When The Beatles rocked Toronto: New exhibit is a sobering reminder of just how bold the city once was
Rock and roll arrived in Canada, and was received, much the way it was across white North America. “This music works on a man’s emotions like the music of the heathen in Africa,” Rev. W.G. McPherson of Toronto’s Evangel Temple warned Maclean’s magazine in 1956.
When the Beatles came along, however, The Man was more bemused than concerned. “34,000 Beatles fans pay $100,000 to hear themselves,” a Toronto Daily Star headline wryly observed of their first shows in the city: matinee and evening performances on Labour Day 1964, when no one in Maple Leaf Gardens reported hearing a note over the screaming.
To someone born 12 years later, who is still in awe of the band, it’s astonishing how quickly the mania faded. The Beatles’ 1965 shows barely made the front page of the Star. In 1966, the paper declared Beatlemania eradicated.
It’s all relative of course. Mayor John Tory, who was 12 in 1966, recalls “complete chaos” in the floor seats and barely hearing anything above the screaming. “As we left, there was a long row of chairs along the wall of MLG, each … occupied by a fan who had been brought out in a completely overwhelmed state,” he says.
A solid day’s work for a band, you would think. But less than two weeks later, they played their final concert at a half-full Candlestick Park.
By: Chris Selley
Source: The National Post
