Opinion: The Beatles rocked Montreal 60 years ago, and we loved them, yeah, yeah, yeah
I was there for the band's only appearance in this city, hired as an usher for the occasion. I can remember the scene — and the screams.
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In early September 1964, I noticed an ad in The Gazette seeking ushers to work a rock concert I wanted to see at the Montreal Forum. The ticket price was outrageous ($5.50!), so the opportunity to work the afternoon and evening shows and get paid sounded great. Applicants were asked to go downtown to the Forum four days before the show. On the appointed day, I took the Sherbrooke 105 bus from Montreal West to the arena. I was 20 years old.
More than 100 of us were crammed into a huge room. An official-looking man announced enough ushers had already been hired and thanked everyone for showing up. My heart sank. But as the crowd shuffled toward the door, the guy suddenly yelled: “Wait! We need the six tallest. If you are over six-foot-two, stick around!” I stood six- foot-three. I was hired on the spot and told to show up at noon the day of the concerts wearing grey flannels, black shoes and a white shirt. This is how I came to be an usher at the only shows the Beatles ever performed in Montreal, on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 1964.
On the day of the concerts, I had to wear a ridiculous usher’s cap. Of course, this cap was available only in sizes too small for me, so I picked the largest and balanced it on the back of my head. We six were taken to our workstations in front of a curtain that blocked a corridor, where we were to stand, arms folded, to deny passage to anyone trying to enter. Behind the curtain was a door to a dressing room. The Beatles would be in this dressing room just before going on stage.
Soon the crowd began to enter and I watched as thousands of exuberant teenagers filed past me. Technicians adjusted the instruments and amplifiers on stage. A house band came on. An MC welcomed everyone and then introduced one of the warm-up acts, a pop vocal group called the Exciters. By this time, the Forum was packed. The north end was blocked off because it was behind the stage, but the floor was full, as was almost every seat in the arena.
The crowd was buzzing through the opening acts; the Exciters received polite applause at the end of their set. There were other warm-up acts that afternoon and night — Jackie DeShannon, the Righteous Brothers, the Bill Black’s Combo, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, and the 4 Français — though I have absolutely no memory of them apart from an unnamed band that came on before the Exciters. As for audience reaction: tolerated politely, attention minimal, applause muted. The crowd did not come to the Forum that day for them, after all. More technicians came on stage to make final adjustments. Then the MC began a hysterical introduction that reduced the crowd to screaming.
The anticipation climbed as the MC built to a crescendo. Then the curtain behind me parted. A phalanx of security guards cleared a path through the crowd. Then, almost as an anticlimax, four small young men about my age scampered by, trying to keep up with the guards.
I was struck by how short and slight the Beatles looked. Their hair did not move as they walked; it had clearly been sprayed with a grooming compound to keep their long hair out of their eyes as they performed.
Bedlam broke out. The screaming reached a new apex; a girl near me scratched her cheeks to the point of bleeding as she wailed. The Beatles went to their instruments and launched into Twist and Shout. At one point, Paul McCartney winked at the crowd. This wink caused a deafening shriek from 10,000 throats, unlike anything I had ever heard. The Beatles were a very tight bar band, although it was next to impossible to hear them. I don’t know how they heard each other. Their set list included their big hits (She Loves You, All My Loving, I Want to Hold Your Hand plus a few more), the theme to their new film (A Hard Day’s Night) and a few covers from Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the Shirelles.
The show was no more than 30 minutes, though they were on stage for longer than that — there were substantial pauses between the songs because of the wild noise level from the crowd — before they streamed off. I had to wait around to work the evening show, so I was able to watch their press conference. In another hour, I was back at my station, arms folded, cap falling off the back of my head, as the evening crowd poured in. Impossible though it seemed, the screaming during the evening show was even louder.
Looking back at that show 60 years on, it is the contagious excitement of the crowd contrasted with the tightly controlled handling of the Beatles that I remember most of all and how, despite that sea of ecstatic chaos, the four maintained their cool. The only time they were free to be themselves was on stage. But surely the joy they released that day still touches everyone who saw them.
A lifelong Beatles fan, Bill Templeman went on to teach school, work for Outward Bound in Canada and the U.S., counsel at-risk youth, travel, paddle to the Arctic Ocean, work in corporate training, marry, raise two kids, all the while pursuing a sporadic career in freelance writing. He now teaches communication at a community college in Peterborough, Ont.
