The middle-aged men greet each other warmly. Hugs and sly, diffident laughter fill a Toronto studio on a bitterly cold day last December. Four members of Janis Joplin's group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, meet for the first time in 30 years. Richard Bell, John Till, Brad Campbell and Ken Pearson accompanied Joplin on the Festival Express in the summer of 1970. And on this day 33 years later, they're about to be interviewed for a film that will finally document their exploits.
That summer of 1970 witnessed one of the greatest, yet largely unheralded chapters in popular music. It was the summer the Festival Express train travelled from Toronto to Calgary carrying a crazed load of musicians, promoters, groupies, filmmakers and journalists. The Festival Express was a trip that forever marked and transformed lives. Festival Express, a documentary film about that wild ride, premieres this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The Festival Express was the brainchild of Ken Walker and his well-heeled associate Thor Eaton, a scion of the retail colossus. The descendant of Russian immigrants who had been jewellers to the czars, Walker was 24 years old in 1970, a recent commerce graduate. Walker had gained fame in 1969 when he surprised the world by convincing John Lennon to play at the Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival.
In the winter of 1970, Walker conceived a plan that would wed Canada's mythic railway origins with all the locomotive lore of rock 'n' roll. He envisioned a train that would convey the world's greatest rock performers to a series of concerts between Montreal and Vancouver. When Janis Joplin signed on, enthusiastic about touring Canada in style with her hot new Canadian group, Walker's dream gained inexorable momentum.
By the spring, the Festival Express was ready to roll with a dream lineup: Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead, Ian and Sylvia (along with their influential country-rock band, the Great Speckled Bird), Buddy Guy, Traffic, Ten Years After, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Tom Rush and Eric Andersen were all aboard. In addition, a crack team of filmmakers and audio engineers was ready to document the proceedings on stage and aboard the Festival Express itself for a proposed film.
Little did Walker and company know that politics and commerce were about to bedevil their plans and unleash a pattern of loss, bitterness and litigation that would result in immediate financial disaster for the promoters and ultimately delay completion of the proposed film for three decades.
Director Bob Smeaton and cameraman Stephen Hall stand around Ken Walker, enthralled as the now fiftysomething Walker parts his thinning hair. He exposes a bullet exit wound. It's the remnant of a failed suicide attempt that followed a series of business and personal setbacks in the 1980s and 90s.
The British filmmakers step back in a blend of horror and laughter. Despite it all, Walker, the rock 'n' roll legend behind the Festival Express, remains a captivating presence, recalling those events of more than 30 years ago with a sardonic sense of humour.
In the spring of 1970, the Festival Express ran afoul of the politics surrounding Quebec separatism. Then Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau was appalled that the first Festival Express show was scheduled for June 24 -- the festival of St. Jean Baptiste, the calendar day of Quebec nationalism. Supposedly worried about street fights between anglo hippies and independentistes, Drapeau cancelled the show. Walker and Eaton were then told the city fathers would not approve a show in Vancouver. So the bands settled on a three-city tour: Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary.
The Festival Express concerts finally began in Toronto on June 27 and 28. Much to the dismay of Walker and Eaton, a riot was brewing. Vietnam war protesters, enraged by the killing of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent Sate University in Ohio the previous month, targeted the Festival Express as a "corporate rip-off."
Tickets for two days of premier bands were $14. The May 4th Movement, named for the date of the Kent State shootings, led a charge for "free music." Its adherents battled police and their horses outside Exhibition Stadium. The Grateful Dead eventually placated the protesters by playing for free on the back of a flatbed truck in a nearby park. Inside the stadium, a crowd of about 20,000 gathered on the football field and grooved.
The dissonance between the hassle outside the gates and the good times and great music inside also prevailed in Winnipeg and Calgary. In Winnipeg, angry musicians denounced the media for trumpeting the protests. Backstage at the Calgary show, Walker punched out then mayor Ken Sykes when the latter jumped on the "free-music" bandwagon. But while the promoters and filmmakers lost their shirts, the musicians and many fans had a ball. The party never stopped.
Sylvia Tyson looks at a photo album proffered by Walker. There's a stunning black-and-white close-up of her and Ian, her former husband, singing at a single microphone, their eyes locked together. In that image from Festival Express, they look like the most beautiful couple on Earth. Sylvia Tyson declines Walker's offer to continue studying the album he's prepared with one of his children. She readies her hair and makeup for an interview with the film crew.
In 1970, aboard the Festival Express itself, musicians played, drank and got high all the way to Calgary. The promoters set up rolling studios in a couple of cars. The film footage of Buddy Guy, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, Rick Danko of the Band, Joplin and the Tysons reveals skilled musicians deeply imbued with traditional American music. Danko and Joplin were ringleaders of a bacchanal driven by booze and a plethora of psychedelics obtained in ever-rockin' Winnipeg.
Festival Express is in part a cautionary tale. Joplin foreshadowed her doom from the stage in Calgary when she bellowed, "Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking thing." A scant three months after that Calgary concert, she was found dead, having overdosed on heroin in a Hollywood motel room at age 26. Her demise is hinted at in Festival Express footage that sometimes reveals an exhausted, vacant look as she gathers her strength during otherwise incendiary performances.
The Festival Express was perhaps the last gasp of a naive, hippie approach to the business of music. As the decade went on, rock 'n' roll became another branch of a popular-entertainment industry dominated by suits. The whole experience so soured Walker that he hung up his rock 'n' roll shoes forever after the Calgary show.
Following the concerts, the original film producers sued each other, leading to the abandonment of the documentary project. Then in 1994, the film work print was unearthed in a Rosedale garage by some Toronto filmmakers. A few years later, the film negative and state-of-the-art audiotapes were mysteriously recovered at the National Archives of Canada. The just-completed documentary was largely financed in Europe.
It was a once in a lifetime party. It was the kind of party you'll never forget, the kind of party you'll tell your grandkids about. Documentary filmmaker James Cullingham is a professor at the School of Communication Arts, Seneca College. He was the story consultant on Festival Express and is featured briefly in the film. In 1970, he attended the Toronto shows. Cullingham bought his ticket.
Festival Express will be screened Sept. 9 and 13 at The Toronto International Film Festival.