It was the time, it was the feeling!
Political awareness was sweeping the world. It was a time of peace marches, civil rights, and the birth of the environmental movement. Benefit concerts were a rarity, and this one was started as a last-ditch effort to end nuclear bomb testing.
The following is an excerpt from a liner note essay by Barbara Stowe, daughter of Greenpeace co-founder, the late Irving Stowe. Read it in its entirety in a 48-page book with concert and Amchitka campaign photos available with your purchase of Amchitka, the 1970 concert that launched Greenpeace. This great CD also includes a second narrative and current photos on Greenpeace today. BUY NOW
At 8 p.m. on October 16th 1970, night has fallen and it’s dark outside the Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver’s largest concert arena, but inside all is bright and tinged with the adrenaline buzz of ten thousand ticket-holders. A pungent potpourri of patchouli, sandalwood and Acapulco Gold is wafting through the stadium. My mother, flanked by my fifteen-year-old brother and me, is sitting in the front row of chairs lined up in front of the stage. Every seat has been taken, and those unwilling to sit in the stands are plunking themselves down in the aisles and on the floor in front of us, with scant resistance from volunteer ushers.
Shortly after eight the house lights dim and a raucous cheer erupts as Terry David Mulligan, deejay of local rock station CKVN, saunters onstage. The whole arena is humming, vibrating with anticipation. I slip off my chair and slide into the crush of bodies on the floor. A shiver of expectation shakes my whole body. Can this really, finally, be happening?
When my father said he was going to organize “a rock concert” I thought he’d gone out of his mind. Dad had never organized a concert before, and the thought of my middle-aged father dealing with rock stars was just sad. Besides, it was absurd to think that anyone would play for free for an obscure little group which a local journalist had sniggeringly characterized as a handful of “eco-freaks and beardies.” “I’d like to introduce…Mr. Irving Stowe.”