Johnny Brower

Johnny Brower was the promoter of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival which featured the debut of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and is documented in the new movie "Revival69: The Concert That Rocked the World," now playing on PBS.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftsaids podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
My guest today is Johnny Browers, one of the promoters
of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in nineteen sixty nine,
featured in the new movie.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Revival sixty nine. This, of course, was debut of John
Lennon in The Plastic Ono Man. So tell me the
history of putting on this concert. What was the thought
forget when you get John at the end, when you
initially booked the festival, what were you thinking?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, I was thinking that Chuck Berry stole the show
in June at my festival called the Toronto Pop Festival,
which was the first festival of nineteen sixty nine, featuring
Sly Steppenwolf, the band, Blood, Sweat and Tears, terrific artists.
For two days, duck Berry had people duck walking and

(01:02):
like just really absolutely stole the show. And that's no exaggeration.
So I thought we needed a show for the fall,
and I thought, why don't we get Chuck and all
of the old rockers together. And of course, being a musician,
I had played Chuck Berry's songs, and you know, being

(01:23):
a musicians sometimes you think everybody else likes all the
same bands you did, and so Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Lewis,
Bo Diddley were available in the same day as Chuck
and that seemed to be an omen So it became like, Okay,
that's it, that's the rock and Roll Revival. And at
that point we started adding other artists just to fill

(01:46):
the bill out and got Chicago. Alice Cooper was just
an afterthought because shep was our buddy and they were
going to back up geene Vince and nobody had any
idea they were going to launch a twenty five year career,
but God bless them. I'm glad they did. I kind
of think that was a milestone of the event as well.
But that was the thinking, and it was thinking about

(02:08):
doing something that you think's a good idea. But you
know what, I'm sure you've had it happened to you.
Sometimes you're a good idea. You go, oh wow, I
thought that was a good idea, but it doesn't seem
to be a good idea with the public. Nobody's buying tickets.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Okay, you'd seen Chuck Berry, had you seen these other
acts perform live? Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
No, I had never seen any of them. I had
been in bands that played their songs. I had seen
them on American Bandstand or various different things, but no,
not live. I never had. Just based on the way
Chuck was, I assumed they'd all be incredible, which turned
out they were.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Okay, tell me about the venue in the capacity of
the venue.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, it's the football stadium on the University of Toronto
campus and depending on the configure, it could probably hold
forty thousand people. I do remember when Crosby Stills in
Nash played there with the band opening in nineteen seventy five.
They had the stage right up against the wall and
Bluer Street. Our stage was halfway up the field and

(03:16):
we had twenty thousand people there, so I think they
must have had thirty anyway, but that would have been
the capacity at that time, the way the stage was
set up.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Okay, tell me about your festival in the spring.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well, it was the Toronto Pop Festival. It was at
the same facility two days and as I said, we
had quite a bill headlined by Sly and the Family
Stone Steppenwolf. We brought them back to Toronto. They were Canadians.
It was their return to Toronto. It was the band's
first outdoor festival. Many people think Woodstock was Toronto pop

(03:56):
festival was. It was just a great show, and I
think all the bands are kind of listed on that
quick shot of the flyer in the Revival six '
nine film. But it was a huge success. It sold
out both days. As I say in the movie, we
made a ton of money in that show, and I

(04:16):
guess we felt kind of invincible because we had come
from being regular, you know, small time concert promoters. Maybe
not small time, but smaller venues. The largest venue we
had done prior to that was Donovan at Varsity Arena.
That was seven thousand seats. That was quite a jump
from there to the Football Stadium. But the energy of

(04:38):
nineteen sixty nine. Agents were talking about festivals. People are
going to be doing festivals, and we thought, well we
better do one.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Okay, once again, let's talk about the economics for sixty
nine in the spring, you had two days. How many
tickets did you sell over the two days?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
We sold twenty five thousand on each day.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
And what were the economics in terms of ticket price?
How much did you have to be the bands? What
kind of profit?

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Well, I know we made a ton of money, and
Kenny was the one handling all the money. I just
knew we made a lot of money and allowed us
to roll up into the fall very comfortably. And we
could have probably stood the losses had we not got
John Lennon. But the Eton investors had, you know, enough

(05:29):
shares in the company to be able to say, no,
we're not going to go along with this. I can't
remember the scale of economics. The tickets were reasonably priced,
the same as at the Rock Festival in September, you know,
six dollars a day. People laugh at that now, but
you know, in terms of the concert business then these

(05:49):
were standard prices. Woodstock was eighteen dollars for three days.
So I think, you know, the fact that we sold
out both of those eight gave us the confidence that
we could pretty much put anybody into Varsity Stadium and
it would be a great seller.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tell me who we is? Tell me about the company.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, Ken Walker was the guy that got me out
of the rock pile. I was in the rock pile.
That was my club. It was like the Fillmore Masonic
Temple in Toronto brought led Zeppelin. Who Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart,
you know, Jethro Tull, all kinds of bands on a
regular basis, but it became kind of like the same

(06:33):
thing every week, and there was a ceiling to the capacity,
so you couldn't really make that much money. And I
had three other partners. So Kenny said to me, why
aren't you and I get in business and let's just
put on bigger concerts. I knew Kenny from you know,
the chums of high school and different places, and we

(06:54):
knew the Eatons. That was common friends of ours. They
were a very very wealthy family and so ultimately Henny
and I just went out on our own. But when
we needed to do the festival in June, we brought
George and Thor in with substantial funds and that allows
us to really do the Toronto Pop Festival and do

(07:14):
it properly.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You're from Toronto.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
I am from Toronto, born and raised.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Okay, So you know, one thing about Canada and non
Canadians don't realize is direct connection with England. There are
a lot of bands that connected from England first in Canada.
What got you excited about music?

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well, I am a musician. I was also a choir boy.
I had a band of some note during my high
school years called the Diplomats. And in terms of coming
back to Toronto, remember I went to Los Angeles for
sixty six and sixty seven, and when I came back

(08:00):
act I did.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Wait wait wait, wait, wait wait wait, let's just go
a little bit further. What year did the Diplomat start?
Pre Beatles or post Beatles?

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Sixty two three four? Definitely pre Beatles because we were
playing Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye songs initially, and it
was an R and B band. And I don't ever
remember being in a band that played Beatles songs because
after the Diplomats I was out of playing in bands.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Okay, so sixty two, sixty three, sixty four, what instrument
did you play?

Speaker 3 (08:34):
I played the bass and sang in some of the songs.
I played bass.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yes, So what a lot of people a little younger
than you were inspired by seeing and hearing the Beatles?
What inspired you to get into music?

Speaker 3 (08:49):
I just wanted to be in a band. I had
played piano and given little concerts in my gray flannel
short pants when I was you know, ten eleven, twelve
thirty Team but I wanted to be in a band.
I started trying to play the drums. I was terrible,
and I wanted to stand up, and so the easiest
thing to learn standing up is the bass, and that's

(09:12):
why I became a bass player. I played guitar later,
but as a bass player, I was able to jump
right in. I had a good year, and you know,
everybody needed a bass player.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Okay, what kind of background did you come from? What
did your parents do for a living.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
My family was involved in the legal profession, construction politics.
I grew up in I guess you would call it
a blue blood family. I went to Upper Canada College,
which was the oldest private school in Canada, where apparently
I was enrolled at birth if I can imagine people
doing that. So I had the opportunity of seeing, you know,

(09:55):
what could be done and what money could do, and
that when you needed I kind of had access to
friends and family who you know, were not unwilling to
roll the dice with something that their sons or daughters
might want to do.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Now, being a contos entrepreneurial, was there any history of
entrepreneurship in your family? Any models or were you just
striking off and you were the first one.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
No, my grandfather was quite a well known entrepreneur. Aside
from building the Granite Club, he also built the Detroit
Windsor Tunnel. And his method was to go to the
United States government tell them that the Canadian government were
going to put up half the money. He hadn't spoken
to the Canadian government, but he came back with a

(10:46):
letter from the US government saying we'll put up half
the money, and the Canadian government said, oh my god,
well of course we'll put up half as well. So
that was pretty entrepreneurial. And you know, my father was
involved in mining at times. I think that's entrepreneurial.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
And you know, obviously there was a lot of success.
Did you end up inheriting any of this money or
any of these businesses when your parents passed?

Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, No, my grandfather died in nineteen thirty. My father
was when, you know, became a lawyer, which wasn't something
you handed on. They wanted me to go to law school.
I had no intention of doing anything that required you
to be in a room all day with no windows.
I was, you know, I was bound for California at

(11:36):
seventeen eighteen, and as I as I said earlier. You know,
I just wanted to get out and do stuff.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Okay, when you went to California, was this after the Diplomats? Yes, yes, okay,
let's start with the diplomats. So what was it like
with the Diplomats? How successful, how often? What kind of gigs?

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Well, we played the same gigs that you know, the
well known bands of the day played the Rogues, John Elene,
the Checkmates. There weren't big opportunities or big venues for
local bands, but there was the Village in Yorkville, the Alpatio,
I mean a number of these clubs that that was
like big time playing those clubs. I think the biggest

(12:23):
thing we played was the Pepsi Under twenty one club
at the CNE, which would have had about twenty five
hundred people at it. We played the Key to Bala,
various places like that, but it was definitely on a
local scene. The Diplomats were very highly regarded by other musicians.
We had a fan base and we were a great band.

(12:44):
That's basically all they can say. Bob Bob McBride was
our singer. He went on to be the singer of
a Lighthouse, which was a very successful Canadian Band, and
the other singer, Peter McGraw, went on to be the
singer with Paul Butterfield. So those who wanted to stay
in the business musically ended up moving up the ladder.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
So tell me about this move to California.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Well, I had the good fortune to fall in love
with a girl in Toronto, and she was an actress
and probably the second most well known Canadian next to
Lauren Green. She had a TV show five days a
week from the time she was eleven till she was fifteen,
and her name was Michelle Finney. But her parents, who

(13:29):
had moved to California, wanted her to be a movie star,
had demanded that she returned there. So of course I
had to go to California, and I got a student
visa and I moved on to her parents' coach, much
to their chagrin, but nonetheless I ended up getting a
job selling photocopy paper, and they gave me a car

(13:50):
and a box of leads, and that's what I did.
My school visa went out the window, and I became
an entrepreneur selling photocopy paper.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
So when you left Toronto, how old were you and
how did you leave the Diplomats.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
I played at the Pepsieter twenty one club. That was
the last gig that I played as the bass player.
It was the big send off. How old was I
when I went to California? I was just almost eighteen.
I was seventeen, but in November of that year I
became eighteen.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
So how long did it last with Michelle Finney?

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, we elope to Encinata, Mexico, and came back with
a Mayorage certificate with our names in English and the
rest in Mexican or Spanish. Somebody said, are you sure
you did buy a cow? But it was fifty dollars
and it was very romantic. And we were then married

(14:50):
again in the little brown church on Van Knives. And
then we moved back to Canada, moved back to Toronto,
and that's when I found a dearth of rock and roll.
We've been going on too, the Sunset Strip and to
clubs and seeing great bands, love the doors, people like that.
Toronto was all folksing back then, and that's how I

(15:11):
ended up bringing the doors and that was my first concert.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Okay, how long were you in Los Angeles?

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Two years? Almost two years?

Speaker 2 (15:26):
And your student visa ran out? How did you stay
in California or no one knew when you were basically
illegal at that point?

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, basically no one knew. No one cared back
in those days, certainly.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
And okay, so you sold copy paper until you returned
to Toronto.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Well not quite. I met a guy named Huggy Boy
at the racetrack. Because I made so much money selling
photocopy paper that I kind of just lived on mailbox
money or picked up my checks. I created the concept
that paper was going to get to be very expensive,
but if you ordered a year's worth, I could keep
it at this price. And so the next thing you know,

(16:11):
my customers are ordering a year's worth of paper. That's entrepreneurial,
I guess, whatever. But I wanted to cut to the
chase and not be going back to the same place
every two weeks. Ended up going to the racetrack with
a neighbor of mine. By this time, of course, I
had moved into an apartment on North Orange Drive in
Hollywood called the Madison and met a neighbor and he

(16:34):
took me out to the racetrack and I met a
guy named Huggy Boy, who'd been a legendary DJ in
the fifties. It was a little down on his luck,
but I bankrolled him to get the big forty oldies
pressed up again and went up and down the coast
with him in his Cadillac, selling them by knocking on
the doors of radio stations and saying, Huggy Boys here,

(16:56):
and people would go, oh my god, Huggy boy. I mean,
we're in awe of him. And we would go in
the air with a little pre recorded commercial and people
would come down to the station and he would sign
the records. Then Jack Smith gave us a slot on XDRB.
I think it was midnight to one in the morning
on Sunday, and it didn't matter, hugging it on the

(17:18):
air with the big forty oldies and bags of money
started pouring in. So this was all great until I
got a knock on my door of my apartment and
it was US Customs and Immigration. You need to be
back in Toronto within three days or we'll be taking
you back. You were working and you're not doing your

(17:40):
student visa stuff. So Michelle and I had to basically
go back to Toronto and okay, wait.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Wait, wait, wait wait. Before you get there, was it
cheaper if you bought paper for a year, or you'd
just tell people.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
It was the same price, and paper, of course, always
like anything else, increased in price, but probably not material
materially to the degree that if you bought it for
a year, you were going to save a fortune of money.
What I was saving was a lot of time because
we would do deliveries on a three monthly basis, so

(18:16):
instead of me lugging paper out to people's places because
there wasn't any deliveries, but once you ordered a year's worth,
you would get it delivered every three months, so there
were some benefits to it.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
What was your pitch to Huggy Boy. You only met
him one day at the racetrack. How did he decide
to go to business with you?

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Well, I met him one day, but we saw each
other many times, and as it turned out, I was
in line behind a couple of very well dressed women
who I recognized as obviously wealthy from you know, mothers
of friends of mine at Upper Canada College. The way
they were dressed, and they were talking about betting on

(18:55):
a horse. This woman said that they flew in on
their jet from Connecticut. Now nobody had jets back then.
The unless you had a leer jet and they were
going to bet this long shot and it was like
twenty eight to one, and the woman bet five thousand.
That brought the odds down. Our friend brought a bad
a thousand. I had two hundred and sixty dollars on me.

(19:17):
I put that all in the same horse in at one.
So I ended up with about seven thousand dollars with
the tickets. Now, my friend advised me, you will not
be able to cash those. You're not twenty one, you're
not even legal to be in here. They will seize
them from you. We need to find Huggy Boy and
get them to cash those tickets. So that's when Huggy
Boy said, I'll only do it if you invest this

(19:40):
money and we get the big forty oldies going again.
So I said, okay, I want my two hundred and
sixty eight dollars back, but yeah, I'll bank roll that.
And that's how it started.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Okay, so you go back to Toronto. What year is it?
Set the scene for me?

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Well, it's now nineteen six and I moved back into
my mom's place in Rosedale with my bride, with my wife,
we'd been married for almost two years, and that's when
I wanted to know what to do, how to you know,
how to fit in up here. And that's when I
decided to bring the doors to Toronto, and they were

(20:21):
very hot. Jamie Sifton's uncle gave us the money and
he was in the construction business, and we went to
ask him for ten thousand dollars to bring the doors
to Toronto, and he was either hard of hearing or
busy on speakerphones or something, and he said, oh, Jamie, Jamie,
I'm glad you're getting into the business. It turns out
he thought we were buying doors, like doors that you've

(20:44):
got put on a wall, and so you know, that's
how we got the money for the doors. And that
was the first time, you know that I wrote in
a limo alone with Jim Morrison of course at the time,
and that was very exciting. We sold out the CNE
Coliseum ten thousand seats and Jim was the Lizard King.

(21:08):
Then it was April twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. I like
to think maybe we started four twenty. I'm not sure,
but that was a very exciting time. I was told
to bring six beers for Jim and two limos and
the band and Bill Siddons got in one and I'm
standing at the curb with Jim and we get in
and he sees the beers and the opener opens one

(21:30):
up drains it opens another one, and he kind of
bumped his shoulder at me, like, you know, meaning have one.
So I nursed mine all the way downtown and we
got to the hotel. The driver opened the door. Jim
got halfway out and he turned back and looked at
me and he said, hey, man, thanks for not talking.
Like I was terrified. I couldn't say a word to him.
I'd find out later. The agent said to me the

(21:54):
next day, hey, kid, you did gray. You sold out
the show. And Jim said he likes the promoter. Well,
that was the only kind I had hitting contact with him.
So Robbie told me later that would be about the
best thing you could ever do with Jim is not
to talk. So that's when fear won out.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Okay, you start in the business. The concept is easy.
You book a band, you get a venue, sell tickets,
big money. But the first time around it must have
been pretty scaring. You must have fucked up a little bit.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Well, you know, you try not to think of the
fuck ups, I'd have to really press hard to recall one.
Just the thrill of doing these things for me overrode
any kind of problems that we had with the door show.
We didn't really have any problems. It was very smooth,
it sold out. The band was incredible. As I said,

(22:47):
Jim was the Lizard King. Then on like nineteen sixty nine,
when he came back for the revival, he was very subdued, haircut,
very you know, you could see the look on his face.
He was not a happy man. He was facing the
charges out of Miami. It was life changing. So the
sixty eight event, now, of course, right after that, Russ
Gibb got in touch with me from Detroit. He had

(23:09):
the Grandy Ballroom. He knew me from the Rock Pile
and he was bringing Jimmy Hendricks and he said, Brower,
be my local promoter, be my guy there. So that
was the next show I was involved in.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
But whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa? How did he know you
from the rock Pile at that point? When did you
open the rock Pile?

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Well? I had the rock Pile in sixty eight, later
in sixty eight, and you know, back and forth with
Russ Gibb was a promoter. A lot of promoters, you know,
were in touch with each other because it was sometimes
you'd if, like Donald in Montreal, if a band needed

(23:45):
two dates, Donald would ask me if you'll take one,
or I would ask him, like the Doors, they needed
two dates to play the revival, and so Donald took
them on the Sunday in Montreal. Russ Gibb on occasion,
I would, you know, share a date with him, or
in this case it was you know, the opportunity of

(24:06):
him for the first time asking me and he didn't
know me yet from the rock Pile. He knew me
from the Door show, because I think that was promoted
also of course in Detroit, Windsor everybody promoted. I mean,
as you know, back in the day, there was no computers.
You had to deliver your tickets as far and wide

(24:27):
as possible in order to sell them. Promotion was easy.
Radio stations were on the case, not a problem. Buy
some radio time and they'll blast it out there because
there wasn't anything else going on, like a million things
right now, you know, putting on a concert. You were
you know VIP in terms of promotion at radio stations.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
So when you put on the doors in Toronto sixty eight,
if we use the line of demarcation of the Beatles
sixty four, things explode. Were there any the other concert
promoters in Toronto? Was anybody mad that you got the
gig and they didn't?

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, Marty Enrat was a well known promoter in Toronto.
He did events at Massey Hall. I don't believe that
he did any rock events. And of course the Gardens
did the Beatles and the Stones, and other than that,
there was the o'keith Center, and I guess there were

(25:27):
a couple of other promoters, you know, other than Marty.
I can't really think of them. If there were any,
they certainly weren't anyone in my social circle or anyone
that I knew. And the whole thing with Kenny and
I is we just wanted to do rock shows. I mean,
that was what we wanted. That's what was happening.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Okay, so it's nineteen sixty eight. How old are you
in nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Well, I'm approaching twenty two. My birthdays in November, so
each year I'm the same as I was almost the
whole year. Eleven months of the last birthday so yeah, twenty.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
How many How many shows do you put on before
you open the club?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Probably four, maybe five, and two of them of course
were with ruskib because Kenny scooped me up after the club.
But we decided to do the club basically because we were,
you know, reading Rollie's sone about Bill Graham and the

(26:33):
film More and you know, one of my friends said, well,
you know, my girlfriend's dad's ahead of the Masonic Temple,
and my other buddy, Doug, said, you know, I have
some trust fund money, and the next thing you know,
we're meeting the Masonic Temple and opening up the Rock
Pile with Blood, Sweat and Tears. Who had a number
one record and was there coming home to Toronto.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
What was the capacity of the Rock Pile?

Speaker 3 (26:59):
I would say legal about fourteen hundred. There were occasions
of having over two thousand people in there. There were
some fire marshall crowbar in the back door nights when
that's just what had to be done. It was very
free for all back in those days when there's no seating.
There were some benches, the concrete benches up on the

(27:19):
second floor, but for the right band, and when led
Zeppelin came, the second time. I mean bikers were charging
five dollars to push people through the open windows from
the street. It was so packed that you couldn't even
get in if a door was opened. It was insane.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
How long did the Rock Pile operate?

Speaker 3 (27:41):
I operated in capacity as a talent buyer and producer
for about eight months. It lasted about another six months,
so it was about a year and a half.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
And why did you leave?

Speaker 3 (27:54):
I left to do bigger concerts with Ken Walker. I
just you know, the rock Pile was just like the
same thing every week. And also there were other weeks
like Silver Apples, where you drew three people, but the
agent told you they were the next Beatles. There wasn't
Led Zeppelin every week, and we weren't Bill Graham, we
weren't selling posters and merchandise. And you know, this was

(28:17):
kind of a fun thing for my three partners. They
all went either back to school or into business or
to business school. And you know, I was entrepreneurial. I
just wanted to keep doing this, so Kenny offered the
opportunity for.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
That and just staying with the Rock pill for a while.
How often did you do shows and how did that
work out? Economically.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Well, there were great weeks and there were disasters, but
there was talent every week. We had to do a
show every week in order to qualify as being a
legitimate venue. You know, we had the debacles there and
we had incredible sellouts, and we had experiences like Peter
Grant showing up and try to rob us, and you

(29:05):
know other times when certain people would show up and
there would be like they'd be so gracious that you're,
you know, putting on a show for them. That especially
the English bands, like you mentioned earlier, many of the
English bands would get their visas to Canada first and
then that would be something that they would use in

(29:26):
the States to add American dates. So a lot of
times they would come to Toronto or Montreal first and
then that would trigger them already being in North America,
or they would be able to apply in the States
since they were playing Toronto, and then we need to
come to Detroit. That's kind of where they went. It
is from Us to ruskild.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Okay, how did Peter Grant try to rob you?

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Well, Peter Grant was the tour manager for the Jeff
Beck group. This is pre led Zeppelin, and we booked
them for two shows on a Sunday. They sold out
both shows clean afternoon Mattinee, No band, No band, had
to refund all the tickets. Everybody's now lining up for

(30:19):
the evening show, and they show up, you know, and unload,
and you know, you always pay the agent for one
show and then you give the band cash for the second.
So Peter Grant shows up and wants the money for
the second show, and we said, well, we had to
refund the first show. You didn't show up. What do

(30:41):
you mean, give you the money for the second show.
He goes, so if we don't get the money for
the second show, we're not going on. Well, at that point,
you know, we'd already let people in the hall. I mean,
it would have been a nightmare, and of course our
reputation would have been destroyed. It was bad enough that
we had to refund the first show. So the band
starts to play and one of my partners, Doug mcquaig's

(31:03):
father was a very powerful attorney, and he made some
phone calls, even on a Sunday, And when the band
got off stage, there was immigration officers, customs officers and
police officers there waiting, and two of my partners were
big guys. They were like six foot three, two hundred
and something, and they said you have to go talk
to him because he might hit us. So I went

(31:26):
up to Peter and I said, look, Peter, I need
to inform you that the police there are going to
take you to your hotel and you're going to a
court tomorrow and be charged with theft by conversion, whatever
else they can throw at you. And the customs people
are going to impound the equipment and that's what's happening

(31:48):
for you guys right now. And so he just now,
meaning take in our equipment, and I go, well, you know,
I'm afraid that's not the case. So one of the
police officers came over and started telling him the same thing,
and he grabbed the guy through like right here of
his uniform and lifting him up in the air right
to his face and said, nobody's taking our equipment. And

(32:11):
this guy pulled his side arm out and put it
in his gut and he said to him, you know,
like let me down roll shoot you. Well Peter looked
downside the gun lowered him. In La he might have
been shot, but in Toronto, I think he shocked everybody.
So much that they just escorted him to the hotel.
Chaff said to me, can we please take our guitars?
They said yes, of course. So nine in the morning,

(32:32):
Steve Weiss and Frank Barcelona are on the phone to me,
nine o'clock Monday morning, going, John, the band's got to
be in Detroit tonight. Please, what can we do? How
can we work this out? And I go, well, we
just want our money back, you know, like we want
to pay for one show and if it was we
paid for the first show and we ended up getting
the second, that's fine, fine, fine, John. The police are

(32:54):
over there. They're talking about escorting Peter downtown in an hour,
and what what can we do? I said, well, get
Peter to come over here with our money and then
I'll make a call and whatever, you know, charges whatever,
Doug mcquig's dadd'll stop everything. So Peter came over with
the money rolled up in a big thing with elastics

(33:16):
around it. And the Masonic Temple had these beautiful marble
steps and leading up to these huge doors, and then
more marble steps up to the entrance. So I went
and sit at the top of the inner marble steps
and within a few minutes because their hotel wasn't very
far away. It was like the door came off the hinges.
Peter pulled that door open and like the sun behind him,

(33:37):
and here's this giant, hoping guy in the doorway, and
he comes in and he looks up at me and
he just goes back in one blow and he just
hurls his money right at me and hit me right
in the head and it blew up all over the place,
knocked me on my ass, and I just started scooping
the money up and I looked at him, I said,
get the f out of my club. And that was

(33:58):
my only contact with Peter Grant. By the time he
came back the second time for led Zeppelin, I was
not involved with the club. I had been at Woodstock.
It was the Monday of Woodstock and I was just
getting back from being on stage at Woodstock for two
days and we got back to go see Zeppelin at
the club and just missed their encore. So I saw
Woodstock and I missed led Zeppelin's encore at what once

(34:21):
was my club.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
What were you doing on the stage at Woodstock?

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Well, you know entrepreneurial skills, you know, aside there was
also hustle. Michael Lang invited all the promoters that were
known to come to his show in Woodstock, which was great.
He called us in June. I don't know who he was,
and you know it was great. Sure, man, that's great. Yeah,

(34:46):
we'll come to your show. Well, on Friday, Hugh Curry
and I and are production manager and receptionist started driving
up Young Street and on the radio comes this incredible
story Woodstock and everything, and on the interview in a
radio comes Michael Lang talking about it. So I'm going
that's that guy called our office in June. That guy

(35:08):
invited us to come. So long story short, we decide
we're going to turn the car around, go to my place,
get some underwear, socks or whatever. Nobody's calling their wife,
nobody's The receptionist said, I don't need to call anybody,
and we had to Buffalo. So we get to the
border and tell the guy we're going to visit friends
and have dinner in Buffalo. We know we're not telling

(35:29):
them we're going to Woodstock. We get to fifty miles
from Woodstock and the roads closed and everybody steered into
a roadside whatever the through way things are. There was
probably a thousand people there, So, you know, my buddy says,
and we had a couple of joints with us some alcohol.
So my buddy goes, well that's it, man. We tried.

(35:51):
We gave it a shot, and I said, no, give
me a joint. So there was probably fifty people at
the pavephone. I lit it and came up to the
front and I said, look, somebody's having a baby. You
got to have the phone just for one minute, please
play is here? So okay, man, So pass the joint
down a couple people. I get on the phone, call
the New York State Police. I go listen, we're roadies
for a band that's playing at the festival witch Talk.

(36:14):
I think we're lost. We're trying to get there. How
do we get to the back roads? How do we
get to the heliport? So he goes, I don't know
what back roads, but the heliport. Where are you? And
I tell him He goes, go back to exits, go
south to Route seventeen, Go eastern Route seventeen. You'll run
right into it. You'll see the clevelands. So an hour
later we're there at the heliport and we go up

(36:36):
to the chopper guy and tell them, you know, when
can we get on a chopper? He goes, what band
are you with? You go, we're not with a band.
Michael Lang invited us. He goes, Michael Lang invited everybody
get out of here. If you're not on a band
playing tomorrow, you're not getting out of chopper. So now
we're like, oh my god. It was a motel there,
and of course it said rooms available, and nobody want
to stay there. So the production manager and the reception

(37:00):
just go, look, we've got to get a room. We
can't drive back to Traunta now. So to them, it's over.
So a cab pulls up and a guy gets out
with the guitar and he comes over to the chopper
guy and he goes, Eric Barrett got Jimmy Hendrix's guitar,
going to get on a choupper right now. The guy goes,
you're not getting on a chopper right now. Jimmy's playing
Sunday night. You don't get on a chopper till tomorrow.

(37:23):
So he's going fuck, you know, So we sidle up
to him, and you know, we're limiting that. The chopper guys,
which are always the worst guys in the world at
any festival and a station wagon pulls up and this
guy gets out and he's chewing on some tobacco, and
you know, Levon Holm would be the perfect guy to
play this guy if this is a movie. And he

(37:45):
sidles up to and he goes, hey, you boys, don't
want to go to that big hip show. Get you
right in fifty bucks each. So we look at this
guy and like so Eric Barrett goes, all right, let's go,
let's go.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
I'll go.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Well, Hugh and I look at each other. Makets for
eighteen dollars, but fifty bucks each. Now my friends come
back and they've got a motel room. They're all excited.
It's one hundred bucks for the next two nights and
there's two beds in a couch. I said, we're going
into the festival with this guy. Well, my receptions looked
at this guy and she said, I'm not getting in
the car with that man. I mean he looked rough,

(38:20):
and so I said okay, And they've gotten kind of
snugly in the car, and a production guy you know, says, well,
we'll stay here, man, We've got a room. If it's
good coming at us, I said, I don't think we're
going to get you. But anyway, so we get in
this guy's car and he drives down the road and
all of a sudden he pulls right off the road
and crashes into the woods, and we are screaming, but

(38:42):
all of a sudden he's laughing, and he's driving through
ruts in the road and branches are flashing off this
windshield and Eric parents says, you know you got me pot,
and then Hugh goes, yeah, we got to do before you.
And this guy goes he bowys wants a pot, and
he pulls up his bag from under the seat, big
buds the size of mice, and he sells us two

(39:05):
of them for fifty each. Long story short. He drives
through the woods, comes into a field, goes through the
woods again, comes out and pulls up and drops right
into the backstage of Woodstock. There's the stage, okay, and
so security comes running over. Eric Barrett jumps out, Jimmy
Hendrix wesby Trailsmie laminates and I go where with him?

(39:27):
And so they give us backstage all stage laminates and
we never see him again. And that was it. We're
now backstage at Woodstock with all access laminates in twelve hours.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Okay, you're there, you're there for three days. Where do
you sleep?

Speaker 3 (39:47):
No, we don't sleep anywhere, because a girl came along
very shortly thereafter with two giant mushroom stems. I ate
my allmine right away. Hugh do doled his out of
the weekend. He has some stories about what happened to me,
But nobody slept. There was no sleeping. You might lean
up against something. I fell in love with the trumpet

(40:09):
player for Sly and the Family Stone, standing about ten
feet from her. Abby Hoffman was standing next to me
when The Who was playing, and between one of their songs,
he ran out and grabbed the mic and goes, what
are we gonna do? But John Sinclair, what are we
gonna do about? John Sinklair and Pete Townsend come up
and smashes him on the back of the head and
knocks him out. Roady's drag him off. I'm on mushrooms

(40:30):
watching this. I never could have an infinity for The Who.
After that, Janna threw me off the stage. My friend
was her guitar player, John Till. We're smoking a joint
behind the amps and she comes out to go on
and doesn't see John as she goes, where's my guitar player?
Where's my guitar player? She sees us, He who the
fuck are you? Are you getting my guitar player's stone?

(40:53):
Get the fuck off my stage. So Rody's come and
grab me. I have to get off the stage. Lamit
or not, you get it off the stage right now. Now.
Those are some highlights. And then of course Monday morning
on stage for Jimmy, and that was incredible. I'm down
by now, and so Jimmy's over and my buddy looks

(41:15):
at me. He goes, where's that guy with the station wagon? Well,
of course he was nowhere to be found. But I
see about one hundred yards away a National Guard helicopter
and the blades were like it was sort of on,
like idling. I guess what their blades do? They kind
of move, So I said, come on, I remember we
have these laminates. So I come up to this kid
that looks younger than us, but he's about six '

(41:36):
three and he's in a uniform and he's standing next
to this huge helicopter. So I go, listen, man, can
you take us to the Montsello Airport? I said, we're
with the promoters. Very important. We have to get there.
He goes get in. He slides this door open, this
like the size of the wall in the one of
my apartments. And of course when we get in, people
rush the helicopter. I mean, nobody wanted to ask. I ask,

(41:59):
that's who I am? So I asked, Now the door's open.
Finally he had to stop, like he had twelve more
people in there. I don't know how many, but bum
bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
down right there, and there's the car, and there's my
production manager and receptionist standing next to it. And that's it.
We drive home and misleds up.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Okay, you do the festival in the spring. You've already
left the venue and the rock pile before you do
the Rock and Roll Revival sixty nine in the fall.
Did you do any other shows?

Speaker 3 (42:37):
I did? I must admit that I did Blind Faith
at the end of July. Kenny wouldn't do it with me.
The record was now yet. My friend Hugh Curry was
a DJ on Chalmy at a Sunday night radio show
called The Dream Machine. He was saying, you have to
do it, you have to do it. This is the
super group. You have to bring them here. So Stan

(43:00):
Freeman at the Electric Circus in Toronto or in New
York had an electric circus by this time, competing with
the Rock Pile in Toronto. He said, I'll do it
with you, and so he and another guy I can't
remember his name, they put the money up and we
lost twenty thousand dollars. There's only three thousand people came.
The record came out the day of the show, and

(43:25):
it was an incredible show. Of course, it was an
amazing show, and Hugh and I sat and played records
with Stevie Winwood and Rick Gretch after the show all
night long. Back at Hughes Plays, Clapton went off, I
don't know where with Bonnie Bonnie Delaney. They were the
opening act. It was a magical experience, but it costs money.

(43:45):
It was. It was a bomb, as were many of
those dates because there was no record. If there's no record,
there's no internet, there's no nothing. There's no tribal drums.
You know, there's rolling stone.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Okay, what let's go back to the show. What is
the exact date of the Spring.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Festival September thirteenth, No, No, the one in the spring
June twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Okay, so how long after that festival do you start
deciding you're going to do something in September.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Like probably the day afterwards.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
And is the initial idea this rock revival thing or
is anybody saying anything different?

Speaker 3 (44:25):
No? No, I was usually the guy that would call
the shots on who we were going to book. Kenny
was the business guy. He always made sure, you know,
we made money. I don't know how, but he did.
And so it was this whole thing that Chuck Berry
stole the show. Everybody's talking about Chuck Berry the next
few days. So that's when it was let's do all

(44:47):
the old rock and rollers.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Okay, so tell me about building the show, getting the tech.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Well, you know, the talent came together in one day,
literally the rockers, and that was what was made us
feel for sure, this is a great idea because just
two calls to Universal or you know another booking agent
I can't remember who, didn't matter. We were, you know,
Jerry Lee's available. Gene Vincent came on later, Kim Fowley

(45:22):
got us to bring him up there, and little Richard,
I mean, you know, probably those guys were not getting
booked very often, and this was like I got a
date for you. It was probably what their agent said, Hey,
I got a date for you up in Toronto, and
we thought it was propitious and you know, a good omen.

(45:42):
In hindsight, it was probably them excited to get a gig.
I don't know, nobody knows, but it all came together
in like a few phone calls.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Okay, so how did you end up booking the more
contemporary acts Chicago? The Door's Alice Cooper.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Well, Chicrgo had a number one record. Okay, they were huge,
and so they were an obvious buy just because they
were getting massive radio player. In terms of the doors,
they did not come along until I saw that this
was going to be an unmitigated disaster. And that's when

(46:21):
I bore the money from Edgo the Biker to bring them,
and I thought, well, for sure, now we're going to
sell out the doors because the year before we sold
out the coliseum in like days. But the you know,
blush was off the rose whatever that expression is, and
the doors. Remember something else. I believe a lot of

(46:42):
parents were involved in kids getting permission to go downtown
and be at a show. They didn't end till eleven
o'clock at night, and also to have six dollars or
eight dollars, and then I need money for a hot
dog and a coke, et cetera, et cetera. This was
not entrepreneurial teenagers. This was provincial Toronto. Liquor stores closed Sunday,

(47:02):
bars closed Sunday. I mean, this was still very provincial,
and I believe parents had a lot to do with it.
I'm sure the story about Jim Morrison more in Miami
had spread far and wide on the parental tribal drums.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Okay, let's go a little slower. Basically, in one day,
you book all the fifties rockers, do you in from
the beginning? Do you plan to book contemporary stuff like Chicago?
Or is an afterthought because those things are a little
oil and water. They're both music, are both rock, but
from different erows.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yes, we intended to book other acts as well, because,
of course, from the June show there were acts that
were so off the wall, like Doctor John, that were
like incredible, that stunned the audience. Nobody knew who Doctor
John was. And we booked Tony Joe White, who also
had a big record and who was he was a

(47:56):
country guy from Nashville or something like that. But they
had big records and that was getting airplay. That obviously
did not translate to ticket sales either. And I think
you have to remember as a festival, parents were involved
in approving their kids coming down there.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
How long after you booked the initial talent did you
decide and then book the doors.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Well, the doors were the very late booking. That was
a hail Mary pass right there before we had a
Hail Mary with Lennon. That was when it was obvious
the ticket sales were not going to reach any kind
of line like a stock where you know it's climbing.
They were flat, and I just felt from the Door's

(48:45):
performance the year before, and you know, girls were screaming,
they were like fainting at the coliseum. It was pandemonium.
Jim had his shirt open and his hair and he
was the lizard king. That's what I thought we were getting.
And you know, we didn't get latest photos of people
sent up to us. Oh wait a minute, here's Jim's

(49:07):
latest mugshot. No, that didn't come up with the contract.
So they came and you know it was a very
different reception.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Okay, let's talk before the date plays. So when you
booked the doors, are you aware of what happened in Miami?

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Oh? Absolutely, of course.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Okay, so tell us about getting the money from the
biker gang.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Well, it was from the leader, edgo and I needed
to borrow the money because he said, look, this is alone,
this is not an investment. Okay, we don't want anything
for it, but you know what, I'll help you out.
But guess what. So that's why when I said to Kenny,
you know we need twenty five thousand, he said, no,
I'm not going to do it. Borrow it from somebody,

(49:54):
and you know, and then when I told him I
bored it from Edgoe, he said, well, you know that's great,
but you know, if it's a bomb, it's on you.
So rolling ahead a little further, when it was like
the Eatons went and canceled the show, you know, my
wife was ready to take the baby and move back
to her parents in California on the next plane, thinking,

(50:16):
you know, the Eatons aren't going to pony up to
twenty five thousand. We're Johnny going to get that money?
I don't know anyway. Then Lennon came alone and saved
the bacon.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Okay, is that what the door has cost?

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Twenty five thousand for each day? Donald paid them the
same in Montreal.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Okay, how did you know this guy?

Speaker 3 (50:37):
No? What guy ed Joe? He did security for us
at the rock Pile. Whenever British bands played at the
rock Pile, the Scotty Mods would come out of Scarborough,
and I mean the guys that were speaking English came
from English families, dressed like the Scotty Mods in Scotland
or in the UK, and they would come and they
would fly in a v right to the front door
and smash their way in. Well, they only did that

(50:59):
one and then we got Edgoe and some of his
guys to come and be security. And when they did
that the next time, they never did it again. So
I knew Edgoe also from the village. Edgo was like
a character hanging around the village, and that's where we
all hung around, like in the Diplomat's days. So I
mean these were characters. I was a character. I think

(51:23):
in one thing edgo says, you know John Brower was
another character hanging around the village. I mean we were
all characters against.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Okay, where did you think he got the twenty five
thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Where did he get it? Probably out of his back pocket,
I'm not sure. I'm sure they had businesses. I'm sure
they had enterprises that were enterprising back in those days.
As he says in the Revival movie, you got to
remember there's a lot of pot smoke back then. Well
there were a lot of people selling it back then too,
and I'm sure they may have been.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Some of them, so you weren't aware that they were
in the business. How do you know we had that money?

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Well, you know, I asked a couple of people before
I asked him. Believe me, Okay, I asked a couple
of people. I asked a couple of guys from Upper
Canada College, could you get your mom to loan me
twenty five thousand? You know, I think one guy asked
his mom. She laughed him out of the house. But remember,
my friend got his uncle to give us ten thousand

(52:25):
to bring the doors. So I mean I was canvassing
some of those things before I settled on Edgoe. Edgoe
was very quick to say, yeah, no problem, okay.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
How long after you announced the doors you realized this
isn't going to sell any real.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
Tickets, probably seventy two hours.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Then what's going through your mind?

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Well, I don't know, but probably wasn't very good basically,
you know now what And that's when I believe Thor
Eaton called and said, we're not going to you know,
green light the rest of the money because they had,
you know, stock in the company and they had to say.
And Kenny didn't want to green light at either. Kenny

(53:10):
wanted to cancel the show. We didn't want to lose money, Kenny.
You know, to me, I was losing a reputation. It
was an unmitigated disaster. I'd never be able to book
another band all of that. That's what I thought. Kenny
and Thor were like, we're not going to lose any
more money. That was just the accountants versus the creators.
And that's when I went to tell Kim Falley it's over,

(53:32):
and he said, you got to call John Lennon.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Okay, Well before we go there. How did Kim Fowley
and Rodney Bingenheimer get involved?

Speaker 3 (53:42):
God bless him. I'm glad they did. Well. Richie Yorke,
the journalist, had suggested early on, you should bring Kim
Fowley and Rodney Bannheimer up to be the MC's. Now.
I knew Rodney from Rodney's English Disco in La Rodney

(54:03):
was the mayor of Sunset Strip, so that name was familiar.
I had no idea who Kim Falley was. But when
they got up there, you know, they were characters and
it sounded like they were going to be great MC's,
and in the movie Kim Fowley is a great MC.
Rodney drifted off. He didn't do anything on stage, but they,

(54:26):
you know, were celebrities, and you know, announcing them also
did not mean anything. It was like way over everybody's.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Head, and you booked them thinking they would do what.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Well, the first of all, they'd be the MC's as
opposed to people from Chum Radio, which would be doing
nothing but talking about Chum Radio all the time. That
was the one thing we wanted to avoid. We didn't
have any MC's at all in June, but a couple
of DJs did snatch the mic, you know, because they
were allowed to be there and say, well, we need

(54:59):
to make an announcement and Chum wants to thank you.
You know, everybody took credit for everything at radio stations
wherever possible, So we wanted to avoid that. So it
sounded great. We'll have the mayor of Sunset Strip and
some other guy named Kim Fowley, and they'll be the
EMC's that'll keep the radio guys off the stage.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Okay, if the show is going to play in September,
when do you decide to hire Fouley in Bingenheimer?

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Oh? Probably not till the middle of August, or even
a bit later.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
The movie gives the impression that they ultimately moved to
Toronto for a month. Is that kind of what happened?

Speaker 3 (55:36):
Now? I don't I've seen the movie one hundred times.
I don't ever remember anything that indicated that they came
up like the week of the show to do promotion
and that was it. They were basically only there like
two days before I went to tell them that we're
pulling the plug and we'll send you home. But the

(55:56):
idea of booking them, the idea of booking them and
paying them and getting them there line tickets would have
been several, you know, weeks, at least a couple before that.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Okay, So now in this great run you have the
fifties acts you booked the doors, tickets still aren't selling.
What's going through your brain?

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Like, why was this my idea? You know?

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Why?

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Why was this my idea?

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Why?

Speaker 3 (56:25):
Why did I think of this? What did I think
about this that was going to be good? Like, you know,
I'm sure every promoter's had that happened once in their life.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
And if you had brought the show down, how much
would you've only owed the acts for cancelation.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
That I really don't know, but probably a lot less
than if they'd had to show up. And I don't
know what those contracts said. I don't know that there
was cancelation clauses in our agreements. I don't think we
ever dealt with anybody canceled before, or US canceling anybody.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
It was like to just let's go back one chapter.
Why did the Jeff Beck group not show up for
the matinee?

Speaker 3 (57:11):
I don't have any idea, and we never heard. But
obviously they were coming by car. They may have had
a problem getting across the border because I don't know
where they came from. But they did not fly into Toronto.
They drove and they came in a station wagon and
a van, So where they came from, I don't know.

(57:33):
There were other acts that were delayed getting in. Some
were even stopped from coming into Canada even though we
had sold out shows for them. I can't think of one.
Some guy set himself on fire. What was his name, Northrough.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Brown Crazy World of Arthur Base, The World.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Of Arthur Brown. It took him forever to get into
the country. And there were other acts that were canceled
that they couldn't get in.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Okay, between the decision of deciding to hire Foully and Bingenheimer,
before the John Lennon idea comes, are there any other
ideas that come up that you either take action on
or decide not to do.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
No, No, there were no other acts available that would
have made any difference. There was no budget to spend
on them because ticket sales were so disastrous and after
the doors got there twenty five thousand and that didn't
produce any tickets at all. That would have been a
fools game to think anybody else would. So, you know,

(58:42):
it was all moving so fast. Right now. Remember it's
like winding down to you know, the week before the
show and there's two thousand tickets.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Okay, it's the week before the show. Are your partners
still saying we want to cancel.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
No, they didn't want to cancel till the Monday. The
show was on the Saturday. Monday was the day they
pulled the plug.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
And what were you thinking?

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Should I go to LA with my wife and child?

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Okay, So it's Kim Fowley who comes up with the
idea of John lenn Yes, and this is on the phone.
Who does he call? What does he say?

Speaker 3 (59:27):
No? No, no. I go to the hotel room to
tell he and Rodney there were the show's being canceled
and we're going to get you guys and fly you
back to LA. Their tickets were for like a week
from then. We didn't want to keep them in the
hotel any longer. Get them out of there. And that's
when Kim Fowley had a meltdown and started stomping around
the room, going, you can't cancel this show. It's a

(59:50):
classic show. What's wrong with these guys? Da Da Da
da da. And that's when he said, look this way
you need to do. You need to call John Lennon
in the more And I'm looking at him like you know,
I know he doesn't do drugs. I heard that already,
So where's this coming from? And you need to tell
him You've got Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis,

(01:00:11):
gen Vincent, Bo Diddley. Don't tell him about the Doors,
don't tell him about any other bands. He loves these bands.
The Beatles have played songs by Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
The Beatles open for Gene Vincent at the Star Club.
I didn't know any of this. Were citing all these
things to me, and I go home and tell my

(01:00:31):
wife and she goes into a complete meltdown, screaming around
the house. You're out of your mind. I guess Elvis
is waiting for your call too, And what about the
Rolling Stones? Why don't you call them? You know? I
mean it sounded so completely insane, ludicrous. But at six
in the morning, Kenny Walker and I with Thor Eaton
because we brought him to the office, it was like,

(01:00:52):
if we get John Lennon on the phone, this has
to be heard by Thor, not a story and lo
and be old. We call out and you know, get
Faucett there on the phone and tell him about the bands,
and he comes back and it's like, okay, we'll do it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
A little bit slower. How'd you get the number? What
do you say when you call the number?

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Kim Fowley gave us the number for Apple. I mean
it might have been that information too, I don't know.
But Kim Fowley gave us the phone number. Here's the
phone number. He went in a book and looked it up.
He had everybody's number.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Okay, so you called and someone picks up. Who do
you say? Who you want to talk to? And what's
your pitch?

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
My pitch is just exactly this. Hi, this is John Brower.
I'm calling from Toronto, Canada. I need you to write
these names down please, It's very important. Chuck Berry, Little Richard,
et cetera. I said, please give this to John Lennon
and tell them all these acts are playing this Saturday,
enter on and we want to invite he and Yoko

(01:02:02):
to come and be the m Sieves, because that's what
Folly said, invite them to be the m Sieves. So
a minute or so later, you know, Anthony Faucett comes
on and well where is it and when is it?
It's this Saturday? And da da da da da, And
then you know Lennon's there and hearing this and goes well, okay,

(01:02:25):
we wouldn't want to come less we could play. So
it was like what the Beatles, No, No, just us,
me and me and Yoka and will get a little
band together. All right. That was good enough for us,
you know. Thor Eaton was like, okay, wow, that was cool.
John Lennon on the phone, you know, because John Lennon's
voice came on. He was on the phone. They had

(01:02:46):
a speaker, So there you go, John Lennon, the real
John Lennon. So that's why we went to chum. They
laughed us out of the place, you know, like get
out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Put a little bit slower. How is it left when
you get off the phone?

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Well, we're jumping out and down, screaming and yelling. At
six o'clock in the morning downtown in our office on
Richmond Street. We had to wait three hours to go
to Chump.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Okay, but how do you leave it on the apple side?

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
Appleside, I'm calling you back tomorrow. I need the names
for the plane tickets, John said, I'm going to get
a band together and for immigration and the plane tickets,
and fine, call back tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Okay, And then you wait till nine o'clock. You go
to the radio station tell the story there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Yes, and it's like, you know, ha ha ha, we
know your show is bombing and I don't think we
can go on the air with that. Boys.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Sorry, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Now, there is a tiny backstory that came up on
Tuesday Wednesday when we came back with the tape with
Anthony Fawson on it. Now, Kenny and I had also
been given the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour movie and we
by Natwis, their lawyer guy in New York. They wanted
to give it out to a few good promoters and
we got it. So we sold out the O'Keefe Center,

(01:04:09):
that's what it was back then. Klein Hands in Buffalo,
Saint Lawrence Center, I think, in Montreal and at the
Elegant Theater in Ottawa. It was a complete bus at
twenty five hundred seat theater with four hundred tickets sold.
The night before, Kenny and I are having dinner at
the Chateau Laurier lamenting the fact we're going to lose
our ass here and I had another idea. And back

(01:04:34):
in the day, you always had the phone number of
the radio station guy in the studio where they were
on the air in case you had breaking news. And
it was very organic back then. So I called a
little hippie girl over that was a bus girl, and
I said, how would you like to see the Beatles
Magical Mystery Tour movie tomorrow? And she looked at us

(01:04:56):
like I don't know what is that? You know? And
Kenny's looking at me like, see, nobody knows. Promotion was terrible.
So I said, Kenny, open me your briefcase. He opens
his briefcase filled with tickets. I said, I'll give you
ten tickets for you and your friends to go to
the movie is playing right down the street at the
Elgin Theaters, the Beatles movie. But I want you to
call my friend to tell him that you work here

(01:05:18):
and that you saw George Harrison. He's here having dinner
with friends. That's innocent enough. So she goes okay. So
she comes back a few minutes later and she's like
kind of white. She goes, guy, you didn't tell me.
You didn't tell me that that was the guy on
the radio. He made me go on the radio and
describe what was George Waring? And did I recognize anybody

(01:05:40):
that was with him? To make it up, But she
said but I did tell him that me and all
my friends are going to see the Beatles movie tomorrow.
I was like, oh my god, yes, okay, I love you,
so we give her the tickets. Not even twenty minutes later.
Thirty minutes later, kids were coming into the Chateau Laurier
looking for George Harrison with Beatle records, wanting to say

(01:06:00):
the next morning it was below the fold on the
Autawa Citizen, George Harrison in town for Magical Mystery to
our movie question Mark. Of course, we sold the show
out by ten in the morning. The other twenty one
hundred tickets were gone, so that became a bit of
a story ha ha. You know, a little elbow on
the side back in Toronto. And of course people at

(01:06:21):
Chum had heard that, maybe a couple of the DJs
or something. So when we came in there the second
day with the tape, that's why they were really upset,
because they said, you know, the Beatles must love you guys. Right,
you're bombing with the movie in Ottawa. But George Harrison's
in town, supposedly nobody sees him, but you sell that out.
Now your festival's bombing. And John Lennon's coming with a

(01:06:44):
band with Eric Clapton, no doubt, get out you guys,
disgust me, you know, get out of here. That's that's why,
you know they knew, And this was like that was
our fault, but you know we had to be victim
of our own uh you know, skullduggery if you will.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
So you called back Apple the next day and tell
me about that conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
Well, I asked for John Lennon. I said, he's expecting
my call. Well, of course, Anthony Fosset comes on the phone. Meanwhile,
we've got a suction cup on the phone and we're
taping this and I was like, you know what, I
didn't want to say, well, we need John Lennon on
the phone. Nobody believes us. I didn't want to put
any shade on this thing. So he recites these names,

(01:07:31):
John Yoker here, Clappton Club's Forman Ellen White, mel Evans.
I knew they named mel Evans and it was like, okay,
So that's what we went up to Chum with that
tape with him on the phone. Now, if John Lennon
had come on the phone, Chum would have gone crazy.
Of course, they would have everybody would have known John's voice.
But Chum was kind of wondering about this. And that's

(01:07:53):
when they call Capitol Records, who called Alan Kline, who said, boys,
John lenn and it doesn't do anything I don't know about.
Forget about it. Just forget it. And then the word
came back to Chaum, it's all b as the Beetle's
manager said, So well, that was it. We were dead.
That's why the night before when Edgeo came to my house,

(01:08:14):
he said, it's all good. If this is bullshit, that's fine,
you're a promoter. But if my guys out at the
airport tomorrow eighty people and there's no John Lennon, he said,
now is the time to tell me. Not tomorrow. So
I'm going. We talked. I talked to John Lennon. He's coming.
We got them plane dikets now. Four in the morning.

(01:08:37):
I hit a call Anthony Foss that John's not feeling well,
doesn't want to come. Send roses and flowers, you know,
like no, no, no, no, that's not going to fly.
He has to come. And then Clampton came on board
and that was it. John wasn't going to come without
a guitar. Player. Not gonna come with a bass player
and a drummer. Eric was the lynch pin. It was Eric,

(01:08:57):
you know, on his way to the airport. All Riot,
that's it, let's go.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Okay, you talked to him if the show's playing on Saturday.
The first conversation with Apple is what day of the week?

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
Tuesday morning?

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Tuesday? It's confirmed on Wednesday. Do you have any contact
before Anthony Foster calls you the night before saying we're canceling.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Well, it was the morning of, not the night before.
It was the morning of. Anthony Foster was canceling at
nine o'clock in the morning, at four in the morning
my time when the phone rang. So no, no conversation
at all. Tickets were sent, immigration papers were organized, you know,
the tickets arrived, they had them there. They missed that

(01:09:42):
first plane. They had to switch all that around. No,
that was it. And then Anthony, you know, got John
on the phone and Eric was on board and it
was like, okay, we're going to get the next plane.
And that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
And next time, okay, a little bit slower. He calls
you says you're canceling.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
You say what, no, No, he can't cancel. He can't
if he cancels, I have to leave my city. I
have to leave my country. I'm figuring it's now four
in the morning. I can't phone Edge oh and back
the thing off. He had guys coming in from other
cities for this run. This was like the VIP run.
This was like a big deal for them. There wasn't

(01:10:20):
anything about the twenty five thousand anymore. It was like
I asked them to escort John Lennon in and he
pulled out all the stops. Now you don't get a
guy like that to get egg on his face. Okay, no,
And I needed John Lennon anyway. Our whole credibility was
based on this. Now we'd sold all these tickets in Detroit,

(01:10:40):
Rusk Gid went out on the line, played the tape
every fifteen minutes at his show. We had to fly
Dennis down there with their shoe box full of tickets.
You know, there's no computers. It was like people. Every
ticket in Detroit Windsor was bought up in like after
the first hour of Rusk get being on the radio,
and Dennis had to fly down the next day with

(01:11:02):
a shoe box full of tickets packed thousands.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
And when did schum finally say okay? They never said okay,
So they never went on it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Oh yeah, they went on it. Let me tell you
when they went on it, and it didn't get in
the movie. And you know what, I brought this up
with Ron Schoppman, the director. I love him to death,
but this was something that was missed and I gave
it to them in my interviews. When John Lennon finally
gets to Heathrow, and you know, Eric Clapton had been
there for a while, and Eric Clapton was highly recognizable,

(01:11:34):
and the media people that were circling around there, just
because at any major airport there's always media people. Eric
wouldn't talk to them. But John Lennon rolls up and
gives a press conference at the curb that he's out
his way to Toronto to play a rock show with
Chuck Berry and Little Richard and all the great rockers.
And this goes out on the teletype all over the world,

(01:11:56):
and then Chum at nine in the morning, because this
is two in the after it comes up on the
telemachine whatever those things were, Chik Chuck and I guess
the guy in the newsroom looked at it and runs
it into the program director who was ever calling the
shots at nine o'clock on Saturday morning, and they went
on the air with it immediately. Chump Presents Worldwide Exclusive.

(01:12:20):
They took credit for everything, and they blasted it out
every fifteen minutes. By one in the afternoon, we had
pretty much sold out the stadium. People were pouring down
there because this spread you know what we call now virally,
people calling each other. I just heard on Chump. John
Lennon is the airport. He's on his way to Toronto.
They're playing at that show, and I mean, you know,

(01:12:43):
Geddy Lee and them thing. You know. His friend said
to him that morning, it sounds like a good idea,
Let's go down there. They didn't have plans to go there.
They went down there then it sounded like a good idea.
So it was all last minute and Chump sold the
show up. That's how I had somebody say to me,
what didn't people come from? Get? Two thousand tickets sold
well between Russ, Gibb and Chum in two chunks. That

(01:13:07):
place sold out. In fact, I had to let fifteen
hundred people in at the Northwest gate because we had
no more tickets to solve the stadium. People were going,
we have nothing to sell them, and the police were
on horseback and that was the gate where the bikes
are going to come in, and I just said, open
the gates and let them in. We already sold out
who cares and we could go with your bankrupt are

(01:13:29):
going to be let them in. And then that really
raised the vibe in the crowd. When fifteen hundred people
came in. It was very exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Okay, it's four in the morning. You say you can't cancel.
What's your next communication with Lenin or Lenin's team.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
Well, Faucett calls back and tells me that, you know,
Eric Clapton's on board and on our way to the airport,
and John is now on and they're getting in the
limo and they got to get the next plane and
he said, you know, I'll let you know when that is.
And then I guess he was, you know, dealing with
some paperwork somebody did. Okay, it's going to be five

(01:14:09):
o'clock instead of two o'clock.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Okay, what time does the show start?

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
Oh, probably started at like eleven in the morning or
noon with early local bands.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Okay, what time is the first real band?

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):
Well, I think the first real band was Bo Diddley,
but I may be wrong. You know, I was not
on stage putting bands on stage. That was Rolly Paklin
and Dennis Hill. That's what those guys did. They got
the show going. They were the producers of the stage
itself and who's coming on and when all of that stuff,

(01:14:57):
I'm still dealing with money. People need to get paid.
Kenny Walker and the lawyers are dealing with Pennybaker, and
that's a whole not good story. But we finally I
got that sorted out. They were wanting Pennybaker to give
us twenty five thousand dollars or they couldn't start filming.
And when I found that out, I had a meltdown
and went up to where the meeting was and start

(01:15:17):
screaming and yelling, and so the lawyers and Kenny backed off,
and Pennybaker went and started shooting. But that's why the
footage of Bo Diddley doesn't capture his whole performance, because
they weren't allowed to start shooting until about halfway through
or close to the end, and they caught the encore.
That was a kerfuffle that I did not like.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
How did Penny Baker even get involved.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
Amazingly enough, Pennybaker called up and said, I'd like to
come up and shoot your show. I mean, the word
was out in New York that the show was happening.
It was off, it was on, the doors were on.
Now they were going to be on the show. And then,
you know, that was enough, Pennybaker. It was enough to

(01:16:02):
have those four guys up there, That's what he meant.
Not those four guys meaning maybe the Beatles, Chuck Berry,
Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley. Those are
the four guys that he knew about. I don't even
think Geene Vincent was involved in the promotion. He came
up as a last minute thing that Kim Fowley got
him added, and he was available, and he flew in

(01:16:23):
and he needed a band, and that's how Alice became
that band. So Kim Fowley again, if he hadn't brought
Geene Vincent up, Alice Cooper might have played in the daytime,
in the morning or something like that. See, that was
the magic for Alice was that Jean Vincent got to
play at night after Chuck Berry with the lights and

(01:16:46):
so Alice got to have the magic of the lighting
and the energy at night. I mean that's when the
energy really was buzzing, and so it all just worked
out and cheffing the chicken, I mean, it was crazy,
It was crazy, but it was fortuous for Alice that
they backed up Jean Vincent, or they'd have been on
in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Okay, are you checking with Heathrow whether Lennon and Posse
actually get on the plane?

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
No, no, no idea, And I'm not never a thought
of that, never, Just like whatever, get the bikes out
to the airport.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Okay, so what's the plan.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
They're going to land, And well, they're going to land
and we're going to get them into limos and they're
going to come down the service road where Edgo has
left enough space between all these bikes for the limos.
As it turned out, that wasn't the way it was done.
They realized that many bikes in front of the limos
was going to be chaos. So Edgo and a couple

(01:17:42):
of bikes rode in front and then the rest of
them road behind. But nobody cared. There was a thrill
to be riding escorting these limos. That was it, and
of course, you know after they were delayed, like I
had to call Edge in the morning and go, look,
there's been a slight delay, and he goes, that's not good,

(01:18:03):
and I go, look, I know they're on next plane. Okay,
John's at the airport. I know that much. So Edro
says to me, when are the doors coming in? And
I said, they're coming in around the same time John
was supposed to. He goes, okay, we'll go and do
a dry run with the doors. That'll keep my guys cool.

(01:18:25):
I start to tell them now there's a delay. That's
not going to be good. Some of them are already
accusing me of being a sucker and that there's going
to be no John Lennon. I go, okay, well there's
going to be John Lennon, so you're no sucker, So
go escort the doors. Well, the doors thought they were
being kidnapped by the bikers. There was no organization. Nobody
told their doors anything. They leave the airport and they're

(01:18:47):
swarmed by motorcycles like a hornet's nest, and they're in
the cars. They don't know what's going on. Robbie told
me Laterry said, we were terrified. Nobody warned us. There
was no nothing build and know anything sittings and whatever.
So that was just the bikers having fun, roaring down
and then they roared back, and they still had to

(01:19:09):
wait like another two hours for Lannon or more. But
ed Joe knew, let these guys ride the doors, you know,
let them get at their mojo here, at their excitement
level up. And you can see in the film. By
the way, this is a whole other thing. I've hat
people say to me, how in God's name were all

(01:19:30):
those bikers able to be drinking and smoking drugs in
nineteen sixty nine in public, out at the airport like they,
you know, any other place. They'd all been arrested, I said,
because the Eatons were involved, hands were off everything. The
police were told to stand down, okay, And I knew

(01:19:52):
that was happening because I was told, don't worry about
the bikers, they'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
People south of the border off familiar with the Eatons,
tell us who the Eatons were.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
Well. Timothy Eaton was the man that coined the phrase
good satisfactory or money refunded. He's the first person to
say that back in nineteen sixty nine. The Eaton's catalog
was doing one billion dollars a year for twenty five
or thirty years. People bought ninety percent of everything they
bought from Eaton's catalog. It was famous, okay, and it

(01:20:26):
became Eaton stores all across the country, and so the Eatons.
When the Queen came in the fifties, she stayed at
Lady Eaton's estate, which is where we put John and
Yogo up. Thor was able to ask his mom, and
his mom said, yeah, okay, no problem. That's why that
classic picture of the band by the swimming pool, that's

(01:20:46):
the swimming pool at the Eaton estate. So there it
was hands off. The biker's got a free free pass
that day.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
So John and Yoko and their band land.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
Then what happens get into the limos and we pulled
down the service road.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Are you there now?

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
I'm in the car with John Roddy Banheimer and I
went to meet him. So Rodney and I and Johnny Yoko.
So we see the bikes and John reached down and
pushes down the two door locks and looks at me
kind of like you know, okay, and I go, look John.
I didn't want to say anything till we got here,
but this is your escort in Toronto. And we pulled
into the space. Edgoe left and John was like, you know,

(01:21:26):
he looked at Yoko and he was like, holy should
So of course Edgoe has to see that this is
not some Hollywood double in a wig, and so we
have to put the window down and Edgoe comes up
and you know, as Edgoe says, you know, we saw
that's the real people. He kind of looked at me like,
I don't know how you did it, man, that's the
real people, okay, And so window goes up and Edgoe

(01:21:51):
does like this with his thing, and eighty bikes fire
up like firecrackers and off we go.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Okay, you directly to the venue. What's happening at the
venue when Lenin arrives, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:06):
It's it's pandemonium because they limos have to come in
and pull right up to the tunnel and you know
tent area that connects the dressing rooms with the stage,
pull right up to that. And of course the crowd
by now has been told throughout the day somebody specials company,
somebody bigs coming. Well, once Lenin landed Kim Fowley was

(01:22:29):
telling people John Lennon and Eric Clapton are here, and
they're going to be here soon and they're going to
play tonight. So now it's madness. And now when these
limos come in. No other bands came in limos that
came into the stadium, they might have got dropped off
outside if there were even any other bands that had
limos other than the doors. So there was pandemonium. It

(01:22:52):
was excitement level as I say in a movie. I mean,
this was like the thrill of a lifetime. I mean
it was amazing. From panic at four in the morning
where I see my life pass before my eyes in Edge,
you're putting these flowers on my grave. Now I'm riding
with John Lennon and this chariot into a sold out
packed stadium and it's all happening. It's like, you know, crazy,

(01:23:15):
It's better than any acid trip or mushrooms or anything else.
That was like the real deal. That was like just
pure adrenaline, pure incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:23:25):
Wow. Okay, The original pitch was he's going to be
there with all these heritage acts. Did Lennon even go
to look at the axe on stage? Did he hang
with anybody backstage? Or it was just like he was
here to headline. The rest didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:23:44):
No, he did come up on stage for a couple
of things. I think he actually had contact with Little
Richard and they had conversation together. There was a kerfuffle
with Little Richard and the Doors and Lennon. That's not
in the movie. But Bill Siddons and the Doors knew

(01:24:05):
that the show was about to be canceled because the agents,
you know, were calling every day, what's the ticket count?
What's the ticket count? And on Monday, you know, a
couple of them were told it looks like this is
going to be canceled. So now Lennon is coming. So
Bill Siddons asked me, if you know, can we talk
to John and you and would you get him out

(01:24:28):
of the dressing room. So I get John to come
out in the hall and the Suddents goes, listen, John,
you know, we'd like you to close the show because
they thought if Lennon plays before them, everybody will leave
because the show would have sold out if they were
coming to see us. So John like a verge of
a meltdown, is like you're the headliners. John's nervous enough anyway. Now,

(01:24:51):
the Doors wanted him to close the show, like are
you kidding me? And Siddons just laid this out. He
didn't tell me in advance what he was going to
ask John, So I was like, you know, I didn't
know what to say. But Little Richard had been very
close by and heard this, and he comes over and
he goes, I will close the show the way it

(01:25:13):
should be closed by me, the king. And he looks
at Lennin and he goes, you know that, mister Lennon.
He looks at me and he goes, you know that,
mister promoter. And he looks at Jim Morrison. He goes,
you know that, mister Doores. And he didn't know his
name right, And John and Jim were like dumbfounded. Here's
little Richard's banking them. And I said, listen, Richard, you're
going on next. And I said, you know that piano

(01:25:34):
was my personal one. I brought it for you. He
was bitching about the piano, wanted just to get him
another one, right, and I said it's mine. It's perfectly tuned.
He goes, okay, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
So he walks in, which was a lie.

Speaker 3 (01:25:46):
Right. Another lie is you know, Live of Convenience. So
promoters get like elephants. Elephants get to never forget. Promoters
get to get off with a few lies once in
a while. Nobody got hurt, nobody was shot, nobody costs
them any money. But somebody moved on to where they
needed to be. They needed their ego something a little massaging.

(01:26:08):
So I said to John, I said, just go in
their dressing room. And I said to Siddons and Jim Morrison, look,
I said, if you don't want to close the show,
I will let little Richard Clark the show. You guys
don't even have to play. I got to tell you honestly,
like I can't have any kerfuffles here. If John Lennon
does not want to close the show, John Lennon is

(01:26:29):
going to play when he wants to play. Today is
about John Lennon, and that's it. And Siddons looked at
Jim Morrison, and Morrison looks at me and goes, okay,
we'll close, but we got to be on stage for
John and Eric. They got to be going. That's what
Morrison wanted. As long as you promised me that we
can be on stage to watch John and Eric. I

(01:26:50):
was like, okay, no problem, man, that's easy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
So tell me about John and the band going on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:02):
Well, you know, John was very nervous and he did
a lot of coke that day, and it was very
good coke because I gave it to him. I got
it off a guy in the audience that I knew
had that stuff. I'd never done any made up for
it in the eighties. But that's not the point. Back then,
I was terrified holding this vial of like these little
crystals and little powder and shit. And as Eric Clapton

(01:27:26):
said a couple months after the show, I don't know
how John even played. He was so coked out because
that coke went directly to John and Yoko and they
were alone in the dressing room and they asked me
to ask Eric to come in. Now, remember later on
it became, you know, public knowledge that they were all,
you know, on heroin and kicking heroin. So that was
probably another reason why without Eric coming along, John did

(01:27:49):
not want to go. And that's why when Eric said
all go, it was like, okay, we'll all do the
Monkey danced together. But as soon as they got in
the dressing room and I said, you know, can I
get you or anything? That's what the wanted. And of
course fool that I was thought they wanted Coca Cola.
I mean, a complete fool of myself. But regardless got
them that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
And that was that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:10):
Now I did not see a lot of them. I
was not in and out of the dressing room hobnobbing
with them or bands or anything else. I mean there
was business and money, and there was coordinating and the
filming people, and there was always little problems. There's platform
for the camera or getting up on stage. Too many
people on stage, you know, got to get them off
the stage. Not not a froom for the cameras. I

(01:28:33):
mean that stage was, you know, not much bigger than
you'd have for your kids, you know, birthday party or
something if they had a band. I mean, this was
not Woodstock, This was not Strawberry Fields the next year
that I did. No, this was like a few rock
and roll bands. That's how it started. And even Steppenwolf
and Sly in the family Stone in June they played

(01:28:54):
in the same stage. I don't know. Maybe the Woodstock
stage got everything Jack, But back in the day, a
stage was a stage if there was room for the
band and the roadies and a couple of people and
that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Okay, was the first time the audience saw Lenin when
he came out with the band?

Speaker 3 (01:29:17):
Yeah, I would say absolutely. I do not ever recall
John Lennon standing on the stage even the doors were
behind the amplifiers, or Jim was on the stairs. I
don't think Jim wanted to go up and be on
the stage. He was on the stairs watching. In the
Chuck Berry scenes there you can see him. And again,

(01:29:38):
I was not spending a lot of time on stage.
That's not my gig. It's not me standing there, you know,
watching the band.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
Okay, gay, I guess what I'm asking is when Lenin
actually hits the stage, what is the audience reaction.

Speaker 3 (01:29:52):
I think it's overwhelming because Kim had asked them to
light matches and lighters, and there was a sea of
lights and there was a lot of you know, you know,
screaming and like, oh my god, you know, and there
he is. It's real, you know, he's unmistakable in his
white suit. And I think it was just, you know,
it was magic.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
So you were watching the show or were not?

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
Oh, I was watching that show. Yeah, I was watching
that show.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Okay, And what was the vibe as they played thrilling,
disappointing shock.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
Well, I think it was fabulous until they did Cold Turkey,
which was, you know, like a bringing a dead fish
to a birthday party, and Yoko got in the bag.
And now I think people started to wonder what was
going on. There wasn't any Beatles songs. Your Blues is

(01:30:48):
not a recognizable Beatles song. Okay, it's so obscure, it's unbelievable,
and it's not even a good song. So I think
people wanted to hear a Beatles song. There's one of
the Beatles, it's John Lennon, you know, plain Norwegian Wood
or something. But John was determined not to play a
Beatles song. I'm surprised he played Your Blues Give Piece

(01:31:12):
of Chance. Everybody came back to life and that was
a beautiful time. But it was a very pedantic version
compared to the recording in the hotel in Montreal. It
kind of slogged along, but nonetheless people had the peace
sign that were waving it up in the air. That
was one of the things John told Kleine on the

(01:31:34):
plane on the way back. I never felt so good
in my life. People were jumping up and down, waving
the peace sign and I want to do my own
songs with my own band. That moment I think was
the transfixing moment.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
So you say, Kline on the plane back, did Alan
Klein actually come to town?

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
Oh my god. Ellen Climb flew in on Saturday morning
on the first plane. When he heard, however, that John
Lennon was at the airport. Maybe John said, Anthony, possit,
call Alan, let him know, tell him to come out.
And because Klein Kleine, what a dog he was, so
Clin grabs me backstage right and he goes, listen, can

(01:32:20):
we talk? So I go, yeah, sure, Well it's pretty noisy.
We'll go in the men's room. So we go in
the men's room and he goes, listen, looks like he
got a lot of people out there. He said, I'd
like to get something for John. I said, like what,
and he goes, well, you know, maybe ten thousand dollars.
He said, look, I don't know what we've spent or
what we owe or whatever. But I said, you know,

(01:32:43):
I can't do anything like that right now anyway, And
he said, well, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
I have to talk to me.

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):
He might not want to play. And I said, well,
I know he'll play because he signed a contract at
the airport. But Clapton had come in, had gone to
the urino, and Kleine said to him out, no, no,
I aren't they know they don't want to pay you,
and clamp And goes, well, piss on them as he's pissing. Okay.
It was hilarious, classic moment, I said, Well, Tony Joseph

(01:33:08):
Fido from the Musicians Union, who I used to take
bass lessons from, came out to the airport with a
contract for John to sign so he could play, and
he signed it for two hundred and sixty five dollars.
I think we have a check for him somewhere. Klein
looked at me and he goes, you're good, kid, You're good, okay,
and that was it. I never heard from him again

(01:33:29):
about any money, but he did try to put a
little scare into me. Well maybe he won't play. Yeah,
I don't think so. I think I'll play, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
Lennon leaves the stage. What does Lenin then do?

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
Gets into a limo and they go up to Lady
Eaton's estate, which is, you know, like forty minutes north
of town out in King so you know, they were
in the limo together. He and Yoko have no idea
what they said. I think it was a fabulous experience
for the two of them. The Oko's face when you
see her when he finally got her off the mic,

(01:34:05):
she was blissed out. I mean, she had done her
thing and that's what she wanted to do. I love
Klaus form going. She came down the plane said can
we do my song now? And John gets up the steers,
your back up for a cup of tea. He didn't
want anybody to know what was coming, you know, he

(01:34:25):
really didn't. He was smart enough to know, like, we'll
just roll with it, just you know, follow me. Put
your aunt guitars up against the amplifiers. It was definitely
cinema verite and it was flying. They were just flying
by the seat of their pants. Like Klaus said, we
didn't know what was coming next.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
So they go to the estate. When do they go
back to England?

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
They go back Monday. The Sunday was spent there on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
Night And did you go visit them at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:34:54):
Yeah, yeah, there was a big dinner party. It was
like a whole huge thing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):
Okay, now the date is played you make international news,
you make history. What is going through your brain?

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):
Well, first of all, I don't think we made international
news on any level that they had any impact.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
I think you're wrong. There. Everybody knew that John Lennon
played in Toronto.

Speaker 3 (01:35:19):
Okay, Okay, well I'm glad to hear that in Toronto.
It was great. It was like, you know, I don't
think we could believe what happened. To be honest with you,
it was stunning. It was successful, It was financially successful.
I do know one thing. We weren't sitting around going
what's our next show? I mean, the film had been shot.

(01:35:43):
I think there was dealings with Penny Baker. But what
happened is Alan Klein again comes in and convinces Penny
Baker to give him the tapes, the recording tapes that
Penny Baker had paid for Wali Hyder, and he agreed
to sign a film release, and he reneged on that

(01:36:04):
and instead took the tapes and put the album out.
And it wasn't for quite some time that he actually
got to put out this Sweet Toronto movie. And that
was just a you know, a few glimpses of these bands.
No narration, no nothing, and you know, then John and
Yoka's performance. You know, that was like in the eighties.

(01:36:25):
This was after John was gone, and then Yoko of
course had to be in the opening of it talking
about it from an art gallery. It was not a
movie that Pennybaker wanted to make. It was a desperate
attempt to get something out of that footage. That's why
when Ron Chapmin came along, and Ron Chapman has credibility,
He's made some award winning movies, they went, oh my god,

(01:36:48):
here here comes the you know, resurrection of this footage.
And this guy's got a great idea. Brower's still alive.
You know. They had to do their interviews with me,
and by the way, people said to me, man, you'll
get rough in that movie, you know, And I go, well,
that was years ago, and you know we were like drinking, smoking,

(01:37:11):
having a good time, and all of a sudden, I
get a call, you have to be on camera tomorrow.
I wasn't ready. There was no hair and makeup, there
was no nothing. I needed three days to detox before
I should have been on film. But Ron couldn't raise
any money unless he got me on film because they said,
no one else is alive. If you don't get Brawer
on camera, then what are you going to do? What

(01:37:33):
if he dies while you think you're going to get
on my camera in three four years? So that became
him having to get me on camera for several hours
sweating under lights in a velvet jacket. I don't know
why it wore. And that's how that happened. That was
what really triggered the beginning of getting the thing funded.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
According to Ron Okay, what happens in your promotion career
after that?

Speaker 3 (01:38:04):
Well, I went to his stan Bull to buy sheepskin
coats in November and the Eatons were going to sell
them in every store of the country, And of course
I got there with another guy and found that all
the sheepskin coats had been paid for the year before.
If you wanted sheepskin coats, buy them now, we'll deliver

(01:38:25):
them next year. So we bought a few at the market.
My friend had bought some hash, a few kilos of it,
and I strapped it on to take it back to
Toronto to figure it'll cover the expenses of the of
the debacle of being istan Bull for a month not
being able to get coats well, I almost got busted
at Heathrow coming in. I didn't my health card. They

(01:38:47):
sent me over to go to a doctor. Take your
shirt off, they'll look at your vaccination marks. And of
course if I took my shirt off, either the person
looking at it would have to be a hash smoker,
that I could give some of it too, and they
would green lightning, or I'd be in jail. But my
friend had the health cards. He waved them in. They
called them in, they looked at them, and they let
me go. So I was too traumatized to get on

(01:39:09):
the plane to go to Toronto. I got a hotel room,
sent my friend on, grabbed the sheepskin coat off him
because it was November. Woke up in the morning and
realized I'm in London and the last thing John lyn
And said to me was you know my number? So
I called Apple and got him on the phone. He
came on the phone right away. I said, look, I'm
in London. I got a present for you. He goes,

(01:39:29):
we have a surprise for you. Come right over. So
I rolled some of this hash up. I put the
rest of it under the mattress in the hotel room,
smoked a couple of cigarettes in there that covered the stink,
because it was like waking up in a barn and
come over to Apple with this big chunk of hash
and you know, I just said, I come back from

(01:39:51):
Miss Dan Bull. I jomped that I was a drug
smuggler or whatever, it didn't matter back in those days.
And he said, look, yo, go a Turkish golf ball
and he rolls across the desk. So we smoked some
of it, and of course he goes over to the
record player and takes a record and puts it on
and it's the live piece in Toronto Record and he

(01:40:12):
says Capitol didn't want to put it out, but Alan
made them. And he said, I'm really excited about it.
You're the first person to hear it. Well, when I
heard the beginning Toronto Presents, Broward Walker Present, our names
were on this record, man, I was like floored. I
thought I was going to faint or something, you know,
and he kind of looked at me. I think he

(01:40:33):
picked up on that, you know, like yeah, he's tripping. Yeah,
he's definitely tripping here in that. So we talked about
doing a peace festival and that's when he, you know,
having been at Woodstock. That's the thing I didn't tell
you during that story is on that stage after Jimmy played,
I had this feeling that I said to you, we

(01:40:54):
need to do one of these in Canada. We need
to do a big festival. This is a real festival,
not a football stadium. This is real. And I ended
up doing the Strawberry Fields Festival one year exactly to
the weekend of Woodstock, after trying to do a peace
festival with John. Toronto Peace Festival probably considered the biggest

(01:41:15):
non event in show business history. Rolling Stone thought five
million people wanted to come. But John and I were
very naive and we didn't realize the power of the
Nixon White House. And I didn't realize the power of
the Eatons because when I showed up back in Toronto,
Kenny and Thoris served me with papers instead, we're throwing
you out of the company, and they voted me out

(01:41:36):
and I didn't even tell them I'd met with John
Lennon and he went to a peace festival. I said, okay,
and I like, literally, you know, you see in the movies,
you clean your desk out and you leave. And I
went home and I got kicked out. But I have
John Lennon, you know my wife, because John Lennon is better.
I like him better than Kenny A. Richie York and
I and Chef's partner Richie Miller went back a few

(01:41:58):
weeks later and made a normal presentation to John and
got letters from him authorizing us to request a meeting
with the Prime Minister and to launch a festival. And
then we brought him back a week and a half
later for a press conference at the Science Center when
we also launched the Wars Over campaign around the world,
and Toronto was the biggest of the campaigns because having

(01:42:20):
come back with a letter from John Lennon, I was
able to raise fast hundred thousand dollars and we probably
spent half of it. People thought there was a Nike campaign.
We had more billboards. Even Sean Lennon in his ode
to the Little Movie about War Is Over, makes note
of the fact that Toronto was the biggest War Is
Over in the world. Other cities had a billboard. We

(01:42:43):
had at least fifteen or twenty, and I had at
least five hundred kids from Roussdale College out on the
street with handbills. So we really kicked it off and
John was very excited and he gave a great press
conference and then everything sort of began to go downhill.
Tragic experience watching politics and money and power crush culture.

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
A little bit more detail there well.

Speaker 3 (01:43:13):
From the press conference. Of course, everyone in the world
wanted to be part of the festival, and we wanted
it to be at Mostport Ground Prix Racetrack, and that's
where it was announced by Jean there it would be,
and it was going to be a wonderful thing until
Harvey Heudis, the park owner, called me and said there
was an emergency meeting called by the town council. I

(01:43:35):
wasn't allowed to go, but the opp that's the Ontario
Provincial Police, made a presentation to them, I understand. They
showed pictures of people frolicking nude and fornicating in the
woods at Woodstock and mounds of garbage and told them
this is what's coming to your community, and your permit
was revoked. All right. That repeated itself four or five

(01:43:58):
times over the next couple of months in the province
of Ontario until we found out through somebody that our
festival was never going to happen Ontario. John David Eaton
was claiming at the Toronto Club with a whiskey glass
up in the air, that festival will never happen in

(01:44:18):
my province. That's who the Eatons were, and they were
my former partners, and now it became a war that
they declared when they found out that I had come
back with Lennon and didn't tell them, well, yeah, what
I'm going to tell you, I just get kicked out
of my company. So that became very distressing to John
because he's one that said I'm going to ask everybody

(01:44:40):
that's anybody to play. But every week we are losing
another site every week in rolling Stone park Hill site
you know, canceled or this site canceled. And so John also,
you know, was upset by Clin because Clin had called
me to come to New York and he and Steve

(01:45:00):
Lieber were in his office and Steve I knew I
bought bands from him. He later on went to do Beatlemania,
but he was a respectable agent head of ICM, I think.
And he's sitting there with Klein, who's telling me there's
a world Beatles tour and your festival is screwing it
up because promoters they're scared you're going to take all
the people, and I need you to cancel your festival

(01:45:24):
and I'll give you all the Canadian dates, five cities.
So I go, wow, I look at Steve, I said,
you know, and Steve, yep, I'm booking it. Steve was
full of shit, but for Alan Kline, he'd do anything,
I guess, as most people would. So I go home
and call John and tell him this, and he goes,
oh my god, he's freaked out. He's full of bullshit.

(01:45:44):
That's all bollocks. We're not doing any Beatles World tour.
And at out of Day's Yelliott Yoko Klins screwing everything
up in the festival. So he said, you guys need
to get me the dirt on Cline. Well, Richie Yorke
own journalists and used to asking tough questions and he

(01:46:04):
prepared Adarcier and what people thought of Klein and there
wasn't much good in it, if any. So then Lennon
calls me and he wants me to get a guy
named Don Hamrick to come over to Albert, Denmark. This
is like in February, close to March, and he's going
to get them off smoking cigarettes. And because they've changed

(01:46:28):
smoked Galway cigarettes. And so we get him a ticket
to go over there, because remember the Beatles have no money.
I was paying for everything, you know, Chatau Laurio, hotel, airflights, trains,
private railway car to meet Trudeau. I forgot to tell
you that yet. You know, in Toronto we did get
a meeting with the Prime Minister Greenlit. We rented a
private railway car with an observation car and two sleeping

(01:46:50):
cars went to Montreal so the press wouldn't know we
were going to Ottawa. Ended up in Ottawa and it
was a different visit than bringing the Beatles movie there
because I was bringing and a beadle and Trudeau met
with him only he and Yoko. None of us got
to go in there, and it was a very highlight.
It was for John. It was the first time a
world leader ever received a rock star. It was unbelievable, unprecedented.

(01:47:13):
So he wanted us to come to Denmark and give
us a report on the festival. I need you know,
a report, Amy, you know what's going on, and you
better have a site. You better show up here of
a site. Well, we didn't have a site, but we
came Anyway, Richie brought the dossier on Kleine, so we

(01:47:34):
had a good time in London. We met some stewardess
is on the way over there and they were off
for the weekend, so we changed our flights, booked the
penthouse at the Playboy Club and had a few days
in London just to cool out. And we get to
Alberg and Anthony Fossett tells us, you know what, things
are really bad here. John has not invited me out there,

(01:47:55):
and he just keeps wanting me to get stuff from
the office and telex and sent out a cab and
that guy Hamrick you sent over here is still here,
and John wants you to go meet him. Now. What
I'm going to tell you right now is written and
documented in Albert Goldman's book The Lives of John Lennon.
So this is not new information, but it might be

(01:48:16):
newer to your audience. So we go to our hotel room,
Ritchie York and I and there's a note on the
door says blue piece to you and love. It's kind
of weird. We just checked in. We come up in
the elevator. How can there be a note on the door.
The hotel was kind of full. There was a convention
of some sort there. So Anthony says, you know, you

(01:48:39):
need to go meet the guy Hammrick. Well, John wants
you to go meet Hammerck now. So we go up
to Hamrick's room and knocking the door, and the door
opens and it was like spider webs came out. It
was really weird, like this whole energy came out. And
the door opens and here's this guy six foot two,
long stringy hair in his underwear and he's motioning us

(01:49:00):
to come in. Boys, come in. So he turns and
walks in. He's got a hole in his back size
of a mango, and there's stitches and everything, and you
can see something moving like a lung or. I don't
know why.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):
It was terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:49:11):
And he goes, oh, don't worry about that, boys, I
had a little operation. I'll heel myself better than them.
So we come in this room. It's dark, the blinds
are pulled, there's a light on in the corner, and
he starts to tell us that John has been chosen
as an emissary between an alien race and Earth, and
that he's been on a space ship in Norway, and

(01:49:32):
that's what's happening right now. So he had a little
plastic city of toy looked like a toy from Toys
r US but it was floating above the dresser and
he goes and runs his hand of her and he says,
we have the secret of anti gravity and we're building
a city in the clouds above Brazil. Well, my first

(01:49:52):
thought was I want my mom. I was scared to
get I mean, this was like too much, Matt, you know,
this was too much. I mean I was terrified. And
so he said, you know, come and do it. Well,
I you know, I wanted I want to put my
arm into there. There's nothing there and that could have
been magnets underneath the drawer whatever. It was some kind
of weird thing there. But so Richie Yorke goes, what's

(01:50:14):
John's part in this? And he goes, John knows his part.
And I said, well, look here's the deal. We'll do
the festival thing, you do all that stuff. And I said,
but I got to go, and we backed out Richie
and I backed out of the room. I didn't want
to turn my back on this guy. So we come
running down to Faucet's room and go, oh my god,
you're not going to believe what happened. This guy is
crazy and he's talking about you know, space people and everything,

(01:50:37):
and Anthony goes, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 (01:50:39):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:50:40):
So anyway, we go decide to go have dinner up
at the roof Top restaurant. It's nighttime now and we're
having dinner, beautiful dinner, you know, a lovely restaurant, probably
the best one in Aulberg. And the matre d comes
over to the table and he says, mister Brower, which
you signed the chip for the barber, and you know,

(01:51:02):
like like the what he goes, mister Lennon ordered the
barber this morning to go out to where they're staying
and cut everyone's hair. And he said to charge it
to your room. So I said, well, of course, where's
the barber And he points to this dominion of young
woman over at the matre d e stand. I said, well,
ask her to come over. I said, yeah, of course,

(01:51:23):
I'll have no problem to sign him. So we asked
her to sit down. Her name's Renata and she's very
shy and you mirror maybe in her late twenties, early thirties.
And Richie Yorke goes tell us what happened, you know
what's going on? And she goes, well, no, I go
out there. I won't do her accent the whole way,
but she's got a little accent. I go out and

(01:51:43):
it's very far out. It's past the edge of the
city where the roads are now not paved, and there's
a farmhouse and I come in. The taxi waits for me,
and I am told to cut everyone's hair, like Mia Farrow,
and mister Cox has a magazine cover with a picture
of me at Pharaoh. Now she had just had her
haircut as thin as you know, like makeer marines look long.

(01:52:09):
And so they proceeded to have all their haircut. Kyoko,
the little child, they cut her hair, then they cut
Melinda Cox, Tony's wife. Then they cut Tony Cox, then
they cut Yoko. And when they cut John, she said,
everybody started to cry. And Yoka took his hair and
put it in a bag. Okay, So this is like
between the guy in the room with his space story,

(01:52:33):
and now I'm starting to feel like, you know what,
there's something afoot here. So I said, look, guys, do
you see what's going on? You know, the space guy
now her and the haircuts. They're trying to freak us
out before the meeting because a meeting, you know, was
supposedly coming, so literally on cue, I couldn't believe it.

(01:52:54):
The matreat comes over and says, we just got a
message from mister Lennon and it says, please be here
tomorrow at eleven in the morning. Bring Anthony. So that's
our meeting. I said, see this our meetings tomorrow with them.
They're trying to freak us out. I said, look, we'll
freak them out. Let's get all her haircut. She's right here.
Can you cut three haircuts if I pay you doubles? Yeah.

(01:53:16):
So we go out down to one of the rooms
and I get all my haircut out, and it was
longer than this, and I got the mere Faraoh aircut.
There's a picture of me in Rolling Stone looking with
that aircut for posterity. And of course Richie York and
Anthony Faucet say no, no, no, we're not doing it.
They got like an inch cut off. So now we
have to go out the next morning and I've got
all my haircut off. We come in. Tony Cox gives

(01:53:39):
me a weird look when he sees all my hair off,
and there's Johnny, Yoko and Kyoko and Melinda Cox and
Tony and she's handing out this stuff they called mar June,
which when I had a bite of it, it was
like there was something in it. I did like that
to Richie because Richie smoke a joint fall over. I

(01:53:59):
don't go near this stuff. I took a bite of it.
John was eating it, and everybody was eating it, and
Belinda was eating the crackers like full of it. And
John is very upset. And but first of all, he
looked at me and goes, had your haircut? You had
your haircut? And I realized then that that was not

(01:54:20):
a setup the night before sending me the bill wanting
us to know they had their haircuts John, that was
just John charging me normal stop. He was shocked and
I said, yeah, I heard it is the latest thing,
and he goes, we did too, And I was thinking,
oh man, this is really easy getting crazy. Okay, good. Yeah,
So he got very upset. You know, the sixties are over,

(01:54:42):
Prime ministers are over. You got to have a site,
this festival, have a site. How can you expect me
to call bands when every time I talk to anybody
they tell me, you just lost the last sight and
I'm way out on this thing, and you know I've
stood up for it. Knocking the door, Tony Cox goes
downs it. Oh, by the way, Richie had given John

(01:55:05):
the dossier on Klein, which he kind of looked at
in walks Allen Klein, and I was like, oh my god,
this is like unbelievable. So John introduces him all around,
and then John takes the dossier and hands it to
him and is here, Allan, here's what people think of you.
John and Richie put it together for us. I thought

(01:55:25):
Client's probably got guys outside with shovels waiting to dig
us into the frozen ground. Because we had called Ronnie Hawkins,
our mentor, from the hotel room after we came back
from seeing the spaceship guy, and told him, and Ronnie said, boys,
I don't think you should go back to that room.
Doesn't sound good. He said. I talked to Morris, meaning

(01:55:47):
Morris leaving. He said. Morris said, Klein is on the
war path for you boys. You were getting too close
to his fatted calf. I'd be very careful out there.
So now here's Kla Right there after we hear this
from Ronnie Hawkins. So Klein looks at the Dosier and
you kind of like he would say that, yeah, you know,

(01:56:10):
I took a band from this guy. And he made
kind of light of it. And then he looked at
me right in the eyes and he said, I wouldn't
have thought you'd have time for all this, all the
problems you're having with your little festival. And that was
like cold. It was like he had us nailed. I mean,
you know what I mean, yeah, exactly, how do you
have time for any of this? Well, Baba John asked

(01:56:30):
us to whatever. I don't know. All I want to
do is get out of there. So we promised to
have a sight within two weeks, three weeks, and we
would get back to them. And we got out of there,
left Anthony there, got the cab that was waiting for us,
and got backpacked and split went back to Toronto and
got to work trying to get another festival site. So

(01:56:54):
now John calls in tells us that they've met us
some people that are friends with Tony Cox and they
really get the vibe of the festival and he wants
to send them to Toronto and work out of our office.
So I'm like, fine, no problem. So these two guys
show up. One of them, Leonard Hollihan, long red hair,

(01:57:15):
wears a purple suit, tells me he's from the Plates
and he's got picture of an aircar. The other one
is David Britton. Tells me his name's Britain. No it's not.
His name's David Snyderman. He's the guy that I went
to the microphone for John for the cocaine at the
revival and said, doctor Snyderman. Plays to the backstage area,
doctor Snyderman, because I knew he was there, because everybody

(01:57:39):
we knew in the world and everyone they knew was there.
We probably gave out thousands of free tickets. And he
had this stuff called cocaine. Jazz musicians had it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:49):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:57:50):
I was married with a kid. We were hash smokers.
So he comes to the back stage snow fence and
he's like, going, what is it?

Speaker 1 (01:57:57):
Man?

Speaker 3 (01:57:57):
Is it a Boston I go listen, John Lennon want
can you have some? Go? Yeah? I did, I did,
but I put it in the grass. I thought it
was a bust. Could you please go get it? So
he comes back in a couple of minutes literally, and
he's holding this thing. I got Denis my roady next
to me, and he's got one of the other guys,
and I said, look, give it to me. I'll give

(01:58:17):
you money, dinner next week, whenever you want. He goes, no,
I have to give it to John lenn and myself.
I look at Dennis. Get it, grab his arm and
rip his hand open, get the vial. Give it to me.
I go, you can't come in here. I'm sorry. I'll
take care of this later. I was terrified coming walk
and there's police everywhere all over the place, policeman in uniform.

(01:58:38):
I'm walking in with this vial which I kind of
looked at and it was all shiny rocks and everything.
I knew that was good. Whatever it was, that was
the stuff. And that's why when I gave it to John,
he looked at me like I was Jesus, because he
knew that is bad, bad shit, that's the stuff. That's
why he said, ask Eric to come in. So now

(01:58:59):
here's the same guy back from meeting with Lennon telling
me his names, David Britten. Now well, let's jump ahead
a little bit to Keith Richards book and Witness X
that busted the Stones was David Schneiderman from Toronto, who
we find out had been busted by customs with ten
thousand tabs of acid in like nineteen sixty three and

(01:59:21):
had been ratting people out ever since. So that's that guy,
all right. So now we get out of there and
come back to Toronto, and it's like, okay, Now these
two guys arrive and we have to give them an office,
and they want to make an announcement about the air cars,
and I go, no, it's not time for that right now.
Festival's not ready for that kind of publicity. Just slow down.

(01:59:45):
Because also what was happening was Rolling Stone had turned
against us. Obviously Alan Klein and by the way, Yan
Winner was not a mogul publisher. He was putting a
magazine together with Bailing Wire in Scotch tape every two weeks.
So ads were critical, and I was led to believe

(02:00:06):
the client had basically told them, look, you're not getting
any more Beetles or Stones, ads or anything from their
record companies if you don't start winding down this festival.
So they had gotten a guy named John Carr who
had been interviewing us, and in one of them, I
had made a stupid mistake. And when I've been in
La Jogive, Jean had been driving me, my driver, and

(02:00:28):
he had told me that in India they had these
massive festivals with millions of people, and they had pits
where you would defecate and then they would you know,
cover the pits up because they never get enough portable toilets.
So I told John Carr that. So the next week
in Rolling Stone has said John Brower wants your shit
in headlines.

Speaker 2 (02:00:46):
No less.

Speaker 3 (02:00:46):
Okay. This was like the beginning of the Rolling Stone,
you know, winding down their support of the festival. At
that point, we were in a disastrous chaos situation. There
was no way to get a site. Everywhere you went,
the opp came with the same movies. Finally, jan Winner

(02:01:07):
asks us to come to California to talk to the
dead and the airplane, and Lennon insisted on these two
guys coming with me, Snyderman and Britain and this Leonard guy.
So like John Lennon, Man, what am I gonna tell them?

Speaker 1 (02:01:23):
No?

Speaker 3 (02:01:23):
You know, okay, okay, we'll take them. So in the
meeting it's like been documented in Rolling Stone as well.
The airplanes, there are some of them Grace is there,
Jack Cassidy's there, the Couple of the Dead or their
Ralph Gleason's there. There's a lot of very heavy, respectable
people from the music community. And before I even speak,

(02:01:45):
this guy, David jumps out and starts giving giving them
this whole story of like the space guy gave in
the hotel room, and Grace Slick just looked at him
and goes, you know what, if that's what John lenn
is into, then fuck John Lennon and fuck the festival.
We don't want to be part of it, and walked out,
and everybody walked out with her, and jan Winner looked
at me hopelessly and goes, you guys are ruining me.
And my buddy Jerry that was with me said you

(02:02:07):
just lost control of your deal and that was it.
So I told these two guys out on the street,
I'm not flying you back to Toronto. Get John Lennon
to fly you back. So that's when Joan Wnder called
John and said, look, man, this is out of control.
Like these guys show up here. John must have realized,
oh my god, Allan was right, it's all going to
blow back on me. And so they pulled out and

(02:02:27):
that was the end of it. And two weeks later
I meet a guy that's just inherited ten million dollars
and he gives me two to put on the Strawberry
Fields Festival. And that began another battle. But we went
to another province. We got the Prime Minister's lawyer who
told us, get a motorcycle sanctioned, have a motorcycle race
at Mostport with added entertainment, and you'll go to court

(02:02:50):
and my lawyers will win. And that's what happened. We
put on one hundred and fifty thousand people at Mostport
Brown Free Racetrack three days and it was beautiful. People
could drive under the track and then park and camp
with the car, so it's no woodstock parking and like,
I don't know if dude, where's my car? No, I
mean there was, you know, forty thousand cars parked on

(02:03:12):
the site, bonfires at night, campfires. It was an incredible show.
Sly in the family Stone. Of course Alice Cooper came
in headlined as well. They were big by then a
year later Mountain. Ten years after Bonnie Delaney and Friends,
Melanie I can't remember a lot. Ten years after a

(02:03:32):
lot of incredible bands. It was an amazing three day
show and that became me resolving the whole thing with
the Peace Festival. It was like we did Canada's Woodstock,
that's what they call it. That's what I wanted to
do in the beginning. And we called the Strawberry Fields
because we moved to Shetty Act, New Brunswick and we
got a site right on the ocean. There were sheddy acts,

(02:03:55):
strawberry Capital of Canada, and so I said, well we
call Strawberry Feels Festival because we were looking at all
these strawberries in this field, and Jerry, my buddy, goes,
that's a good idea. So when we moved it back
to Toronto with Trudeau's lawyers in this new plan, because
we were told by her contact in the RCMP that

(02:04:17):
Trudeau was not happy with John Lennon and he wasn't
happy with John David Eaton and this was payback and
so we basically got tipped in by the Prime Minister
and his lawyers to pull this off and we did.
It was amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:04:32):
So how much longer did you promote concerts? Well?

Speaker 3 (02:04:36):
I moved to Laguna Beach and Larry Weinstein and I
formed Laguna Concerts under the Sky. We took over the
Laguna Bowl, which had never had a concert. He brought
beautiful acts like Emmy, Lua Harris and different country bands,
very gentle stuff. And then we did the Tubes with
Bill Grahame. He gave us all their dates down in

(02:04:57):
South we did some rush dates. I did not do
anything significant along the lines of a festival until I
had moved back to Toronto and did the heat Wave
Festival again at Mostport, which was now sanctioned because now
they saw that there was no nudity, there was no
mouths at Garbage. It was like okay. And this was

(02:05:19):
ten years later. Music had become the big business by now,
and I was very proud of doing the first, last
and only punk festival. But as David Byrne said, we
would never play a festival ever. And then we heard
about this crazy guy in Toronto that was willing to
get us seventy five thousand dollars for one show, and

(02:05:39):
we didn't make that much all last year, so we said, okay,
let's take the money, and Jake took money for Elvis.
We got to B fifty two's Rumor Rock Pile Pretenders.
It was an incredible show. The clash canceled, my investors
went around behind my back tried to sign them to
a movie deal so they could take over the deal.

(02:06:01):
Investors are always trying to take over deals. I can't
understand why they can't just leave well enough. But they
get producer itis where they want to be the producers.
They're not happy to just be investors or lawyers whatever.
They're all necessary investors and lawyers, but you know, sometimes
they get these visions they see their name up in lights,
like a brightly lit marquee. Any event, we managed to

(02:06:25):
fight past that assault and put on an incredible, beautiful show.
Was hotest day of the summer. And Dan Aykroyd came
out there and did an interview with me as Elwood
Blues and Danny really on a Danny. He's incredible. I've
known him so many years, but he never fails to
surprise me. He did the imitation on the radio interview

(02:06:47):
as Elwood and he goes to John, I'd like to
ask you a favor. I go what, And he goes,
I'd like to invite everybody listening to be on my
guest list. I go, sure, no problem. So like this
isn't late in the afternoon. Less than an hour later,
Harvey Pewdis, the park owner, calls me. He goes, John,
where are all these people coming from? What's going on?
I said, Oh, they're on Dan Ackroy's guest list. He said,

(02:07:09):
we don't have any tickets left. He said, it's all
been done. The count's over. I said, they're on his
guest list. They're coming in for free. He goes, oh, damn.
I said, well, sell them hot dogs. You got the concession,
sell them some food whatever. They're coming in free, and
they well, the audience up significantly. Justice Talking Heads was

(02:07:30):
coming on with their nine piece band, and David Byrne
was so nervous his voice was croaking. That's one of
the moments, Bob, that that cheers me up. Is the
magic of some of these moments, you know that I
recall and I don't recall them often, but once in
a while a guy like you will pull them out

(02:07:52):
of me and I have to just have that moment
to just remember that, Like being in the limo with
John coming in. I was too busy then, but on
stage at heat Wave, you know, I was like, really,
I just couldn't believe that it was happening anyway, Let's
get back to your question.

Speaker 2 (02:08:08):
Sorry, So when was the last show you did?

Speaker 3 (02:08:13):
A heat wave? Was the last show I did? That
was it? That was my swan song. I went out
on a high note. That was the end.

Speaker 2 (02:08:20):
So you're happy with the movie, you know, I.

Speaker 3 (02:08:23):
Mean, I'm overjoyed with the movie. I'm a little there's
a couple of things in the movie that kind of
like are over the top. Like when it comes on
on the screen, you know John Brower, I say, the producer, Yeah,
John Brower, the producer. Was that him in the phone?
John Brower? When my name comes up four times on
the screen around some card, Like, I was like, that's

(02:08:44):
over the top, man, I mean that's like, really, that's
not who I am. I'm not like all about t
shirts with John Brower on them. That was a little
you know, overwhelming for me. Like I was kind of
embarrassed by that. It was flattering, and I guess, you know,
the director wanted to do that, and yes they were
saying those things. That was on the tape. But you know,

(02:09:07):
I will tell you that I was very glad in
the beginning. I had an agreement with these guys that
I was an executive producer and Ron Chapman came to
me before anything went down and said, look, I need
to ask you a favor. I want you to give
up that executive producer title. He said, I'm going to
make this movie. It's going to be your movie and

(02:09:28):
everyone else is in it, but if you're an executive producer,
it's going to look like a vanity movie. And I went, Okay,
I get it. I see what you're saying. And when
I saw the movie, I was very glad my name
was not on the screen as an executive producer. That
had just said the producers wished to thank John Brower
for sharing his story. That was enough, because that's was
what it was. And I am, you know, a little

(02:09:52):
overwhelmed by the fact that the movie is being received
so well, and by you especially. I cannot tell you
how many times I've read that I don't want to
embarrasue it. Probably ten times I've read your review, making
sure that I didn't hallucinate this, that bob Lefsits really

(02:10:13):
wrote that. Yeah, so there's been other reviews, et ceter
but no, there's been nothing like yours. And in the industry,
there's no one like you, and so that review and
your love of that movie, that's beyond anything I think
anybody expected. So thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:10:31):
Well for those people who have not seen the movie,
the movie is really that good and I lived through.
And remember my friend bought the you know, the live
in Toronto ahilbum with a cloud in the sky, as
I say international news. I certainly was following the whole thing.
It was amazing that it happened in Toronto, and we

(02:10:52):
didn't know all the backstory until the movie, but the
fact you got John Lennon was unbelievable. So John, John,
I want to thank you so much for sharing your
story with my audience.

Speaker 3 (02:11:05):
Well, Bob, I want to thank you. It's an honor
to be on your show to have finally gotten to
meet you, even though it's electronically. I'll look forward to
the first time that I can shake your hand and
give you a hug, and I hope it's this year.

Speaker 2 (02:11:19):
Sounds good job until next time. This is Bob Left
said