Berry played a key role in a series of improbable events that led to this festival happening, though it was an inadvertent one. Johnny Brower and Kenny Walker were young Canadians who had some recent success booking acts for a club in Toronto. They wanted to branch out to rock festivals, since that seemed to be the happening thing in 1969. With the backing from high school friends who were heirs to the massive Eatons department store chain, they got the money to put on the Toronto Pop Festival in June 1969. Brower later recalled, "Sly and the Family Stone headlined and Steppenwolf played, but it was Chuck Berry who really stole that show. He had a crowd of like 25,000 people going insane doing the duck walk. That's when I got the crazy idea that if we brought all of the legendary rockers together for a 'rock and roll revival' we could add some contemporary bands to the bill and do a one day show in September."
Berry's career wasn't doing that well in 1969. He'd had many hit songs from 1955 to 1964. But then musical trends changed fast away from the 1950s style he was associated. From 1965 until the end of the 1960s, none of his singles would even make the Top 100 chart in the U.S. (Although that would drastically change in 1972 when he would have a Number One hit with "My Ding-A-Ling," which he already played in this concert.) But he was still an electrifying live performer, with his famous "duck walk" and other physical feats, and his songs were classics that remained well known.
Berry was notorious for being a cheapskate. For pretty much his entire career, he was known for touring with no backing band. Instead, he would expect the promoter of each concert to find some local band familiar with his songs to back him for practically no money. and with no practicing together. That was even the case for this high-profile concert. A local Canadian band, Nucleus, had opened the festival, performing only three songs. I read an account from the lead guitarist of that band, who said he was watching the rest of the festival with his band mates that afternoon when his manager found him and told him that Chuck Berry was scrambling to find a backing band and would they be willing to play for him? They eagerly said yes, despite being told Berry's set would be starting in 15 minutes and there would be no practicing beforehand!
For each song, the band members just had to guess what to do, and what key to play in, once the song began. But if you listen to the recording, you can't tell the lack of practice. Fortunately, nearly all Berry songs use the same basic structure. That's probably why he was able to get away without having his own band and not have it frequently lead to disaster.
This is one of the rare sets from this festival that has been officially released in full. It came out in various forms over the years, but the best is a "record store day" release from 2021. However, in my opinion, this version sounds better. That's because the lead vocals were low in the mix (which was the case for nearly all of the recordings from this festival), and I fixed that with the use of the UVR5 audio editing program.
This album is an hour and six minutes long.
01 talk by Kim Fowley (Chuck Berry)
02 talk (Chuck Berry)
03 Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry)
04 talk (Chuck Berry)
05 School Day [Long Live Rock and Roll] (Chuck Berry)
06 talk (Chuck Berry)
07 Johnny B. Goode - Carol - Promised Land (Chuck Berry)
08 Hoochie Coochie Man (Chuck Berry)
09 Maybellene (Chuck Berry)
10 Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)
11 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
12 Reelin' and Rockin' (Chuck Berry)
13 talk (Chuck Berry)
14 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
15 Memphis, Tennessee (Chuck Berry)
16 My Ding-A-Ling (Chuck Berry)
17 talk (Chuck Berry)
18 [In The] Wee Wee Hours (Chuck Berry) (Chuck Berry)
19 Bonsoir Cherie (Chuck Berry)
20 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/BksNeg35
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/3cbwpyyBIo8NZ4E/file
The cover photo is from this exact concert. It was used as a cover photo for an album of this concert performance.
Just so you know this was released awhile ago. It's on all streaming services
ReplyDeleteI mentioned that in my write-up. I consider this different, because I remixed the vocals to instrumental balance, (hopefully) improving the sound quality.
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