While reading the Toronto Star the other day, I found a great piece of music history that never was.
It was to be organized by John Lennon and whats her name. This event was to be part of their peace campaign, shortly after John left the Beatles. It was to have been a star studded event North of Toronto Ontario.
Unfortunately for us the US government got involved with it. I still to this day have no idea why the US Government was so concerned with John Lennon in the first place? If he was such an eyesore to them then why didn’t they just ignore him. You know like what I say about Micheal Jackson all the time, ” If you just ignore this freak, he will eventually just go away”. Just like the school or village idiot?
But even common sense has to prevail once in a while. Although the Ontario government at the time tried to put the ca bash to this one, the courts stepped in and said that it was ok to proceed.
When was it to have taken place, Aug. 7-9, 1970. I bet it would have been a blast!
John Lennon R.I.P.
Keep on Jammin’
This concert did in fact happen but Lennon was not there that I remember. It was called the Mosport Strawberry Festival and was held at the Mosport racetrack in Ontario next to a tiny town called Tyrone. It also had a sister event at Goose Lake Michigan with a estimated combined total of over 500.000 possibly making this twin event even larger than the woodstock event. (I was at the canadian event when I was 12 years old)
Holy smokes Jim, that is amazing! do you have any memories or pics about the show? If you do, I’d love to see them.
Keep on Jammin’
here’s a new video clip of the event
http://archives.cbc.ca/society/youth/topics/580-3215/
this guy hosts the best pix I’ve seen
http://johnphillipsphotography.com/Strawberry_Fields/Strawberry_vol_one/index.html
In the news clip the guy mentions that a motorcycle race was scheduled to get around laws. That is not true. The race was a scheduled event but was canceled during the first race because of all the hippies that kept wandering onto the track (my father was entered into 1 of the races)
When the towns people of Tyrone complained about all the hippies taking baths in mills pond, the event organizers brought huge water trucks into the infield and setup showers. very quickly the infield turned into a mudpit and thousands of people started playing in it. right after that most of them shed all their cloths and tromped around naked for the rest of the event. there were probably 50,000 or more naked people roaming around.
There were free food stands in numerous places, they offered cheese sandwichs on a couple different types of bread.
I remember seeing hundreds of vehicles with signs on them advertising drugs. Lids 12.50, Blotter 1.50
A lid by the way, was a sack of weed containing the amount of weed that could be scooped up with a maxwell house coffee can lid.
The RCMP was all over the place but they didn’t do a thing. It appeared they had a blast as well. I remember them smiling all the time and flirting with the naked hippie chicks.
Melanie Safka was the big star of the show that I remember
This event is one of my fondest memories.
Sorry but I don’t have any pix myself as I was 12 at the time and didn’t have much use for pictures.
Jim, you win the best comment in ages man! I bet most readers here LOVE IT! Thanx again and …
Keep on Jammin’ Jim!
I was there too..a couple of my memories were all the free acid laced koolaid that was being passed around, and then after everyone was stoned out of their friggin minds, along with all the great music, the organizers enhanced everyone’s trip by such things as hosing down the crowd which was appreciated in the 80 degree heat, making insane drug announcements like ” Beware of the MDA, there is bad MDA being passed around” freaking e few people out, and my favourite…they flew helicopters over the crowd and dumped out roses..for a few seconds in my “altered state” I thought it started raining roses..I’m sure a few other people got fooled too..I would say a good time was had by all…
Sounds like a show that I would of loved to see Brian! Any chance that you brought your camera with ya?
I never heard of helicopters dropping roses on any crowd before but it sure seems like a very nice touch!
Keep on Jammin’ Brian