What was this critic thinking?
50 years ago, on the Beatles’ first Canadian tour, classical music critic William Littler called them ‘loud, monotonous and unmusical.’ Traces of egg remain on his face,
The screaming started at midnight.
It was Sept. 7, 1964 and more than 10,000 young people stormed Toronto International Airport to get their first glimpse of the Beatles. Lined up behind 60 metres of chain-link fence, the delirious crowd jostled for position and belted out verses from chart-crushing tracks such as “Please Please Me,” “Love Me Do” and “She Loves You.”
But mostly they screamed in a way the city had never heard.
One girl, clutching a black and white photo to her chest, stared up at the night sky. As if summoning a deity, she shouted, “Rin-go! Rin-go! Rin-go!”
Her scraggly god was indeed high above, en route from Detroit, where the screaming had just ended. Sitting in a rear section of a Lockheed L-188 Electra, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr cracked wise with a flight attendant, recalling a dubious remark a handler made after a concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on Aug. 19: Canadian girls would be different. They were polite and demure. They were immune to the hysteria infecting the world like a mutating virus.
The lads were disabused of this notion in Vancouver on Aug. 22, during their first performance on Canadian soil. The polite and demure young ladies of British Columbia shouted, clutched, grabbed, passed out and gave chase like Olympic sprinters hopped up on steroids.
Beatlemania had no borders. And now it was here.
The turboprop plane touched down in Toronto at 12:15 a.m., the boom of its engines and landing gear drowned out by relentless shrieking. The Beatles knew this stop would be like Washington, Chicago, New York or any city on their first tour of North America. They were prepared for the chaos. Toronto was not. The chartered plane taxied to a decrepit hangar in the old terminal where customs agents and a police escort were waiting. The crowd erupted, surging forward like a human tsunami.
Officers unfamiliar with this grade of bedlam pleaded for calm and braced their shoulders against the buckling fence. Some teens started dropping like bags of cement. Their limp bodies were passed to the front and hoisted over barbed wire to volunteers from St. John Ambulance, who would treat 36 fainters at the airport.
Martin Bridgman was one of the police officers assigned to escorting the Beatles from the airport to their hotel, the King Edward Sheraton on King St. As he stood inside the hangar, next to a convoy of five limousines and seven police motorcycles, the logistical nightmare was creeping into focus.
A few minutes later, as this motorcade left the airfield, Bridgman could hear the distant sound of car engines starting up in the darkness: one, two, three, dozens. The screaming also seemed to be on the move, drifting toward the motorcade like rolling thunder.
“We knew we were in trouble,” he says. “But we didn’t really have a plan.”
By the time the procession reached the QEW, it was the police who were being chased. Despite reaching speeds of 160 kilometres per hour, the civilian pursuit continued. At one point, Bridgman glanced over his shoulder to see a bumper inches away from his Harley 74.
The motorcade proceeded toward King St., toward a new block of screaming and a flashpoint of mass hysteria unprecedented in the city, one that has yet to be matched. An infestation of girls It was just after 1a.m. when the Beatles arrived at the hotel.
Fans, some of whom had been holding vigil for hours, went berserk. The limos were swarmed, the hoods and roofs pounded. Some teens were dangling from lampposts, hooting like jungle animals in a safari no tourist would dare visit. Others were chanting, as if in a daze, trudging forward, jumping and clapping and flailing, eyes as spaced out as zombies.
When a police inspector grabbed a bullhorn and demanded order, the zombies turned on him, as if he were a fifth Beatle. He was lovingly mauled.
The police locked arms and held their belts, creating a blue shield, trying to hold back the kamikaze rushers. One charging girl was in hysterics, crying so hard that she inadvertently bit rookie cadet Pat Tallon on the chest, drawing blood and leaving a scar that remains to this day.
A hotel worker looked out and did a sign of the cross.
The police motorcycles used in the escort were now on their sides, the windshields cracked. Officers formed another line and the Beatles — never the bravest of souls — bolted for the doors like spooked toddlers in a haunted house.
They made it safely inside. Some of their clothing did not.
The boys were sardined into an elevator. McCartney, briefly separated from the pack, was lifted clear off his feet by a burly officer and reunited with his mates. As Lennon would quip the next morning, “The best view of the country is over the blue shoulder of a policeman.”
The band was led to the Royal Suite on the eighth floor. They flopped on couches in the drawing room, chain smoked and asked for J&B Scotch.
Phil Givens, the mayor of Toronto, also ventured to the eighth floor. That’s as far as he got. The mayor wanted to meet the Beatles. The Beatles declined, preoccupied, as they soon were, with a number of unidentified females who, almost through osmosis, materialized in every hotel room they occupied.
“The mayor became indignant and had to be asked to leave the floor,” says Barry Jones, an officer who was guarding the door.
The mayor wasn’t the only rebuffed visitor. One 14-year-old girl was discovered in a linen closet. Another teen managed to broach a stairwell before she was discovered and kicked out. And on it went. Through the night, it was as if the King Eddie was dealing with an infestation of pubescent girls. At 3 a.m., Larry Kane, a radio journalist based in Miami who was travelling with the band, heard a knock on his room door. He answered to find a teen wearing a housekeeping uniform that was about four sizes too big. “Are you the man who called for soap?” she asked, looking past Kane. “It’s 3 in the morning,” he replied. “I don’t need any soap.” There was an awkward pause before the girl asked two more questions. “Do you know the Beatles? Can you take me to them?” Anew escape plan By 8 a.m., the mob returned to the hotel. Police reinforcements had been called in overnight. The band’s first visit to Toronto would require the services of more than 850 officers from all city divisions and from the OPP and RCMP. Despite this small army, including the mounted unit, the crowd was gleefully unconcerned. There were melees around the hotel that morning, hours before the first of two Beatles concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens. Inside the hotel, a first aid station was busier than the CNE, which was celebrating closing day with a karate championship, baby contest and dog race in Lake Ontario. At the hotel, 55 fainters were treated. In between chanting (“We want the Beatles!”) and singing a modified version of the national anthem, mini stampedes kept breaking out every time a hallucinating stranger pointed and shouted, “There they are!” By 10 a.m., it was a mirror scene outside the Gardens. And now ticket holders were entering the fray. In Forest Hill, Myra Lowenthal, a high school art student, clutched tickets to both shows. She had waited in the rain for six hours when the first batch went on sale in April. She also won a pair of front-row seats in a radio contest after submitting a portfolio of her Beatles drawings and paintings. She was on tenterhooks that morning. More than 30 pieces of her art adorned the Beatles’ dressing room at the Gardens. If the band asked to meet the artist, promised Stan Obodiac, the arena’s publicity director, he would get Lowenthal during an intermission to bring her backstage. The Beatles, apparently, did ask. But as Obodiac would later tell a crestfallen Lowenthal, he couldn’t find her. “I can’t begin to describe the disappointment,” she says. As for her beloved art, it vanished. In Cabbagetown, 14-year-old Ron Demers could barely speak after his good fortune. He had begged his father for tickets, but they sold out. His father worked at Massey Ferguson by day. In the evening, he tended bar at the Frontenac Arms Hotel on Jarvis, a hangout for the Toronto Maple Leafs who, back then, had reason to drink and celebrate. One night at the bar, as his father mixed cocktails and lamented his kid’s disappointment about not going to the concert, a customer smiled, reached into his coat and handed over two tickets. That customer was legendary goalie Terry Sawchuk. By noon, police were still dealing with crowd surges. The mounted unit was forced to divide the crowd into smaller sections. It was a surreal sight: majestic horses, trotting sideways, head to tail, pushing back waves of deranged youth on the streets of Toronto. “I remember this one policeman,” says Susan Crawford, who was 13 at the time. “He reminded me of Ernest Borgnine. He had these big square teeth. And his horse had these big square teeth. I was absolutely terrified.” At 2:30 p.m., the doors opened at the Gardens. The first concert was scheduled for 4 p.m. But since there were also a number of opening acts — including Bill Black’s Combo, the Exciters, Clarence “Frogman” Henry and the sultry Jackie de Shannon — the Beatles’ 12-song, half-hour set would not start until about 5:30.
Not inclined to repeat the chaos from the night before, authorities hatched a new escape plan. The limos would pull up to the King Edward, as expected. This would be a ruse. As the zombies pounded the vehicles, the Beatles would ride down in a freight elevator, duck through the hotel kitchen and sneak out a back door where an armed vehicle from 52 division would smuggle them into the Gardens.
An area around the concert venue was dubbed “Beatleland.” Motor traffic was restricted between Yonge and Jarvis Sts., Wellesley and Gerrard Sts. There were a number of decoy paddy wagons on the streets. It would’ve been a great day to rob a bank.
The paddy wagon carrying the Beatles travelled north on Church St. before entering the Gardens via Wood St. As it got closer, fans once again lost their minds.
Officer Ed Ludlow had to pull an unhinged woman off the back. Another woman, like a political freedom fighter, tried to block the car. The driver was forced to navigate this obstacle course as officers cleared a path.
“I heard the engine increase in noise as the driver shifted down a gear and turned sharply into the entrance of the building,” says officer Trevor Tranter, who was waiting for the Beatles. “Instantly, the huge doors rolled up, the wagon drove quickly into the loading bay area and out came about 50 or more police officers to reinforce us, with the doors closing immediately behind them.”
The situation on the street, somewhat improbably, got even wilder as word spread from screamer to screamer: the Beatles were inside!
It was a muggy Labour Day in Toronto. The temperature outside was nearing 30 degrees. Inside the Gardens, it had tipped past 40.
Soda and ice cream vendors were run off their brogues. The water fountains were barely producing a drip.
But as the opening acts came and went — mostly to boos since they had the misfortune of not being the Beatles — dehydration and exhaustion were no match for the building anticipation.
Terry Ott, who was 9 at the time, was sitting in the green section, near an exit. Standing nearby was a Gardens staffer carrying a walkie-talkie. It suddenly crackled and Ott felt chills when he heard a disembodied voice say, “Here. They. Come.”
At the same time, an emcee named Jungle Jay Nelson appeared onstage and bellowed the two words the record-breaking crowd of 16,761 was waiting to hear: the Beatles!
The screaming at the airport and hotel now seemed like a whisper. This band was our band “The sound went above the audible level and I thought I’d gone deaf,” says officer Art Perry, who was standing stage-right. The only warning came from a nurse who minutes before said, “You are about to hear 10,000 young females having an orgasm.”
Dazed officers jammed empty shell casings in their ears. Vendors ran for cover. It’s unclear if the Beatles could even hear their own voices, their instruments or each other.
“It was like something out of Dante’s Inferno,” says officer Noel Lewis-Watts, who could see it all from high up in the greys. “All the lights were out except for the exit and stage lights. And curtains were drawn across the exits. When the Beatles appeared, there was a great roar and then flashbulbs going off all over.”
“It was like thunder and lightning,” says Lowenthal. “No one could hear above their own screaming. But it was magnificent.”
Officer Brian McNeil was standing in the blue section with his partner. In addition to the screaming and the burst of blinding flash, he recalls how fans rained offerings upon their pop idols: bras, lipsticks, jelly beans, balled up pieces of silver paper.
Gary Hooper was trying to do his job and keep the Coca-Cola machines stocked. But the unfolding scene was mesmerizing, including a new tally of fainters: 109 at the Gardens.
When one teen collapsed near the front of the stage, officer Joe Winson, who was nearby, carried her to a first aid station. Another one tumbled over a balcony. There were more than 50 medical volunteers on site, toiling inside makeshift clinics with nothing more than ice cubes, water, cold compresses, orange slices and vague threats: “If you don’t get ahold of yourself, honey, you’ll miss the whole show.”
Bob Elliott, an officer standing next to the stage, squinted at the madness and thought what everyone with a badge was thinking: “How can young girls scream so loud, for so long?”
The screaming females are impossible to forget. But we should also remember the Beatles did not lack male fans, as any suicidal barber from that era can attest.
“It looked like a mosh pit down in the floor seats,” says Stephen Freedman, who was 12 at the time. “Then you’d see the St. John Ambulance guys. You’d see two guys lifting girls above their heads and then passing them along toward the exits to take them to the nursing stations. It was like you were in a war zone. But I was in heaven.”
“You could see the Beatles,” says Marty Roth, who was sitting in the greys and one day away from his 13th birthday. “I mean, you could see them playing. But pretty much all I can remember hearing is the screaming. It was surreal. It remains one of the highlights of my life. Their music still means so much.” For some, the Beatles transcended music. As Demers, the boy who got his tickets from Sawchuk, puts it: “It changed me as a person. I realized I had the right to be the person I wanted to be. I had the right to like what I liked.” Miraculously, there was a gap — well, about two seconds — in the deafening roar. Sitting in the second row, 16-year-old Connie Oprea sensed her chance. She shouted “Paul!” so loudly, the singer oriented to her voice. “He actually turned his head,” she says. “I will always remember that. I couldn’t believe it. All the hairs on my neck were standing up. I was tingling all over.” This was not a rock tour. It was mass hysteria. When the first concert ended, around 6 p.m., the Beatles were shuffled to a dressing room in the northeast corner of the Gardens. Officer Ed Dryden, who was standing next to drummer Starr during the concert, led the way and chatted with the band. About 20 minutes later, during a press conference, the Beatles looked a little bewildered but powered through. As usual, they poured on a charm offensive with admirers and unleashed their savage wit on jaded journalists.
“How long do you expect to last?” asked one snickering reporter.
“Longer than you,” shrugged Lennon.
“The four of them were actually kind of shy,” says Boyd Kozak, a Winnipeg radio host who arrived in town with two contest winners. “But they were impossible not to like sitting up there. They just had this quality.”
Canada embraced the Beatles before the United States. By late 1963, while still not getting national airplay on radio, the band had built up huge regional popularity in cities such as Toronto, London, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Following their first live television performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles became an unstoppable force, the soundtrack for an emerging youth culture. Indeed, about six weeks after that TV broadcast, the Beatles held six of the Top 10 spots on CHUM’s hit chart.
“The Beatles got into your household,” says Piers Hemmingsen, who was 9 years old at the time of the concert and is now author of the upcoming The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania. “You saw them on TV. You read about them. You heard the music. It was an as- sault. You couldn’t not be aware of the Beatles.”
Back at the press conference, Michele Finney, the precocious14-year-old host of CBC’s Razzle Dazzle, pulled the foursome aside for an interview.
“This band was our band,” says Finney. “This was the first real thrill for my generation. I think it established teenagers as consumers, as a viable market. I think it also changed the conservative attitude of our city.” The city itself was also in flux. Yorkdale Shopping Centre had just opened. The last phase of the Gardiner Expressway was completed, though it admittedly remains a work in progress. The bohemian scene in Yorkville was rumbling to life. The suburbs were sprouting.
The Beatles didn’t change the world by setting it on fire. They caught fire while the world was changing.
“It was a perfect storm,” says historian Bruce Bell. “When the Beatles came that day, there was no turning back. We were never the same.”
The second concert, virtually identical to the first, ended before 9 p.m.
The band was shuffled back into the paddy wagon for the return trip to the King Edward, their only sleepover in Canada during the tour. Fans pooled at the rear entrance, now wise to the limo ruse. “The entrance was just wide enough for the vehicle to enter, leaving no room for a body to slip in between,” says Bruce Wood, an officer who found himself in that nonexistent space. “I got pinned between the wall, the vehicle and the protruding side view mirror.” Luckily, the mirror snapped off. Wood lunged after a few fans who dive-bombed after the paddy wagon as the gate was closing. They were pulled out by their ankles as the door slammed shut. The next day, just before noon, the Beatles headed back to the airport to continue their gruelling tour: 26 concerts in 24 cities, requiring 36,405 kilometres of travel in 34 days, a hellish grind that would kill most rock stars today. The sun was shining on the first day of school. The crowd was considerably smaller. The mood was also different, forlorn more than wired, This was the end. After signing autographs, posing for photos and waving at admirers, the band boarded their chartered plane and headed to Montreal. “Rin-go!” wailed one young woman, violently shaking the fence. “Rin-go! Come back!” vmenon@thestar.ca