Nobody else turned up. So they went home.

The next day at 3PM the phone went again. "It's all on again - get to the airport." So off went Klaus again, and waited.

Finally Terry Doran located Eric Clapton late in the evening - after trying all the clubs in town and then realizing Eric was in bed, not answering the phone - and Eric,Klaus, Alan, John and Yoko all met at the airport and boarded a plane to Toronto.

And the Plastic Ono Band was formed.

Of all the things that have happened in pop music in the last ten years, the Plastic Ono Band is surely the strangest. Try to book them for a personal appearance on stage and the chances are - if you're lucky enough to get anywhere- you won't know what you're getting.

You may be lucky enough to get Lennon and Yoko and Klaus and Eric and Ringo. Or you may only get Lennon and Yoko, or Lennon and Eric or a combination of any three.

For the Plastic Ono Band doesn't really exist. So far, under that name, they have produced two singles - "Give Peace a Chance" and "Cold Turkey" - and done one live appearance. And from all these the only consistent members of the "group" have been John, Eric and Klaus.

Klaus recalls the first trip to Toronto with much amusement. "Apparently John had met some people on his last visit when he did 'Give Peace a Chance' who suddenly phoned and asked him to appear at the concert. He said he couldn't because he didn't have a band. They said, 'Of course you can - don't worry.' So he phoned 'round everyone he knew and liked working with to see if we were free." Up until this time, Klaus and Eric had both done a lot of session work for Apple.

"When John phoned, I was really quite excited and very pleased. It sounded like such a good idea - even though none of us had ever played together on a stage before. On the plane going over, we tried to vaguely rehearse. We picked out chords on the guitar - which you couldn't hear because we had no place to plug in - and of course Alan didn't have his drums on the plane with him. So really when we walked out on the stage it was a glorified jam session. John had stood in the dressing room - which was admittedly rather tatty - beforehand saying, 'What am I doing here? I could have gone to Brighton!' After all, it was rather a long way to go for one concert. But the feeling when we all got out on stage and started playing together was truly fantastic."

"Cold Turkey", the latest offering from the band, has moved quite a long way from its original inception. Klaus: "The first time we did it, it started with John playing very straight rhythm guitar. Then we did tracks with drums and bass. In the end we had loads of incredible guitar pieces, and when we finally finished we scrapped nearly all the original ideas and got back to a very hard, tight sound which everyone was pleased with."

Whether the Plastic Ono Band is here to stay, whether it will fritter away into a dream, or whether it will actually form itself into a complete group is rather in the lap of the gods.

Klaus: "John is really quite vague about it at the moment. So far there hasn't been any trouble with recording sessions. Eric and I have always managed to be free when we're required for sessions and it really is a matter of a last-minute phone call from John. Nobody ever plans sessions months ahead. You see the great thing is, we have no contract to say we are a group. We are just friends playing together. And that is such a marvelous way to work. There's no pressure on us and because of that, much better things get done. In fact, the first thing ever to come out as the Ono Band was very nearly a ridiculous jam session we all did at the studios one day when everyone was just fiddling about! I don't know whether John wants to make anything permanent out of it. He didn't set it up with the idea that 'this is a band'. And the last thing anyone wants is to see something like this take on such a steady, fixed position that it might split up the Beatles. This way, John can do what he wants to within the confines of the Beatles. Just as he can do his films and his peace thing, just as Paul can record Mary Hopkin and George can record Billy Preston or Jackie Lomax. As things are at the moment, each one of us - John, Eric or myself - are free to do anything we want to."