon's performance. It seems undeniable that this was a pivotal moment in his music career and even his entire life, because it's when he fully committed to leaving the Beatles. Prior to this festival, he was drifting away from the Beatles, but he hadn't really figured out what would come next, and he lacked the confidence to leave the most famous band in the world. The success of this performance gave him that confidence.
Shortly after the concert was over, he told his new band mates he would be leaving the Beatles. "I told Alan [White] I was leaving. I told Eric Clapton and Klaus [Voormann] that I was leaving. I announced it to myself and to the people around me. 'It's over.'" As soon as he returned to London the next day, he told his manager Allen Klein the same thing. Then he broke the news to the other Beatles on September 20th, about a week after the festival. However, they all agreed to keep that news quiet while they renegotiated their record contract. In the end, they didn't go public with the news until April 1970, but they were effectively broken up until then, with the four of them never all getting together a single time.
So this leads to a big question: would the Beatles have endured for much longer had it not been for the improbable chain of events that led to Lennon performing at the festival? My guess it maybe they would have stuck together for a few more months, but not longer than that. A break-up was in motion over many issues, mainly financial ones relating to a dispute over who would manage the band after Brian Epstein died. Plus, Lennon really wanted to go off and do his own thing with Ono, and he was just gathering the confidence to make the break. Had it not been this concert, something else would have come along soon that played the same role. And the Beatles had just finished recording the "Abbey Road" album in August, so they probably wouldn't have wanted to record a new album until well into 1970 anyway. The odds of them sticking together long to record another album without this festival happening would have been extremely low, in my opinion.
This album is 39 minutes long.
01 talk
02 Blue Suede Shoes
03 Money [That's What I Want]
04 Dizzy Miss Lizzy
05 Yer Blues
06 talk
07 Cold Turkey
08 talk
09 Give Peace a Chance
10 talk
11 Don't Worry Kyoko [Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow]
12 John, John [Let's Hope for Peace]
All tracks John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band
