Barbara Stowe on the concert that launched Greenpeace

By John Mackie, Vancouver Sun

Irving and Dorothy were key figures in the Don't Make a Wave group which founded Greenpeace in 1970. The money to send a protest ship to Amchitka Island was largely raised through a concert Irving Stowe arranged for Oct. 16, 1970 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. A tape of the show has just been released by Greenpeace.

Sun: I understand your dad used to tape live shows in the early 60s in New York.

Barbara Stowe: He was from Rhode Island. He used to drive up to New York every weekend and go to jazz clubs and stuff. He had one of the first so-called portable tape recorders, that took two men to carry. He'd drag it into clubs and he would ask the performers if he could tape them for personal use. They trusted him and he did that. Louis Armstrong wanted to hear himself on that tape recorder, so dad went to Louis' hotel room the next morning. Louis came out in a robe drinking orange juice and they played the tape.

Sun: Someone told me that he taped Bob Dylan before he had a record deal.

Stowe: I wish. [It's] not true. He taped Art Tatum, Buddy Rich...Louis Armstrong singing with Diana Washington, I think.

Sun: So how did your dad tape the Greenpeace show?

Stowe: He didn't tape it. During the concert, he saw a tape recorder under the stage. He went to the sound engineer, Dave Zeffertt of Kelly-Deyong Sound, and said 'Dave are you taping this?' Dave said 'Yes, I tape all my concerts, so I can learn from them and improve my work.' And dad said 'We've got to tell the performers. But if they give you permission to keep that for personal use, I want a copy.'

They all gave permission, except for Chilliwack's manager. So we never had a portion of the tape that had Chilliwack on it, unfortunately. In the last year Bill Henderson searched valiantly for that portion of he tape, the master.

We played [the Greenpeace show] in our living room from time to time. It had been recorded on a Revox, these great big silver reels. My dad was a stereo fanatic, he had to have the best, which was good.

Anyway he transferred it at one point to cassette, or my brother [Robert] did. Over the years we'd play it occasionally for friends, or Greenpeace people who dropped by. Finally my brother transferred it to CD as a Christmas present for my mother and I, and gave us copies. He's very meticulous, he timed all the songs and everything.

He basically made a prototype, and went to Greenpeace and said 'You know, if you got permission, this is a prototype you could use.' So they did.

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