The Beatles
Beatlemania wasn't quite dead, but it was clearly on the wane.
In 1964, on the first North American tour, the Fab Four were greeted by 10,000 fans at the airport in Toronto, and were mobbed at their hotel - where one enterprising teenaged girl even managed to hide in their closet. Their two shows set an attendance record at Maple Leaf Gardens. A year later, when they rolled into town on the heels of their wild and triumphant concert at Shea Stadium, Gardens' owner Harold Ballard turned up the heat, turned off the water fountains, and made a fortune selling soft drinks as the lads from Liverpool again packed the arena for two shows. But by August 17, 1966, something had changed. John Lennon's crack about the band being more popular than Jesus had stirred controversy and protest. Only 800 fans were at the airport to greet the Beatles, and on the day of the shows, tickets were still available. As before, the Beatles only played a dozen songs, and were preceded by several opening acts - which included The Ronettes. Rumours abounded that this would be the band's final tour. "It would be embarrassing to perform Long Tall Sally when we're 35," Paul McCartney said at the pre-concert press conference. "We can't go on holding hands forever," John Lennon added. Writing in the Toronto Star, Arthur Zeldin had it right. He noted that the band didn't play some of their more ambitious recent songs like Eleanor Rigby live, because they couldn't replicate what they did in the studio on stage. Meanwhile, their more subtle numbers - Yesterday was a clear crowd favourite - were all but drowned out by the screaming. "So, by the very forces of their musical experimentation and development, the Beatles may be taking themselves off the touring, mass live audience scene," Zeldin wrote. Maple Leaf Gardens was the only building the Beatles visited on all three of their North American tours, and after that show in 1966, they would play only eight more concerts, and then never do an official live show again.
But of course, that was hardly the end of the story.
-Stephen Brunt
Plaque via Alan L. Brown's site Toronto Plaques. Full page here.