Mike's Favorite Stuff: November 2010

Ugly Ducklings perform "Nothing":

The Hollies, in a televised 1969 concert, perform "Hey, Carrie Anne":

The Hollies cover "Just Like A Woman":

Next, the Hollies perform a medley of their hits, including "Bus Stop" and "On A Carousel":

The Hollies follow up with a rockin' acoustic version of "Quit Your Lowdown Ways":

In another Dylan cover, the Hollies perform "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight."

Another Hollies take on a folk tune: "Help Me, Brother:"

The Hollies close out the '69 concert with Stop, Stop, Stop:

The Hollies perform "Bus Stop" live in 1966:

Hollies, in a live version of "Carousel":

Another "Carousel," from 1968, during Graham Nash's last days with the band:

Same '68 concert, "Jennifer Eccles":

Hollies, 1968, on "Carrie Anne":

The Hollies perform "Look Through Any Window," in 1966:

Another performance of "Look Through Any Window" (looks live, but it isn't):

In 1973, the Hollies perform "Carrie Anne," with Tony Hicks handling the lead vocals, with former lead singer Allan gone.

Three years later, in 1976, they do "Carrie Anne," now with lead singer Allan back in the band:

In 1983, with Graham Nash rejoining them for a reunion, the Hollies do "Carrie Anne":

Spencer Davis Group does "I'm A Man":

John and Paul at the Gardens, in Toronto, Aug. 17, 1966:

Here's my actual stub from the afternoon show...

.... and here's what some other stubs from that concert looked like. Note that the first one is for the afternoon performance while the second and the third are for the evening show.

A fine article that captures the spirit of the time, including the actual set list!

Fans remember Beatles gig in T.O.

By CASSANDRA SZKLARSKI

August 11, 2006

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2006/08/11/1748269-cp.html

TORONTO (CP) - The year was 1966, Edith Manea had just turned 17 and the greatest band in the world - the Beatles, of course - were about to play their last concert ever in Canada.

Short of cash, but desperate to see her heroes, Edith and her twin sister marched themselves down to Maple Leaf Gardens, turned on the waterworks and unleashed a sob story at the box office involving lost tickets.

It worked. Moments later, they stood mere metres from the Fab Four, screaming along with thousands of other young fans.

"I was not about to be left out," states Manea, now a 56-year-old mother of two grown sons who goes by her married name, Ippolito.

"We waited until people in the front were fainting and being carted off and we just took a seat and we sat in the very front. I took photographs right up beside Paul McCartney singing Yesterday. I have photos of that," she recalls proudly on the eve of the concert's 40th anniversary - Aug. 17.

At the time, no one knew that the performance would be the Beatles' farewell to Canada. John, Paul, George and Ringo would play their last concert ever as a group in San Francisco on Aug. 29, 1966, and announce thereafter that they would focus solely on studio recordings.

A two-day convention to commemorate the final tour takes place next month in Toronto. Original drummer Pete Best and John Lennon's onetime companion May Pang are expected to attend, and a never-before-heard Toronto bootleg from that '66 show will be on display.

Incredibly, Beatles expert Peter Miniaci says neither the matinee nor evening concerts sold out that day, the only Canadian stop on the tour. Amid controversy and waning fan frenzy, the Gardens sold just 15,000 of its 18,000 tickets for the matinee and 17,000 tickets for the evening show.

Miniaci, who runs Toronto's Beatlemania Shoppe, blames the leftover seats on Beatles fatigue, which by Revolver and Rubber Soul had settled even in Brit-pop crazy Toronto.

"It was the third time that they came to Toronto," says Miniaci, noting the band had also visited in 1964 and 1965.

"People in '66 thought OK, we saw them in '65, they've been here, they're gonna come again, right? Little did they realize that that was the last time. I'm sure there's a bunch of people now reflecting, 'I should have went to that '66 show. I could kick myself.' "

Those who did go to the show paid a mere $5.50 for a floor seat or $4 for a seat in the rafters.

Inside, it was bedlam.

Just like every other Beatles show, the audience was packed with screaming teenage girls, all clamouring for a glimpse of their mop-topped idols, says Ippolito.

A row of uniformed security officers ringed the stage, arms linked. In addition, 200 police officers had reportedly been assigned to escort the boys, and hundreds more were on standby.

The bare-bones stage was littered with white pieces of paper, presumably love notes tossed in desperate adulation, recalls fan Stephen Long, who was in the third row.

The stage set-up, meanwhile, was "laughable" says Ippolito.

"Nowadays they have these huge speakers. Then, they just had these little wee box speakers and little regular mikes. There was nothing fancy about their set-up."

Throughout it all, there was screaming.

Long, who brought along a handheld tape recorder to the show, is thought to have made the only full Beatles bootleg from a 1966 concert. It will be played publicly for the first time at the Toronto Beatles Celebration on Sept. 16 and 17, says convention organizer David Goyette, but he warns "it's mostly screaming."

Ippolito concurs.

"It was about 25 minutes of total screaming," she says, adding that the musicianship left a lot to be desired.

"I didn't think they were hitting the notes, they didn't remember the lyrics, it was so noisy. (But) they were fantastic."

She says Lennon especially put on a lacklustre performance, a comment that doesn't surprise Paul White, head of A&R for Capitol Canada at the time.

"I would never say they went through the motions but (the 1966 show) was a bit of a letdown from previous years," says White, the man credited with launching Beatlemania in North America when he released Love Me Do in Canada in February 1963.

"I think that was when the group was starting to run down and become four individuals, more than a group called the Beatles."

The real fun was had backstage, says the now-73-year-old White.

"Well, that was a bigger madhouse than the actual show because you had all the people in town that they knew from the record label and then musicians that they'd met along the way," says White, who recalls Ronnie Hawkins and most of his band, the Hawks, as "always around."

"And there were groupies, of course, but that's enough said about that."

Despite the Beatles' phenomenal following and unprecedented celebrity, a look at their four-page 1966 concert rider is a study in modesty by today's outlandish standards.

The contract, signed by then-promoter Bob Eubanks (later host of the Newlywed Game), simply asks for adequate police security and a spartan stage set-up.

Among the requests are "four (4) floor stand Hi-Fi microphones," "a first-class sound engineer" and "not less than two (2) super trouper follow spotlights."

Backstage, the minimal demands include "four cots, mirrors, an ice cooler, portable TV set and clean towels and two (2) cases of soft drinks."

Miniaci laughs when he considers how times have changed for today's rock gods.

"Here they are, they walk in, the four of them plus three other guys. And then you see some of these celebrities and actresses and singers, they get like, 50 people, and it's just an interview at Much(Music)," says Miniaci.

Most interesting, the rider stipulates that "artists will not be required to perform before a segregated audience" - a real possibility in the racially turbulent times of the United States.

Politics and controversy definitely had a way of following the lads from Liverpool.

In the weeks leading up to the Toronto concert, a firestorm erupted after a U.S. magazine published quotes in which Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. On the day of the Toronto show, Lennon stated his support for Americans who fled to Canada to escape the Vietnam draft.

While Ippolito says ongoing controversy didn't seem to diminish fan ardour at the show, White says times had definitely changed for the Beatles by 1966.

"I remember that it was sort of the end of an era because, not that Beatlemania ever really died away, but sort of the fever from the early shows was not quite there this time 'round," says White, adding he wasn't surprised that they announced an end to touring soon afterwards.

"So many other things had come along to replace them and they were going in different directions themselves."

"We suspected that things were going to have to end sometime."

Miniaci suggests the Beatles put an end to live performances in part due to the frustrations of touring.

"A lot of people think it was a combination that they were losing their popularity, they were going really weird and psychedelic, they were letting their hair grow long in '66 and then John came out with some controversial statements and stuff," he says.

But technological limitations also kept them from playing their increasingly challenging songs, he says, noting the '66 tours featured material from '64 and '65.

"They couldn't do any of the psychedelic songs (on Revolver), like Tomorrow Never Knows and She Said She Said," he explains.

"It was very primitive back then. They were getting frustrated and they should have just hung in there, because a year or two later you had all these great bands like the Who and the Yardbirds and (Jimi) Hendrix touring with much better equipment and stuff."

Toronto was one of five cities that the Beatles visited on each of their three North American tours. The others were Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

To this day, Ippolito says nothing compares to the experience of Beatlemania in Toronto.

"There hasn't been anything like it, that I can recall, in terms of excitement in the city, except for the World Series," says Ippolito, a devoted fan who once snuck into the Beatles' Toronto hotel room in 1964, absconding with a spoon, a cereal box, a linen napkin and several cigarette butts.

"When the Beatles came, the whole city was buzzing. It was in papers all the time, CHUM (radio) was talking about it all the time, it was just huge."

"I'm so glad, I'm lucky I was a part of it."

-

On the Web: www.torontobeatlescelebration.comr

-

The Beatles played their last Toronto show almost 40 years ago on Aug. 17, 1966.

The set list for the gig at Maple Leaf Gardens:

-Rock And Roll Music

-She's A Woman

-If I Needed Someone

-Day Tripper

-Baby's In Black

-I Feel Fine

-Yesterday

-I Wanna Be Your Man

-Nowhere Man

-Paperback Writer

-I'm Down

In Toronto, BeatleMania marked Fab Four's visit 40 years ago

CASSANDRA SZKLARSKI

Fri Aug 11, 2006

TORONTO (CP) - In the 1960s, Beatlemania undeniably took over the world - but in Toronto, the obsession with the Fab Four was more like BeatleManea.

Manea for the Manea twins, a pair of Toronto sisters who loved the Beatles so much that they themselves gained notoriety for several bold encounters with the famed band.

"I just wanted to be in their airspace, basically," the now-56-year-old Edith Manea explains on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' last Canadian date - Aug. 17.
"I just wanted to get beside them. I didn't want to be one in a million, I just wanted to have some sort of a contact."

The starstruck relationship began when Edith and Herta Manea fell in love with the Beatles at the age of 14. They learned the band was to perform in Toronto on Sept. 7, 1964, and immediately sprang into action. Getting tickets to the show was the easy part. Orchestrating one-on-one time with the boys at the swank King Edward Hotel would take some planning.

"My sister and I (went) to the hotel, all summer, every opportunity, and we scouted it," says Manea, who now goes by her married name Ippolito and was featured on a 90-minute Beatles documentary called The Scream Heard Around The World.

"We looked for every nook and cranny we could hide - stairwells, anything. We knew the joint inside out."

Then, the night before the concert, the pair put on their best dresses, snuck out of their house and returned to the King Edward. They found police had cordoned off parts of the street to keep screaming fans from getting too close to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Edith says she planted herself right in front, behind a giant officer. When the mop-tops arrived, she didn't hesitate.

"I ran through the police legs and I grabbed George's arm and I went 'George!' " she laughs.

"And there was such a skirmish, I looked over my shoulder and saw Paul coming in. I literally crawled out from the skirmish and ran over to Paul, took both his hands and just said, 'Paul, hi.' And he looked at me and said, 'Hello there, luv."'

"I stood frozen in that spot and Paul walked away, got into the elevator and the police let go and everybody ran to me and they were kissing my hands and touching me and it was great."

The next day, they went to the concert and afterwards, made a beeline for the hotel. Luckily, they had a stolen hotel key that allowed them to roam the halls without suspicion. They found the band's newly painted room with ease.

"The Beatles had already left. (We) got into the room and we just took souvenirs," says Ippolito, who also orchestrated elaborate encounters with the boys in the subsequent tours of 1965 and 1966.

"We got a teaspoon, we got an empty cornflakes box, we got a linen napkin and some matchbooks and cigarette butts."

But after all that trouble, Ippolito laments that her mother threw the treasures in the garbage.

"She was disgusted we would keep something like that," she says.