By David Topping

Bruce Springsteen. Queen. The Ramones. Ozzy Osbourne. Genesis. Yes. The Jacksons. At—or near—the peaks of their careers, in the mid-’70s through the mid-’80s, they all rolled through Toronto. The venues they played are now either long gone or much-transformed: the New Yorker Theatre, for instance, is now the Panasonic; Maple Leaf Gardens awaits its grocery store; and Exhibition Stadium stood then where BMO Field does now.
In the audience to shoot them all was then-adolescent photographer Tony Makepeace. Makepeace spent a decade lurching from concert to concert, lugging along either a Nikon F, Nikon F2, or Pentax Spotmatic F. “The Nikons had huge heavy motor drives attached to them,” he explains. “The Pentax had a 500mm lens…it required a huge wooden tripod which they actually let me bring into Maple Leaf Gardens and set up in the seats. Unthinkable now….I’m surprised my spine still functions after decades of lugging that gear around.”
For the shots he got, though, it was worth it. A selection of photos is above; Makepeace’s current project, Panoramaist, appears regularly on Torontoist.
Photos by Tony Makepeace.