‘It was so rock ’n’ roll’: How a concert at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium may have broken up the Beatles

It was the event that signalled the end of the Beatles — and it happened here in Toronto more than half a century ago.

John Lennon wasn’t even a part of the original lineup of the Toronto Rock ‘N Roll Revival, a concert festival celebrating the forefathers of the genre with headlining pioneers Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Gene Vincent sharing the same Varsity Stadium stage on Sept. 13, 1969.

But the concert wasn’t selling, despite the presence of rock royalty, and even with such modern day concessions as Alice Cooper, Chicago and the Doors rounding out the bill, promoters John Brower, Ken Walker and Thor Eaton were looking to take a financial bath on the event, with 20,000 seats yet to be purchased.

As documented in the compelling new Ron Chapman film “Revival 69” — which premieres Saturday at Hot Docs with a panel that includes Brower, Chapman, Doors guitarist Robby Krieger and Rush bass player extraordinaire Geddy Lee, who was at the show — things were looking extremely grim until Brower made a panicked phone call to the office of Lennon’s Bag Productions, inviting one of the most popular Beatles to emcee the concert that featured many of the Liverpool native’s musical heroes.

Brower, co-founder of the Toronto club the Rockpile and the first person to bring Led Zeppelin, the Doors and the Who to town, couldn’t believe Lennon’s response.

“When I talked to John, he said he would only come if they could play,” Brower told the Star during a phone interview ironically conducted on the anniversary of John Lennon’s 1980 assassination and the late Doors vocalist Jim Morrison’s birthday.

“And I said, ‘What? The Beatles?’ And he said, “No, me and Yoko (Ono, Lennon’s inextricable girlfriend). We’ll put a little band together.”

After Brower hastily agreed, Lennon said he’d have the names of the band members so the promoter could book plane tickets and inform immigration.

“Call tomorrow and we’ll have the names for you,” he told Brower, who then made a beeline with copromoter Walker for radio station 1050 CHUM to share the good news. Showtime was only 48 hours away and Brower knew that the station’s powerful signal would go a long way to promoting the cause.

Except the CHUM personality didn’t believe him and — with Brower furnishing no concrete proof — threw the pair out of the building.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Lennon was assembling a ragtag collective to join him on the plane: future Yes drummer Alan White; and Beatles associate and artist Klaus Voormann on bass both said yes.

But according to a story related in the documentary, nobody had heard from the guitarist.

When it came to the day of departure for Toronto, Lennon told his assistant, Anthony Fawcett, that he and Ono weren’t feeling well and they’d just send flowers to the concert … until Fawcett received word that Eric Clapton had agreed to be part of the band.

Suddenly Lennon changed his tune and the combo was headed to Heathrow Airport.

Bolstered by the news, Brower had the presence of mind to record the conversation confirming Lennon’s Rock ‘N Roll Revival appearance on cassette and headed back to CHUM with new evidence in hand.

CHUM rejected him again.

“When I called and got only Anthony the next day, CHUM said, ‘We’re not buying this, that’s a guy with a fake accent,’” Brower remembered.

When Lennon arrived at Heathrow in his paisley-painted limo to board the plane, he held an impromptu press conference announcing his looming Toronto appearance and the newspaper wire confirmation suddenly made CHUM a believer.

“CHUM, they immediately took credit for it — of course, they were promoting the show — and said, ‘This is a worldwide CHUM exclusive!’” Brower chuckled. “That caused 10,000 people to come running down and sell out the stadium. They denied it, but at the last minute when they realized it was a fact, they were non-stop in promoting it the minute that tickertape hit the newsroom.”

Meanwhile, the five musicians — who had never played together before — spent their flight rehearsing on acoustic instruments in the back row of the plane and figuring out a set list.

After the plane touched down on a Toronto Pearson International Airport runway tarmac, Lennon was met by a musician’s union rep and signed a contract for $265.

“Whether or not he got that $265, I don’t know,” Brower admitted, who then whisked Lennon and Ono into a waiting limo that was escorted to the venue by the Vagabonds, a local gang whose leader Ed “Edjo” Leslie lent the promoter $25,000 to secure the Doors for the event.

The ensuing set marked the live debut of the Plastic Ono Band, with the impromptu group performing a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants set that included such rock classics as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Money (That’s What I Want)” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy;” the Beatles “Yer Blues,” and the live premieres of “Cold Turkey” and “Give Peace a Chance.”

A side note: in his 2007 autobiography “Clapton,” the guitarist known as “God” said his compensation for the shindig was “a few of John’s drawings, which over time I have unfortunately lost.”

Whatever the impact of playing the Toronto show on Lennon, his decision was final: within a week of returning to London, he informed the rest of the Beatles he was leaving the group.

Did The Toronto Rock ‘N Roll Revival break up the Beatles?

“I don’t think so, no,” said Brower. “I think the Beatles were due to break up. I think John getting his mojo back onstage and feeling what it was like to play; feeling what it was like to be John Lennon with a 100-motorcycle escort, I think it gave him a vision of a lot of potential possibilities and he just decided, during that moment, that he was empowered. Ringo was quoted saying that when John and Eric came back from Toronto, the Beatles were over.

“Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I certainly don’t think we should be documenting ourselves as breaking up the Beatles, not any more than Yoko would be accused of that.”

The live debut of the Plastic Ono Band, which would sport a fluid lineup over the next few years, wasn’t the only notoriety that the Rock ‘N Roll Revival fest provided the public. There was the Alice Cooper chicken incident, where it was inaccurately reported worldwide that the shock rocker had bitten the head off the rooster and drank its blood. The real story was that somehow a chicken ended up being thrown onstage and when Cooper threw it back into the audience, the poor bird was torn apart by the crowd.

“They went on to a huge career as a result of that chicken incident being really over-exaggerated,” Brower recalled. “Alice was signed to Frank Zappa’s (Bizarre) record label. The following morning there were rumours everywhere and Frank called the hotel and said, ‘Alice, this is incredible! We’re getting calls from all over the world. You’re going to have to talk to people and you need to say, ‘No comment’ if they ask you if you bit the head off a chicken.’

“That’s what Alice did and it put more gasoline on the fire.”

The noteworthy performance of the rock pioneers who had largely been relegated to the lounge circuit — Diddley, Vincent (backed by the Alice Cooper Band), Lewis, “Little Richard” Penniman and Berry, backed by a ramshackle band of Toronto musicians that included Nucleus mainstays Hughie Leggat on bass and Danny Taylor on drums, fending for themselves as Berry never gave them a set list — elevated their profile to the level where they were routinely offered opening and festival slots from that point on.

And for filmmaker Chapman, it was the chance to wade through piles of film of the event lensed by legendary documentarian Donn Allen (D.A.) Pennebaker, renowned for such music chronicles as 1967’s “Don’t Look Back,” featuring Bob Dylan, and 1968’s “Monterey Pop.”

According to Chapman, Pennebaker had high hopes for “Sweet Toronto,” his 1971 documentary of the Rock ‘N Roll Revival.

“The film was a total failure, and it bankrupted him and his company at the time,” Chapman, who hired Pennebaker as an executive producer for “Revival 69,” said in a separate phone interview. “He had hoped that this film would be his greatest success, bigger than ‘Don’t Look Back’ and ‘Monterey Pop.’ He thought this was going to be his blockbuster and it was the exact opposite.”

Chapman said Pennebaker, who died during the production of this documentary in 2019, was so despondent about the loss that “he threw all this stuff in boxes — not properly catalogued — and off it went to (storage company) Iron Mountain.”

Chapman eventually convinced Pennebaker to give him access to the footage — and was shocked by what he discovered.

“When we finally got the boxes, we found about two hours’ worth of Super 8 footage that wasn’t even processed,” he said. “I had that processed along with other 16 mm stuff: there was about 60 hours of 16 mm footage that I went through.”

Much of that previously unseen footage has been inserted into “Revival 69,” an evolution of sorts for Chapman, who directed a lauded 2013 documentary about another Toronto-born concert promoter, “Who The F— is Arthur Fogel?”

Chapman said he directed “Revival 69” for the same reason as “Fogel.”

“It’s a great Canadian story with international appeal and impact,” Chapman explained. “Arthur was arguably maybe the most important guy in the music business — he did the Top 10 tours of all time — and nobody in Canada and nobody in the world knew who he was. I wanted to get that out there for Canada because we don’t celebrate our own enough or know enough about them.

“I wanted to do this rock film because, again, it’s a Canadian story — one of the most important events in rock music history happened here in Toronto — and nobody knows about it, unless you’re a music industry insider or a Beatles fan. It just got lost.”

“Revival 69” is a fascinating narrative about a festival that succeeded despite the constant obstacles that continually threatened its existence up until showtime — and Chapman recognized that a similar event based on happenstance couldn’t be pulled off in today’s more guarded business climate.

“These are such different times,” Chapman said. “What 22-year-old is going to pick up the phone two days before a festival and call up one of the biggest names in entertainment and have him play at the last minute? That call could never happen in this day and age. That would never happen in today’s brand-conscious corporate world.

“It was so rock ’n’ roll: John Lennon was itching to get out there and play again and on a whim went, ‘Sure, let’s go.’

“That’s not how shows come together these days. That’s not how shows get financed. What Brower did would never happen in today’s world and it’s so refreshing to see. It’s like a time capsule: as soon as it starts, you get thrown back and understand what it was to do business in that era.

“It was an amazing moment in rock history.”

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