Revival69: New Doc Gives Fabled, Forgotten Toronto Concert Its Due

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B+

Revival69: The Concert that Rocked the World is a documentary with a back story almost as impressive as what ends up on screen. Even more incredible, it’s a story that was very nearly lost to the passing of time until a Toronto director stepped in.

In autumn 1969, following what had been a smash concert that spring, 22-year-old Toronto promoter John Brower hoped to stage another live music shindig. Brower’s vision was to unite the living pioneers of rock and roll, booking Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and Gene Vincent to perform.

Added to that, Brower booked two fledgling acts: a shock-rock combo from Detroit called the Alice Cooper Band, and a jazz-rock outfit from Illinois called Chicago. Despite the strong lineup in an era virtually defined by irreverent rock — Woodstock had just happened that summer — ticket sales were sluggish. Really sluggish.

Promoter Brower needed a fix, and fast. He booked The Doors, controversial at the time owing to an infamous incident at a Miami concert earlier that year, and he leaned on bikers to underwrite the show. The stakes were impossibly high, but Toronto concertgoers still hadn’t got the proverbial memo, perhaps daunted by the then-steep six-dollar ticket price.

On a lark, Brower asked John Lennon to join the event. Unbeknownst to the promoter, Lennon was at a crossroads, wanting to escape the Beatles and explore other musical avenues but unsure of the right direction.

The Toronto event seemed like a solid distraction, and Lennon’s rock and roll heroes would all be there. With Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band featuring Eric Clapton (!) in tow, Lennon headed to Toronto. The subsequent show, dubbed the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival and held September 13, 1969, at Varsity Stadium, was a game-changer on multiple fronts.

Co-emcee, famed band manager and producer Kim Fowley got the crowd waving lit lighters, launching an evergreen trend that persists today. Newbie Alice Cooper had fun with a live chicken, cementing a legend that would follow the band for years. And Lennon, technically still a Beatle at the time, would perform what was his debut post-Beatles gig; he would announce his departure to his bandmates one week later.

Even more fortuitously, late legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker was in the house, camera in hand, capturing it all. With “full access to all the footage taken by Pennebaker at the concert” amounting to “60 hours of mostly never-before-seen 16mm footage,” that had been stored in “cardboard boxes in an Iron Mountain,” Toronto director Ron Chapman created Revival69: The Concert that Rocked the World. It opens Friday (scroll down for details).

In addition to Pennebaker’s archival footage, Chapman’s film also includes animated segments by Mathew den Boer and present-day interviews with Brower, Alice Cooper, the Plastic Ono Band’s Klaus Voormann, The Doors’ Robby Krieger and Rush bassist and concert attendee Geddy Lee, plus many others, filmed in Toronto, Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, London, and Munich.

One of the most illuminating interviews is with Anthony Fawcett, an assistant to Lennon and Ono at the time, who helps puts the show’s momentous impact on the onetime Beatle into perspective.

As Chapman tells Original-Cin via email, “Interviewing and spending time with Anthony in London was amazing. He had not done an interview since the early 80s, and there are no interviews with him available online. Yet he lived and worked with John and Yoko through that period, from'68 to '71, and he shared so many amazing stories and experiences with me. He has led a fascinating life of art, music, and popular culture.”

Fawcett’s vivid recollections, along with the above-mentioned others — notably promoter Brower, now 76, based in California, and razor-sharp — propel Revival69, adding context and nuance to the concert footage Chapman painstakingly restored.

Though The Doors’ closing performance was not filmed (Krieger reckons Morrison nixed the idea), Lennon and Ono’s penultimate set was unhinged, bizarre, and quite likely the first time a Toronto audience had witnessed performance art, with Ono — a card-carrying member of the ground-breaking Fluxus art movement — cawing like a bird as Lennon fed his guitar back into the monitor, creating a cacophony that Pennebaker, heard in voiceover, describes as being “like a 707 about to take off.”

That riveting segment alone makes the documentary worth a look though, as Cooper notes, the veteran performers, from Bo Diddley to Little Richard, all brought their A-games. A young, hungry, wild-eyed Cooper was no slouch, either.

While the doc is organized as one might expect, with concert footage interspersed with straightforward talking-head interviews, the net result is nevertheless fascinating, and feels like buried treasure.

The Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival was once cited by Rolling Stone magazine as the second most historic concert of all time, behind just Woodstock, though proof of that remains elusive online. (Both director Chapman and former rock critic and concert attendee Ritchie Yorke, speaking with Toronto author and historian Nicholas Jennings, say the designation is true. Ditto Toronto Star film writer and former rock writer Peter Howell, who has a copy of the issue somewhere in his files).

For local rock fans, the film feels like an essential if esoteric piece of history, one all but ignored by the mainstream press at the time because, as Chapman notes, “It was shortly after Woodstock, and I think there was a certain amount of fatigue in the music press at the time. It was never perceived to be an ‘important’ concert in the leadup to the show, and so there was really no coverage or international attention.

“Plus, Lennon was only added on the bill at the last minute, a few days before the show, and there was no real belief by the Toronto media — or any media — that he was really coming until he was seen boarding a plane for Toronto the day of the show.”

Chapman continues: “The hardest thing to get right in this doc was what would we ultimately include in the narrative. There were so many other details and stories that we found, it was very difficult deciding which ones we had to cut, which ones we just did not have the time for. It could easily have been a two-hour film.”

Retro-rock fans, your must-see concert movie awaits.

Revival69: The Concert that Rocked the World. Directed by Ron Chapman. With John Brower, Alice Cooper, Klaus Voormann, Anthony Fawcett, Robby Krieger, Geddy Lee, and Robert Christgau. Opens in select cinemas across Canada beginning Dec. 16, before moving to video on demand and Crave TV. See below for Canadian theatrical release dates.

Hamilton — Playhouse Cinema, Dec. 16 & 17

Victoria — The Vic Theatre, Dec. 16-22

Toronto — Hot Docs Cinema, Dec. 17 (Q+A with director Ron Chapman & special guests); Dec. 18-22 & 27-29 — Fox Theatre, Dec. 20-22 (Q+A on Dec. 22 with director Ron Chapman)

Ottawa — Bytowne Cinema, Dec. 18 & 22

Vancouver —VIFF Centre, Dec. 19-20 & 22 -23 & Jan. 4

Waterloo — Princess Cinema, Dec. 30-Jan. 2

Milton Film Festival — Virtual online Jan. 25-31