Fewer Fans and Fainters -- But Beatles Bedlam Was as Usual (Toronto 1966)

 Fewer Fans and Fainters -- But Beatles Bedlam Was as Usual

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The Toronto Star

August 18, 1966

    The Beatles flew on to Boston today with 96,000 Toronto dollars, a white-haired troll doll, and unless the staff got rid of it, a friendly hamster named Brian. Those were among the souvenirs of their third and dullest Toronto appearance. It was the dullest by any yardstick. Fewer fans paid to get into Maple Leaf Gardens. Fewer milled around the King Edward Hotel. Fewer police were needed to handle them. And horrors! Only half as many teeny boppers fainted from the sheer excitement of it all.

     They filled the Gardens last night with 18,000 fans, but only 15,000 showed up in the afternoon. Saint John ambulance workers handled 167 stricken fans, compared with more than 300 last year. The 33,000 who did show up created just about as much bedlam as usual, drowning out their idols with shrieks and trying to pelt them with paper balls.

     At a between-show press conference, the boys gave one-sentence quips on Christianity and Vietnam to reporters. John Lennon, trying to clarify his "Beatles are more popular than Jesus," told a United Church minister he wasn't really against Christianity. "I recommend it to anybody, all the people in the world, especially old people," said Lennon, wearing a pink linen suit. 

    The group said they support the basic ideas of Christianity, and George Harrison added that "People who dislike us are not offering a Christian answer to what Lennon said." Reverend Gene Young, a United Church minister, said afterward he was amazed and really impressed with the Beatles as individuals. 

    On Vietnam, Lennon said he could see no reason on earth why anybody should want to kill anybody else. Challenged to comment on the war itself, Harrison declared, "America is in there, but thou shalt not kill means thou shalt not amend Section A." He said, "People forget about thou shalt not amend Section A."

     "But we can't say things like that," piped up Paul McCartney. "We're not allowed to have opinions. You might have noticed that," said Lennon. The literary Beatle also said anyone who did not feel like fighting should have a right not to go into the army.

     McCartney sat playing with a white-haired troll doll during the conference. One of a mountain pile of gifts sent to Maple Leaf Gardens, and the Beatles Hotel during their stay.

     Is the Beatles' craze ending? "If our popularity does diminish, we'll be the last to worry," said Harrison, who wore a fishnet shirt and a brown windbreaker.  "It shows no signs of diminishing."

     Will the group ever break up? McCartney said, "It will be a bit embarrassing at 35 to be doing the same routine."  Lennon:  "We do not intend to go on holding hands forever. It might last. I don't know."

     But if anyone thought Beatlemania had ended, the fans who swarmed through the Gardens for two shows proved otherwise. Nearly 300 police officers guarded the building in the afternoon. Another 50 were added last night. The College Street subway station scene prompted one TTC worker to compare it to the Blitz. Extra subway staff were on hand to keep people from being pushed off the platform, and barricades were erected in the station.

     Waving signs proclaiming "I'm happy" and "Paul, I love you always." The fans lined up from Carlton Street around to Yong Street. 

    Two Albany, New York teenagers, Mary Ann Scott and Patricia Novak, marched past officers into the Garden Restaurant, having booked reservations a month ago. They later infiltrated the press conference held in a nearby room.

     A 77-year-old Port Hope woman arrived in time for the nighttime show, but tripped on the way to her seat. After sitting out the early acts at a first aid center, she got back in time to stand on her chair and watch the Liverpool group.

     The noise got so bad at one performance that a hefty cop, one of the barriers in front of the stage, pulled a couple of bullets out of his holster and stuck them in his ears. And twice yesterday there was a thunderclap of voices as four famous faces half-skipped into view, wearing forest green mod jackets, charcoal gray slacks, and polka dot shirts. Paper balls, glittering tin foil, and sounds-tons and tons of adoring screams-cascaded onto the stage as the Beatles bobbed about in the pool of light. It went on for just over half an hour, screams interrupted only by louder screams, as youngsters stormed the stage or were carried out.

One youth appeared from nowhere and climbed to a front seat in midair, reaching for the platform. When the crunch came, a dozen officers bore him away. Last night, a youth climbed over the elaborate backdrop barrier, came rolling down yards of bunting and drape behind him. Dozens of teenagers at both shows went into faints from heat and excitement. One girl somehow lost her skirt when she collapsed.

     As the Beatles finished their show shortly after 10 p.m. in a windowless room in the depths of the Gardens, staff members fed a hamster pieces of lettuce and mused over what to do with it. Apparently named after Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, the hamster was sitting in the Beatles' dressing room when they came back from the news conference. No one knows how it got through the scores of police. A note with a crayon-drawn heart says, "This is Brian. We love you, Linda and Sue."

     The 65 policemen really didn't have much trouble holding back the 200 teenagers, as the Beatles returned to the King Edward Hotel by police paddy wagon last night. A fan wants the hotel named a national shrine because it has been the Beatles' sleeping quarters three times now.