Klaatu was a Canadian rock trio led by vocalist, songwriter and drummer Terry Draper, who formed around 1975 along with John Woloschuk and Dee Long. The band’s main claim to fame was that for a brief period a rumour circulated that Klaatu might actually be the Beatles in disguise. The first single by Klaatu - whose name was that of the robot alien in the classic 50s movie The Day The Earth Stood Still - was ‘Doctor Marvello/California Jam’, a minor hit in Canada on Daffodil Records and picked up in the USA by Island Records. Switching to Capitol Records in 1976, the band released a single titled ‘Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft’. Along with its b-side ‘Sub Rosa Subway’ and the accompanying album, Klaatu (titled 3:47 E.S.T. in Canada), the band’s sound closely resembled that of the latter-day Beatles, and when the trio included no biographical material with its recordings, and supplied its record company with no information about themselves, a US journalist surmised that it might very well be the Beatles. The band did nothing to stem the rumours and Rolling Stone named Klaatu ‘hype of the year’ for 1977. While the story aided sales of their debut album, when it was revealed that Klaatu was indeed just Klaatu, sales of their future recordings diminished. The song ‘Calling Occupants...’ did eventually attain chart status in the hands of the Carpenters when, in 1977, it reached the US Top 40 and UK Top 10, and is now classified as ‘The Recognized Anthem Of World Contact Day’. Klaatu meanwhile, carried on working until 1981 when, after releasing four further albums, they eventually disbanded. Dee Long is very successful in software animation technology, Draper has his own roofing business and Woloschuk is an accountant.
