Live music promotor John Brower telephoned the Apple office and spoke to John Lennon, inviting him and Yoko Ono to the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival taking place the following day.
Brower offered eight first class tickets for the couple and their friends. At the time sales for the festival were slow, and he needed some high profile guests to boost its appeal.
To his surprise, Lennon agreed on the condition that he could perform at the event. An astonished Brower accepted without hesitation.
"We got this phone call on a Friday night that there was a rock’n’roll revival show in Toronto with a 100,000 audience, or whatever it was, and that Chuck was going to be there and Jerry Lee and all the great rockers that were still living, and Bo Diddley, and supposedly The Doors were top of the bill. (John Lennon, 1969
Anthology)
They were inviting us as king and queen to preside over it, not play – but I didn’t hear that bit. I said, ‘Just give me time to get a band together,’ and we went the next morning."
Lennon called Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White, each of whom agreed to fly to Canada the next day. Clapton wasn’t Lennon’s first choice as guitarist, however.
When the Plastic Ono Band went to Toronto in September John actually asked me to be in the band, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t really want to be in an avant-garde band, and I knew that was what it was going to be. They just rehearsed on the plane over there. (George Harrison Anthology - via Beatlesbible)
