CONCERT FOR A CAUSE
It was 50 years ago today ...
There have been countless benefit concerts over the years. But few have had the lasting worldwide impact of a show held Oct, 16, 1970, at the Pacific Coliseum.
The Greenpeace Benefit Concert was staged to raise funds to send a protest ship to a nuclear test on Amchitka Island in Alaska.
Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Chilliwack and Phil Ochs volunteered and 10,000 people showed up at the Coliseum, paying $3 a ticket.
The net profit of $17,164 basically launched Greenpeace, the world's foremost environmental organization.
The concert was dreamed up by Irving Stowe, a 55-year-old lawyer who had become a full-time peace and environmental activist.
“Brothers and sisters in green peace,” he announced at the show. “Green peace is beautiful! And you are beautiful, because you are here tonight! You came here because you are not on a death trip! You believe in life, you believe in peace, and you want them now!”
Stowe and his wife Dorothy were American Quakers who had moved to Vancouver in 1966. After meeting fellow expats Jim and Marie Bohlen at a peace rally, the quartet founded the Don't Make a Wave Committee to protest the nuclear testing at Amchitka.
Sitting at the kitchen table at the Stowes' Point Grey house, Marie Bohlen suggested sending a protest ship up the coast, as Quaker pacifists had done in the 1950s to protest nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
A Vancouver Sun reporter phoned out of the blue, looking for a story. So Jim Bohlen said they were planning to send a boat to Amchitka.
“Something must be done to stop the Americans from their insane ecological vandalism,” Bohlen said in the Feb. 9, 1970 Sun.
Bohlen was quoted as the education officer of the Sierra Club of B.C., which the two families were involved in. But the Sierra Club was leery of the protest, so the Stowes, the Bohlens and fellow travellers such as Bill Darnell formed a new organization.
“Nobody came up with a name that anyone agreed upon, and then as Bill Darnell was leaving (a meeting), my dad flashed him the peace sign,” said Irving Stowe's son Bob. “Bill said `Let's make it a green peace.'”
Bingo. Marie Bohlen and her son Paul Noonan then designed a button with a circular ecological logo on top, “Green Peace” in the middle and the peace symbol at the bottom.
“It actually was two words,” Bob Stowe said. “It became one word (Greenpeace) because there wasn't enough space to put a space on the button, without making the typeface really small.”
“Dad and Jim fronted the Don't Make a Wave committee the money to buy 100 buttons at once, which cost $10,” said Barbara Stowe, Bob's sister.
“They couldn't afford more than that. We sold them for 25 cents and got 10 cents for the cause out of that. At Georgia and Granville, right outside Birks, every Saturday morning. The Hare Krishnas were across the street, choking on their incense, the Vietnam Vigil on another corner. What a scene.”
Jim Bohlen had talked fisherman John Cormack into renting his boat to sail up the coast, but selling buttons for 25 cents and T-shirts for $3 wasn't coming up with enough cash. So Irving Stowe came up with the idea of a concert.
“Everybody said `You're crazy!” Bob Stowe said. “You're a lawyer, you're not a promoter, none of us are.”
Irving Stowe initially approached Joan Baez to headline, but she was unable to do it. But she donated a $1,000 cheque and suggested Joni Mitchell, who agreed.
James Taylor was a last-minute addition. The Stowes were sitting around eating dinner one night when Mitchell phoned and told Irving she wanted to bring him.
“Dad puts his hand over the receiver and says `Who's James Taylor?,'” recalls Barbara Stowe, who was 14 at the time.
“My brother and mother shrugged and I thought `Oh they're such idiots, they're so uncool.' I said `He's a Black blues singer!' I was thinking of James Brown, who I'd never even heard.
“When dad hung up he said `Don't tell anyone. We don't know who this James Taylor is, if he's no good it could ruin the concert!'”
As it turned out, Taylor's signature song, Fire and Rain, was rocketing up the charts. Taylor was added too late for posters or ads, but they got the word out on radio, and the concert was a sellout.