Rock For All Ages
Paul Butterfield Blues Band doing its magic on The New Penelope stage, 1968
It was not until 1971 that the legal drinking age in Quebec was lowered from 21 to 18. This policy makes The New Penelope all the more popular with the under-21 crowd at the time. Michael Cahill was one of these regulars, a young high school senior who was lucky to live not far from the coffeehouse. His friends would gather at his place before walking over to concerts by some of their favourite bands, such as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Listen to the audio clip with transcript: “Walking over to The New Penelope”.
Michael Nerenberg and Michael Bunting also remember hanging out with The Fugs, after one of their shows:
Now, my place, we had a party with The Fugs that was right out of Reefer Madness. If you were to make a movie and warn somebody about drugs, that’s the party. It was, you know, the strobes were going everywhere, there was a punch bowl with LSD, there were hash brownies, there was Tuli [Kupferburg] and Ed Sanders [of The Fugs] .. They were living their music!
― Michal Nerenberg (interview with ARCMTL, June 3, 2021)
The Fugs at The New Penelope, 1967
A handbill for The Fugs concert at The New Penelope, 1968
Peter Lebensold is just starting to publish his film magazine Take One in the winter of 1967 when he walks past The New Penelope and takes a chance on an unknown performer listed on the marquee:
(…) it was spelled J-O-N-I Mitchell and I remember very clearly not having any idea whether that was Johnny or Joanie. And, in fact, I probably assumed it was Johnny Mitchell, and walking in and to my recollection, there were maybe 10 people sitting there, almost all guys, I think. And there she was, you know, 10 feet away. […] And, you know, and with the long hair and very California looking and sweet, and we all fell in love.
― Peter Lebensold (interview with ARCMTL, 2021)
Extract of The New Penelope newsletter, February 1968
Pierre Huet was a young student attending as many shows as he could, at The New Penelope, in 1967 and 1968, receiving a veritable education in songwriting from the legends he saw perform there. By 1974, he was writing songs with the Montreal rock band Beau Dommage, whose success was recognized in 2017, when the band members, including Huet, were inducted into the Canadian Songwriting Hall of Fame. Hear Pierre Huet talk about seeing Joni Mitchell at The New Penelope:
Listen to the audio clip with transcript: “The New Penelope Goddess”.
Even though The New Penelope had an all-ages policy, some of its younger clients still feared what their parents would think about them going to a downtown concert venue. Montreal artist Susan Shulman explains:
I only went to the places that didn’t serve alcohol. That’s why I was at the Prag and The Penelope. It was the classic story of, I told my parents I was staying at my friend’s house, and they told their parents they were staying at my house. Eventually they talked to each other. But we’d be at these places, with these friends, all night long. That would have been on weekends, Friday or Saturday nights. There was always music playing at The Penelope. It was always packed.
― Susan Shulman (interview with ARCMTL, June 2015)
Young crowd at a concert at The New Penelope, 1968