Seven rare vintage photos from the Beatles’ Toronto concerts

19 July, 2016 - 0 Comments

In 1964, the year of the Beatles’ first Toronto concert, the band was playing the peppy ’60s pop of A Hard Day’s Night. By their last local gig, just two years later, they’d evolved to the stranger, more psychedelic sounds of Revolver. Toronto had changed, too: it had a new City Hall, a second subway line, freshly built expressways and all matter of upward and outward growth.

This year, Wayne Reeves, Toronto’s chief curator of museums and heritage services, set out to mark the 50th anniversary of that final show. He didn’t want to just tell the story of a band; he wanted to throw back to the spirit of the city when it last hosted the Fab Four. He asked three photographers—Boris Spremo, John Rowlands and Lynn Ball—to dive into their personal archives, and he combed through thousands of negatives in search of never-seen images. The resulting exhibit, When the Beatles Rocked Toronto (on now through Nov. 12 at the Market Gallery), features three rooms of pictures, posters and other memorabilia. We asked Reeves to share the stories behind some of the shots he unearthed.

“Photographer Lynn Ball worked out of Ottawa, so he captured a lot of Canada’s political life. I love how Lynn turns his back to the band to show that Beatlemania is about the interaction between the fans and the musicians, to capture that youthful exuberance and sheer joy. Coming down from the suburbs and being part of an incredible scene—that’s really what Beatlemania was all about.

By: Luke Fox

Source: Toronto Life

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