Another group that Borley developed was Nazareth, a Scottish Rock Band from the 1980s that still tours today in 2008.
Nazareth was enjoying a Canadian tour, which ended in Victoria, British Columbia, yet another sold out show, before leaving for the Australian leg of their World Tour. The night before, they played to 20,000 screaming fans, dancing and singing along with the band. Nazareth had a successful show at the Pacific Coliseum, when they got word that Deep Purple was playing the next night in town. The band chose to stay in Vancouver to attend Borley's sold-out show featuring the famous band, instead of flying to Victoria for their own gig.
Nazareth was standing in the wing clapping along with the band, while 12,000 wet fans were waiting outside the Victoria arena to get into their show. Harvey became enraged after seeing the crowd, so much so that he arranges to steal the band's equipment off the airliner leaving for Australia. The start to the band's Australian and New Zealand tour began with no gear. The band shows up, no gear, no show.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up at Borley's residence, and knowing about the band's poor behaviour of not showing up in Victoria, proceeds to inform him that the equipment that was removed off the jet was in bond and belonged to the Canadian Government at this point -- Borley could not dispose of the equipment. The equipment was sitting in his brother-in-law's garage for 3 weeks until compensation is worked out to Harvey's satisfaction.
Nazareth writes a song about Borley called "Vancouver Shakedown", and Borley starts a recording company called Astro Records, and writes and releases a tune called "Messin' with the Bull Gets You the Horn".
To this day, some 20-some-odd years later, the group Nazareth takes the position that they were in the right; and never in the wrong for showing the disrespect to their fans, and breaching their contract with Borley.
Borley's side of the story had been documented by the press of the day.
This once mighty band has been renegade to the status of a bar band, having troubles filling a three hundred seat venue, a far cry from Borley's twenty or thirty thousand seater sold out shows on an almost nightly basis.
Hmmm.
To: Harvey Borley
ReplyDeleteI am trying to put together a time line chart for a reunion of old friends and putting it on a wall chart displaying all the concerts we attended in the mid 70’s before we all went our separate ways. I have a question that I think maybe only you could answer. It won’t take long.
We all went to 2 Nazareth concerts around 74/75. I would like to know the exact dates. They were both supposed to be in the Pacific Coliseum but one ended up in the Agrodome. I don’t know which one or why it was moved.
I remember they wrote that song about your dealings/disputes and your response lyrics about the bull and horn, good one. According to Pete Agnew you actually had 2 disputes with them before they wrote that song. I was at the Deep Purple/E.L.O./Elf concert on Sunday Nov. 17, 1974, and I remember it was raining a lot. Is the previous night [the 16th ] the night Nazareth played a concert and then failed to go to Victoria the next night? Also was this the first “dispute” Pete mentions or the second. According to all I have been able to find they played the Coliseum on June 13, 1974 with B.O.C. and then again on Sept. 26, 1975 with Rush. No mention of the night before Deep Purple. Which was the other “dispute” date? Maybe that could narrow it down for me as to which ones we all went to.
If Nov.16th was indeed a Nazareth concert, who was the backup that night?
I can’t find any reference to a Nov. 16th concert or of any move to the Agrodome. Maybe one of the other dates was the moved one?? A CUPE stike maybe?? I do recall going to 2 concerts back to back one rainy weekend in 74 that’s about all. Gee I wonder why it’s all fuzzy now. It was the 70’s.