This legendary Toronto music promoter opened an art gallery for his rock memorabilia

After witnessing the magic of Woodstock, legendary music promoter John Brower, then a 22-year-old student, realized he wanted to bring the same raw, unfiltered rock-and-roll spirit back home to Toronto. Within a month, the fresh-faced Brower—whose only prior experience in the music business was playing with his high school band, the Diplomats—used his slick, fast-talking confidence to sell Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley on the idea of performing at an outdoor festival in Toronto. “When I reached their agents on the phone in New York and let them know I had both money and a venue, boom, they were available,” he says.

The result was the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert, a one-day music festival at Varsity Stadium on September 13, 1969, where John Lennon performed a hastily rehearsed and much-derided show with the newly formed Plastic Ono Band and Alice Cooper threw a chicken into the crowd. The event was a haphazard spree of legendary performances by rock’s biggest names, and it helped put Toronto on the map as a major destination for international acts.

Brower spent the ensuing decades bringing luminaries like Eric Clapton, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis to the city and co-founding the Rockpile Club. Then, in the 2010s, he shifted his attention to the art world. Now he runs Venice Modern Art, a rotating pop-up gallery where he shows the sought-after rock memorabilia he’s collected over the years. Until January 31, the Skulls and Vinyl exhibition, featuring Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artwork for California punk band the Offs’ debut album, is on at Charles Puma Gallery (624 King Street West). Here, Brower shares the colourful stories behind some of the artworks on view.

Monterey Pop Festival, 1967

“The artwork for this poster was supposedly drawn by all four Beatles—mostly John and Paul—while on acid. The original is owned by my friend Tom Wilkes, who was the art director at the Monterey Pop Festival and, later, at A&M Records. Tom lived up in Topanga Canyon, and he hung the drawing—which was small, about six by eight inches—with a clothespin in his kitchen. He gave me a copy and said, ‘You can do whatever you want with this.’ His daughter later auctioned off the original. Lou Adler, a record producer who co-founded the Monterey Pop Festival, bought it from her and donated it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I made a giant poster of my copy and displayed it in 2014 at the Hard Rock Cafe on Yonge Street.”

Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, 1969

“Fortunately, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent and Bo Diddley were all around on September 13—but we couldn’t get anyone to care. Ticket sales were a nightmare–absolute crickets. The week before the show, we had sold only 2,000 out of 20,000 tickets. The Eatons helped finance the show but pulled out because of how bad sales were.

“We had initially asked Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer to emcee, but Kim said, ‘You can’t cancel this show. It’s a classic. Call John Lennon. I’ve got his number right here. Ask him and Yoko to be the MCs. Rodney and I will step aside.’ John Lennon comes on the phone and says, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it. I’ll put a band together.’ Once Lennon landed in Toronto, CHUM radio went ballistic and devoted non-stop coverage to the news, which drove a massive last-minute rush. People were climbing over the north wall to get into the stadium that day.”

Strawberry Fields Festival, 1970

“After the Revival, I was in England, and I called up John Lennon with some hash I’d bought in Istanbul. He told me to come over, and we talked about doing another big festival in Toronto that summer. Yoko immediately chirped out, ‘Yes, yes, for peace.’

“We drafted a letter that gave me the authority to raise capital for a show and a letter from John Lennon requesting a meeting with prime minister Pierre Trudeau. They’d previously tried to meet with him during their Montreal bed-in in May of 1969 but had been unsuccessful. At the time, John and Yoko had just launched their War Is Over campaign, and I proposed adding Toronto as a stop. We organized a press conference at the Ontario Science Centre on December 17, 1969, where they discussed their peace campaign and announced plans for the festival in Toronto. Six days later, on December 23, we were able to arrange a meeting with prime minister Trudeau at his Ottawa office, where John and Yoko could appear as official global ambassadors for peace—not just rock stars. What was meant to be a five-minute courtesy call lasted roughly an hour.”

Heatwave Festival, 1980

“In 1979, Gary Topp and Gary Cormier—known as the Garys—opened a club on Gerrard East called the Edge, where they would bring in new wave bands. After seeing how popular these shows were, I wanted to put on a new wave show. I was able to get Elvis Costello to headline, then all the other bands fell into place: the Pretenders, the Clash, Talking Heads, the B-52s and the Rumour. My investors floated the idea of offering a movie deal to the Clash, but the band was so disgusted that they cancelled their appearance.

“It turned out to be a magnificent show on the hottest day of the summer. Dan Aykroyd was there, and he did a radio interview as Elwood Blues from The Blues Brothers, inviting everyone listening to come and be on my guest list. Fifteen thousand people showed up in the next hour and a half. We had 60,000 to 70,000 people there. I heard later that the Clash were really upset that they had cancelled.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Offs’ First Record, 1984

“The Offs were a post-punk band formed in San Francisco in the late 1970s. They were a horn band, more like the Specials. Early on, the band became close friends with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Basquiat made a painting for their record jacket in 1981, and Warhol helped them get signed when they couldn’t get a record deal in New York. Andy called David Ferguson, a legendary record producer in San Francisco—who had Bad Brains and a bunch of other punk bands on his label—and said, ‘David, you’ve got to sign this band.’ David agreed.

“In the ’90s, when Basquiat died, David realized how much attention he was getting, and he resurrected the Offs’ project in 2001 by releasing more copies. In 2015, we acquired the rights to the Basquiat image. I decided to press some records, rent a little art space and go to Art Basel to see if they would sell. We sold 500 copies, at $1,500 each, within three months. Then I thought, Well, let’s pull the record out and frame the cover as an art piece on the wall. That started to attract more attention. I lent these to the Art Gallery of Ontario for their Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition in 2015, then took them to France, to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, in 2018.”