Whether because it took place in Canada or was overshadowed by the PR spectacle of Woodstock, which took place a little more than a month before, this ostensible rock and roll revival show has mostly been shunted aside in the annals of pop even if it marked the debut of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s nascent Plastic Ono Band. In fact, Lennon’s participation, as this documentary so painstakingly points out, was mainly an afterthought instigated in order to sell tickets. The main idea of the concert, which took place at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, was to celebrate the work of the founders of rock—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and Gene Vincent—but the success of a more contemporary pop-oriented festival at the same venue earlier that summer perhaps inflated the expectations of the two ambitious young promoters who put it on. Apparently, oldies show (and, mind you, this is only ten years out from these artists’ prime) just didn’t catch the youngsters’ attention as much. Before Lennon was tapped, they managed to snag The Doors, who were huge in 1969 but already bogged down in legal and image problems stemming from Jim Morrison’s notorious near-flashing episode in Miami earlier that year. The Toronto show was the only secure gig they could get.

What really makes the movie valuable as a document isn’t so much the concert footage, which, while intermittently exciting, rarely stays on any artist for an appreciable length of time, but the way it spotlights a particular instance in a very momentous year for pop. In September 1969, The Beatles were still together, though Lennon was seriously thinking of going solo, and the offer from the Revival69  promoters, originally asking him to emcee the event and maybe sit in with some of his heroes, hit him at the right time. Though he almost pulled out after he said “yes,” he quickly put together a group consisting of Eric Clapton, Alan White, and Klaus Voorman, and this truly motley crew didn’t rehearse anything until they were on the plane to Canada. Say what you will about the presumptuousness of rock stardom, but Lennon came up with two of his most indelible compositions for the gig: “Cold Turkey” and “Instant Karma.” A year late, of course, The Beatles would be no more and Lennon would have released his classic solo debut album, and it’s easy to hear the seeds of that work in what he was trying to accomplish in Toronto, even if he didn’t really know what he was doing.

The documentary has a lot of sideshow business that’s fascinating as well. Toronto, apparently, solidified Alice Cooper, who doubled as Gene Vincent’s backup band, as the force of avant garde rock vaudeville with their standalone performance, for what that’s worth. And Chuck Berry, as usual using a pickup band of teenagers who had to play everything by ear since Chuck never rehearsed, put on one of his greatest shows ever, according to no one less that the dean of rock critics Robert Christgau, who was there and provides one of the talking heads that gives the whole project credible context. For Christgau, a stone Berry freak, to say that actually means something, and made me wish Berry’s entire show was in the film, but you either get a thorough history lesson or you get kicks. You can’t expect both. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015).

Revival69 home page in Japanese

photo (c) Rock n’ Roll Documentary Productions Inc., Toronto RNR Revival Productions Inc., Capa Presse (Les Films a Cinque) 2022