Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob left Hid the podcast. My guests today are Johnny Fay and Bob Baker of Tragically Hit, who have a new four part documentary on Amazon Prime.
Gentlemen, what do you think of the documentary?
I think Mike Downey did a fantastic job. He's Gord Downey's older brother. We've known him since since they first moved to Kingston, our hometown. They all showed up at our high school one year and we, you know, we became friends with Paul and Gored became best buddies right away, and Mike Downey was in our year and we've known him a long time. He knows all the ins and outs of the band and wasn't afraid to go to
the the dark places, the more unexplored places. But I think he did it in a very fair and balanced kind of way. We were allowed to be very vulnerable with him. We knew what he wanted to do, and he brought out a lot of the vulnerability and we were allowed to be truthful basically.
And Johnny, yeah, I feel the same way. Mike actually was thinking about it when I was doing an interview the other day that I met Mike before I met any other of the Downy clan, and it was really funny. I was in grade eight and Robbie would remember that he and another guy, Hugh Douglas Murray and some other people used to do ski trips and we'd all go on the ski trips, and of course, you know, music and skiing and drinking too much French beer goes hand
in hand in Canada. And so I remember getting the clearance from my parents that I could go on the ski trip, and someone said that's the guy you need to talk to. And so I went up to Mike Downey and said, can I come on this ski trip? And he said, I don't see why not.
Yeah.
Absolutely. You know, I wasn't in high school yet, and I was talking to Mike the other day and it wasn't his ski trip. He was just tagging. He was tagging along himself. But you know when you're in a room with somebody who's just so exuberant, and so yeah, absolutely, And he's always been that guy. He's always been the guy who's been really positive about things. Yeah, come on in,
it'd be great. And he's also a really interesting brother because he's not the kind of brother that would hang out at every single gig, and he was kind of the ultimate fly on the wall. He knew the ins and outs of the band, but he also didn't hang out too much. He'd disappear and then he would reappear and you'd see him a couple of weeks later and he would say, Hey, that was a great gig in Boston. I didn't come backstage because it was mental and we just hung up with our friends at a local bar.
But good gig, and then you wouldn't see him for another eight months or something like that. So when he became a filmmaker, it was kind of a no brainer. Robbie and I talked about this a long time ago and said, you know, we got to really manage the ship and getting Jake involved and of course having people help us tell our story is just a logical step. So yeah, what Robbie's saying is bang on that. Having Mike do it was just a no brainer.
So what is the genesis of the documentary? How did it come together? And why now.
We had in the wake of hearing about the Universal Fire, Johnny and I got in touch with each other. I was in Rome at the time and we thought we had lost a lot of stuff in that fire, and it kind of after Gored died, we all went our separate ways to grieve and figure out what we were going to do with our lives, which was a terrible idea. You know, we did everything together, we shared everything, our whole lives, and then at the moment when it was
probably most important, we all went our separate ways. But the Universal Fire lit a fire under us to get our affairs in order, and we started an archiving process and we tracked down all our master tapes. Through the archiving process, it just seemed now is the time. If we're ever going to do a coffee table book or some kind of tell our story properly and honestly, now is the time. And Mike proposed this idea for an Amazon documentary and he had no problem getting Amazon on
board and we were off. So the archiving. The fire led to the archiving. The archiving led to the book in the documentary.
Okay, a couple of things. Did you lose anything in the Universal Fire?
You know, it's funny, Robby, I want you to tell that story of you and I having a little chat and you picked up the new York Times and I think you read it to me and from Rome and who are we sandwiched? But we were sandwiched between some bands.
It said the people who'd lost stuff in the fire, and it said meltor May, the Tragically Hip and the Von Trapp family singers. That was like, well Eastern great company. But we said about you know, we set the ball in motion trying to find this stuff and very fortunately we were spared. But what a disaster for the music industry. Truly horrible.
You did mention the book. There's also coming out subsequent to the documentary. I certainly have a copy. It's a big coffee table book. Tell us the story of the band. Tell me about the book.
That's Robbie.
Yeah, we talked about doing something for a long time. We've had a lot of great photographers through the years, and we would sort of become we're a family operation. For management, even record company people, they become extended family and photographers. We work with the same photographers over and over because they're people that we like, and they can be in the room with us and they can be
shooting and you don't even know they're there. And we just thought at some point we should feature this, and we talked about it many times on the bus, but when we were doing the archiving, it just seemed this is a natural extension, This is our end, this is the moment when this becomes a viable project. And I pushed hard to work with Genesis Publishing out of London
because I'm a big fan of their books. You know, I've got I can see right now, books of theirs that I've got on Laurel Canyon and moon Age day Dream, the Nick Rock photographs of David Bowie, and lots of tons of great books. The Beatles in India. They just do such a first rate job. They don't cut corners there, you know, they truly are collector's items books, and I just I'm always about that, like the quality is the most important thing. So Genesis was an easy choice on
my part. And I also thought, having read a countless of these books, that there are a couple of things that really appealed to me. One was the Beatles anthology, where it's really in their words. There are a few other people mal Evans and George Martin, but it's true the inner circle and the story is told in their own words. And the other thing was the Beastie Boys book where the conflicting opinions are on full display. You know, I thought that was a great album. Someone else says
that was a terrible record. I thought that's got to be right front and center.
Okay. Mike was in charge of the documentary who did the interviews, And Gordon Downe, who of course is longer with us, is also in the book. Who assembled the book.
The book was largely assembled by Genesis. I worked with Genesis. You know, they're in England, so it was a lot of early mornings for me to be on calls with them. But it was about a two year project, almost a two year project with them. A lot of the interviews were culled from the documentary. Each of us did about fifteen hours of interviews, and the Gordon Downey interviews were largely taken from contemporaneous interviews.
You know, when we're.
Out touring a record or promoting a new album or something, go would have been a front and center, very in demand for interviews, so there was lots of that.
Okay. So, Johnny, in the book, it tells the story of your mother driving you to the Berkeley College of Music. Can you tell that story from my audience.
Yeah, that's a good one. I remember sort of just getting ready to I've been playing drums for a good four years and I was very, very into it. And my drum teacher had told my mom at the time that it was imperative that I stopped listening to Stuart Copeland, which every guy who played the drums in the eighties was listening to the great Stuart Copeland. I mean, he was like the guy you wanted to look like him, You wanted to be like him. You you'd I taped my hands like him. I did it all, just like
everybody else in the eighties. And so I was looking at a brochure one day and I kept on looking, you know, at it, and it was from the Berkeley College of Music, which I had I had written away, and they sent one up and I had a great summer program. I'm sure they still do. And my mom said, what are you doing this summer? And I said, well, I don't really, I don't really know, just kind of kick around. And she said, you know, pack your stuff up and we'll take a trip tomorrow. And I had
no idea. And so we get in the car and we start driving. You know Watertown sarrahcuse, you know, Binghamton, and then you know, we start cutting over and she said, we'll go and and we'll go check out the Berkeley College of Music. And in those days, in the eighties, it was Roxbury was not a great sort of place to be, you know, touring around and and my mom just drove right through it, right up to the front door of Berkeley College of Music. We sparked right there
and said let's go in. So we walk in and my mom said, my son would like to go to the summer program here. And we were stopped by a guy by the name of Ed Sandon. I'll never forget him. He was just such a lovely, lovely man. Who's the painter with the hair that Bob what's his name? He kind of looked like him with a mustache and he said Bob Ross. Yeah, Bob Ross. He looked like him, you know, very approachable and very nice. And he was
from New Hampshire. And he said, well, you can't just show up, and my mom said, well, we've driven all the way from Canada. Could you at least hear my son. Now, she didn't say where in Canada, And so he might have thought, Oh God, they've driven all the way from Vancouver. So anyway, I go, I do a little audition for him. He walks there, he goes, Actually he's he's a good little drummer. I think we could find a place for him here, and well, uh, you know, get them set
up in the dormitory. I didn't know anyone from you know, a bar soap, and and so there we were. I was on Boilston Street for the summer of nineteen eighty four, and he said, go go get your drums and I'll show you where you put them. And my mom said,
we'll be right back. And we didn't have any drums, and we went across the street to had great music stores in those days in Boston, just like lined up great drum drack Jack's Drum Shop, which was right around the corner from you know where the uh base where the baseball Yeah, Fentware Fenway as you can see Fenway from there. And then Daddy's Junkie Music was across the street. So we went in and I got a little kit,
a little slingering kit, and it was perfect. And my mom, I might never forget I had those drums, and she got in the car and she split and she knew I was going to be good. And I went in and I had the greatest summer of music. I really was that. I was like, I'm doing it. And then when I got home, I had a couple of weeks and then my mom said, oh, somebody's phoned and asked you if you would audition for a band. And I said, well, okay, great, and she said it's a guy by the name of
Doug Downey and I said, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So then, like I remember, like four days later, I said it wasn't Gore down and she goes, that's it. That's the guy. That's the guy. You'll phone his numbers right over there, and I was like, oh, four days said they've got a new drummer by now, like I just uh, and I gave up. I gave a phone call and they said go up to Robbie's house and audition, and so that was that. That was October of nineteen
eighty four. So that's how that sort of all came together.
Okay, a little bit slower. You went across the street to buy drums. Did you not own any drums?
I did own some drums, but we didn't know that I was going to get in, so we were just going. I think my mom was like, I don't necessarily think my mom thought I was going to get in. She just thought we'll just go down and try, or maybe they have drums down there. You know, it's not the most portable instrument. You know, if I was going to do it over, I definitely play bass or guitar because you unplug and you're with all the girls in like
ten seconds. But you know, the drums you gotta you can have a beer and then you got to take the forty minutes to get it all, you know, torn down. It's like, so I did have drums, but I just I don't know, you know, I just packed clothing and that was that.
Okay, you were there for the summer. Had you spent the summer away from your family previously?
Never?
No, No, So what was that experience like, both culturally and learning about playing the drums?
Well, it was amazing because one of my roommates was a guy that I'm still very close with. His name is John Kimball, and he taught me he was a bass player and he liked Michael Anthony of Van Halen, but Eddie van Halen was his guy. So I got a full summer of Van Halen, which was pretty unbelievable. He would he would put it on and he would explain what Eddie was doing, and you know, he knew some guitar stuff, and I was like, Eddie van Halen, my god, I don't think there's been a guy since
you know. He was like he was coming onto the scene and I got incredible. So I taught him about the Police and I was in DS and he taught me about Van Halen. So that summer was an education in music. One of the great live bands of all time van Halen.
What did you actually learn in class?
I studied some rudiments, and I really it was about playing with other people. You could sort of hook up with other people there, and what I learned about that was that Robbie would agree that, you know, you can practice on your own in your room, but playing with other people, it's like doing ten hours of practice. Just the gelling of being with people. And I think that that really sort of opened me up to understanding that when there is that lightning in the bottle, you know,
you know, recognize it. And we just had something with the hip that was really so organic and so beautiful that just it happened like that. It was really great. So I got to move around and jam with different people. There were jam rooms, so in nineteen eighty four, that was pretty That was pretty amazing. The Berkeley College of Music is just a wonderful place if you really want
to study all kinds of things. But what it taught me was that there's great players and there's not so great players, and if you can sort of figure out where you want to be and where you need to go. I think it was a good sort of view into the work that I needed to do to get better on the drums. So that really helped me. That was the big learning thing for me.
And Rob what was your experience with guitar lessons.
I had an older sister who had a great record collection, and she had classical guitar that she ever touched, and anytime she listened to one of her records, I listened to it twenty times. So I spent a lot of time pretending to play the guitar and leaping off furniture, playing the tennis racket, listening to early led Zeppelin albums and Diamond Dogs by Bowie, and at a certain point I think I said I'm going to do this. And my parents were always very supportive, and they sent me
for guitar lessons. They signed me up for a month of guitar lessons and I went to this guy and he was a very old school He was an evangelical preacher who taught guitar and I did three lessons with him and it came time for the fourth lesson. I said, I'm done. I'm not going back. I don't dig this at all. And my mother said, we've paid for four. You're going to the fourth lesson. You never have to do another one. And I went to my fourth lesson and he was sick and he had a six ten
year old kid filling in for him. I was twelve, and sixteen year old kid taught me bar cords. He taught me jumping jack flash in my first lesson and the intro to Angie and I was like, hello, let's go. I mean, I studied with him for you know, Saturday mornings for about a year, and then I studied with a couple of other people at jazz guy and kind of a prog rock guy for a little bit. But I think I got everything I really needed in about the first four lessons because I was just I was devoted.
For the next four years or five years, I had a guitar in my hand, probably eight to twelve hours a day.
Tell me a little bit deeper what that looked like. You have the guitar in your hand. What were you doing.
That guy, the sixteen year old guy, Jorgan Jensen, he said, always don't put your guitar away. In this case, keep it near when a commercial. If you're watching TV and a commercial comes on, play try and play the commercial or play anything. Just constantly have your hands on the guitar. Then I would go away in the summers, and I have terrible allergies. Summers were miserable for me. So I would sit inside and I would be with my guitar fifteen hours a day, just trying to figure stuff out.
As any young aspiring guitar player does, you know, they sit in their bedroom and they practice and practice and practice. But it's not until you get playing. As Johnny said, you've got to play with other people. It's all you know. It's all well and good, it's a good way to occupy your time, but you're not really getting anywhere until you start collaborating in real time and playing with other people.
So when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I said to go Sinklair, who lived across the street, I'm starting a band and I'm going to be the guitar player, and you're going to play the bass. And he said okay. About three weeks later he had a guitar, had a bass and a n app.
Okay, see it, told Gord Sincleir, you're playing the bass. Did he have any experience playing the bass?
He did not have experience playing the bass. But he was an extremely musical guy. His mother was played piano, not professionally, but she played at parties and things and in church, and his dad had a stand up bass, so Gordon would have goofed around with that. But he was just naturally a good musician. He played the bagpipes at that point. He was actually a very good bagpiper.
He went to an international competition in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished sixth in the world under eighteen, which was pretty impressive. He was a kid, was like fourteen, so he was just a musical guy. You know. He was doing these funny things when we were in grade nine where he'd get two cassette tape recorders and he was bouncing back and forth. He'd play Riders on the Storm on a keyboard on a pump organ that his parents had, and then he'd play that into another tape recorder and overdub
something on top of that. Like he was just thinking that way as a young guy.
Okay, before we get into the band, let's start with location. A lot of Canadians are very familiar with the landscape. A lot of your fians elsewhere or not. You guys are from Kingston. We're in is Kingston?
What is it like? Kingston is right where Lake Ontario meets the Saint Lawrence River, So it's right at the end of the Great Lakes and it's just to short jump over to upstate New York where two hours north to Ottawa, two hours south to Syracuse, two hours east to Montreal, two hours west to Toronto. So it's a nice central location. Smallish town, you know, when we were
growing up, it was about seventy five thousand. It's about one hundred and forty five now, I think, so big enough that there's something to do and small enough that you wouldn't lose your kids.
Now, you guys both still live in that area, right.
I do. Johnny lives in Toronto.
I live in Toronto.
Yeah, So how did you decide to leave Kingston behind?
It wasn't easy, it was I was thinking of making a move. I was actually going to Vancouver, because I don't think any of us have ever gotten a plane and gone to Vancouver have a bad time. It's such a beautiful, beautiful city. I think that Canada doesn't make a lot of sense without Montreal and Vancouver. I always say. So. I was on my way out there and that got derailed and I ended up just going to Toronto. I don't know why. I still I'm still asking myself why.
But I'm in I'm in Toronto, and I missed my days in Kingston. I come, I come down to visit, uh my, you know, my mom, and and it is a beautiful town. It's it's one of the greatest fresh water sailing it is the freshwater sailing capital of the world.
Really.
They have a Canadian regatta called Cork every summer. That's when you kind of know summer's over in Kingston when Cork starts. And so there's a lot of sailing. It's right on Lake Ontario and directly across from Clayton, New York. So I I ended up in Toronto. And yeah, it's not until sort of halfway through the hip, sort of starting touring.
Okay, are you a sailor?
I was a sailor. Yeah. I went to sailing camp before I went to the Berkeley College of Music that bit because that's where all the girls were going. So my buddy had said, oh, these are the girls that are going in July, and these are the girls are going in August. And it was like, okay, well then we'll do it. And you've got these little nutshells, these little boats, and you sailed around, you know, some of the islands. It was. It was actually a great way to spend the summer and get sunburned.
Okay, so you still have kids in school, right, I do. So how many times you've been married?
Just the once? I'm a little allergic to it, Bob, but just the ones.
Okay, So you waited a while. Why did you wait? Were you sewing your wild note? So you hadn't met the right person or what was happening?
I think you know the latter. I think that I would always I was so happy to be in a band and wanted to make sure that I was committed to that. And it was just, you know, the right person, and and of course you never know the way these things shake out. But I wanted to have kids when I had the time, and I think that, you know, I learned a lot about being a dad from four
great dads in the band. You know, they you know, in the early days, they brought their kids on the road, and so I remember I was talking to Robbie's wife about it the other day when Boris, their son, came to Europe in Belgium and Germany, when we played with the Rolling Stones, and then you know, there he was with a lanyard around his neck and it was hitting the floor. He was so small and he was tripping over it. He was just a wee thing, and he
experienced music. And so I got to grow up and have those kids in my life, and then I got to have my own kids. But I learned how to, you know, really be a dad and be a musician. But by the time I was i'd had kids, it was over and you know, there were no absolutes in life. So I'm very thankful for it. Now I've got time to spend with my kids.
And Rob, how many kids do you have?
I just have one son who's an aspiring musician.
He's a great musician. He's a touring musician.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's ask the most important question. Is he off the payroll?
Well? Yeah, for the most part, he just his own home. This summer, moved into his first house. I wouldn't say he's entirely off the payroll. There's a he's got the use of the Mini Cooper, but he's pretty pretty self sufficient. He's got a job that's paying his way, and he's touring as a bass player in a band, and he's kind of the the driving force behind the band.
So he's the Robbie. He's the Robbie of the band really because he's doing all the bookings. And Robbie did all the bookings for the band in the early days. So he's learned. He's got a great mentor there.
And he doesn't have a day job. He's supporting himself as a musician.
No, he does have a day job. He did a master's degree in neuroscience and he works with he works with people who've had brain surgeries. Helping them rehab and doing some physio type of stuff, mirror therapy with them, and he also does analysis for a company that does hallucinogenic therapy for veterans with PTSD. Kind of a big up and coming thing. People, you know, this is a major on the horizon thing.
You guys have toured around the world. A lot of successful acts come from Canada. For those outside of Canada, what do they not understand about Canada?
Can I say it? Johnny?
Yeah, you got to.
Saying used to be I think it was Ronnie Hawkins said in Canada you have to you have to work ten times as hard to get one tenth as far. And I think it's just that the dis between cities to be a touring band in Canada is absolutely grueling. You're contending with huge distances, you're contending with horrific weather, and you know, you go to the States and there's another big city every hour or two hours, and in Canada you might have a fifteen hour drive between gigs.
So it kind of weeds out the people who it's not really for. You know, if you're going to be a touring band in Canada, it's because you really love what you're doing and you're devoted to it, So I think that makes a difference. The other thing I think is that Canadian bands, the example that was set for us by people like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, is that you walk on stage and you're kind of the
same person on stage that you are off stage. It wasn't about the make over or the character that you're playing. It was kind of a singer songwriter vibe even for a band, like you know the guests who are whoever? And I think that makes a difference.
It's grounding, okay to what degree. I mean, I've been to Canada many times. You know, everybody seems to know everybody in Canada. It's like a giant high school and you can't let your ego get too big. Someone's going to step on you. So any other differences that you can point out between Canada and the United States.
I think. I think the cutting down of tall trees. Canada is founded by skinning beavers and cutting down tall trees, and it it's that way to this day. If you get above your station, people get out their access and starting you down. I think the US loves their success stories and the US loves their mythology. Canada loves to blow holes in our own mythology and we don't celebrate our own the way the US does. But I think
we're learning. I think it's improved a lot over the last twenty something years.
Also, I'll throw in that because of the our British influence, the British really can they can take a grudge to the grave. It's just like, yeah, really, that's it. And in America they'll chop you down. But they also love a redemption, which is pretty cool. And you see that a lot. Well, I'm sorry for what I did. Martha Stewart. Look what happened there, she's back on top. I don't know that that would happen. I mean, you're right, our population in Canada is a population of New York State.
In the entire country, that one state is like here we go. So you're right, everyone does seem to know everyone up here. But I would have to throw that in that in the in the United States, you're you're not guaranteed her redemption, but you're it could be tabled. And I like that about America. I think that's that's pretty cool. And in Canada it's like, really, we can forgive, but we'll never forget.
Do you run.
It's kind of run like an Italian family.
So so true, Johnny, you talk about coming back from Berkeley and your mother taking a phone call from Gord.
How did Gordon doug downy? Well, as my dad. My dad was at the university here and I think you know he was going for tenure at the medical school, and they were kind of dancing around it, and he went to he got on a plane and went to Nigeria because they'd offered him the chair of medicine there. And then he got to Nigeria and they said, yep, you've got the job. And then he was at a dinner and this guy said, oh, somebody's been bitten by a snake and they died, and so anyway, I will
continue with the dinner. And my dad said, what was that and the guy said, oh, green, mom, but bit this guy. But you know that happens all the time. And my mom is if she sees a snake on TV, it's like well, so she'd have a heart attack. So there was no going to Africa. But my dad said something to me that was really interesting. Sometimes to come back, you gotta go away. So I'd gone to Berkeley, and without even knowing it, I came back and I was the only guy in town who had been to Berkeley. Now,
I think that carried a little bit of something. And you know, there's great drummers around Kingston even today, and so maybe that that just highlighted my name more than it should have. I don't know. But when I got back and Gord had known me because of the high school, and I'm the same age as his brother Patrick, so maybe Patrick had said something I don't know, and so that's kind of how they came to know me. I don't actually know.
Wow, were you aware of Johnny and playing the drums at the time?
I was not. I was two years ahead of Gordon Paul in high school and five years ahead of Johnny, so I was not that aware. But we had someone who we thought was lined up for drums and it just wasn't working out. There was no he had no time for us, and we just said, well, does anyone know a drummer? And of course our circle was small. We're thinking about our high school basically, you know, not even the city at large. It was more, you know, our neighborhood and Gord or yeah, it would have been.
Gordon said, there's a kid in the high school, Johnny, and I think he just went to Boston to Berkeley, and he's a good drummer. I've heard he's a really good drummer. He said, let's check him out. Very simple, and as Johnny says, he showed up for the first rehearsal and there was already a drum kit in my parents' basement, and he came in and we smoked a couple of joints, and he woke up and he was on the road.
And it was very We should point out that it's Rick McCreary. It was really his gig to give up, because he's a beautiful drummer, a great player, and he was the drummer and Rick in the road. And I think maybe, you know, as I've said a couple of times, I think his dad said to him, you know, why don't you get you know, university under your belt, and then you can go and do all this stuff and and and but go to university and get that out
of the way. His dad was kind of steam pressing him a little bit, and and that just it was his It was really his gig to give up.
But that was that was the thing for all our parents really that certainly my parents Gord's parents, was get university under your belt. You got to have something to fall back on. H So, having no other options and just wanting to be in a band, I thought, well, go to art school. I could do that. That's how bands are formed, isn't it. That's how the you know, Lennon Clapton, Keith Richards, they all went to art school. I thought, that's what you do, okay.
You know we talked and you talk about Queen's College and everything in the book of the three other members of the band and yourself. Did any of you finish school?
I finished? I got a fine arts degree, and Gorge Sinclair got a history degree. Gordon Downey dropped out after third year. He was doing poly political science and film, and Paul Langui dropped out part way through his first year of journalism in Ottawa.
And did they drop out because of the band?
No? Well, Gord Downey I would say yes, he did drop out because of the band because at that point, you know, Gordon I had been in a previous band that was working three, four, sometimes five nights a week and we were trying to go to university at the time, and that was really not panning out too well. So we quit that band and said, let's just form a band of friends for fun, and that was the tragically hit.
But by the time I finished my fourth year, we were gigging three, four or five nights a week and making enough money to kind of keep body and soul together, and we just thought, let's ride this and see how far it goes.
Now, Johnny, your father's a doctor. What does he think about you playing in a band while you're in high school in not finishing college.
Well, I didn't even go. Yeah, I finished high school. But as Robbie's in university, Gord Sinclair's in university, these guys are just they're in. But I had two older brothers that were finishing university and there were no jobs. So this was nineteen eighty four, so they were going to have they both had to go back. One did a master's and another one went into law. So my argument was that you go to university and there's no job, so you go to go back to university. And they
were like, yeah, you're right. And my dad was always like, like all of our parents, you got to get up and enjoy what you're doing every day. And so it was very much that that I could at least give it a try. I got entrance to university, and so that was good enough for them. But it was an interesting time to be uh. As we've we've often said, it's like, it's not like the parents were shouting at the top of the rooftops. You know, our sons are going to be musicians. You know it was you know.
It, yeah, supportive but qualified.
Yeah yeah, so yeah.
Oh okay. This drummer whose drums it was, who was pressured by his parents to continue his education, do he ever circle back with regret?
No, No, I don't think so. He went into mining and he became he did very well and became, you know, a father, and I just think his h I don't. I don't think so. It was a lot of work to be in that band, right, Robbie the Rodents, And I don't think he ever kind of looked at it that way. I never got I saw him the other day and he was just he was beaming. He was beaming in the movie. And I don't know, maybe Robbie's got a different take on it, but he's he was
very supportive of us, and he was not jealous. He's not that kind of a guy. He's really a beautiful, big heart. That's what I got from it.
Yeah, I don't think he has any regrets. He's still drums all the time. He has a place set up not too far from Kingston where he keeps the kids, set up with the PA system, and he goes and he plays drums for two days a week to workout his angst and then he goes back in. Is you know VP at a bank or VP of Barrett Gold or whatever.
Okay, when Johnny joins the band, is everybody else involved? Or is Paul Langmah not in the band yet?
Paul was not in the band yet, and we didn't even really have Before Paul, we had a sax player and we didn't even have him yet, so it was really just it was the three of us and Gordon Downey,
so we were a little four piece. And then shortly thereafter we got a sax player and he was with us for about eighteen months, and we kind of over that eighteen months we went from never having played a gig to being kind of the popular band in eastern Ontario, starting to travel bit make a name, and we had to part ways with our sax player, who was some years older than us. He had a very different history
from us. And at that point, I think we could have chosen, you know, who's the hot shot guitar player in the area. We could have cast a much wider net, and instead we chose a good friend. You know, It's like, well, Paul knows how to play four chords on the guitar and it's not like it's rocket science. Were better off to choose someone who were friends with, who we can hang out in a van with four fifteen hours driving between gigs and he'll learn how to play the guitar.
And boy did he learn how to play the guitar. He was already trying to write songs. But he became a great songwriter in his own right, and he's got a great voice. So it was the right call.
Okay, From the moment Johnny joined the to the recording of the so called EP before the first album. How long a period of.
Time is that, would you say, Johnny? Three years?
I yeah, little less? Yeah, maybe a little less, because we got together in eighty four and then we played a sprinkling of gigs, and then Davis joins and then he's gone. And in the movie you see these pictures of us as a five piece, then a four piece, then a five piece again, and those pictures are cool because that's Robbie's wife taking those photographs. It was black
and those beautiful black and white. So we took these band photos and then two days later Davis was gone, and then we had to call her again to say we gotta go to some of those same places again and take photos again, minus one, but Paul came in. Yeah. I think by eighty seven we had recorded that little Baby Blue record, right, Robbie, So this was just a two and a half years maybe.
Okay, it's hard to keep a band together. They're all these different mindsets. Did anybody think, or certainly you two sing Wait a second, this isn't going to work out. Either I got to join a different band, or I got to live a straight life, or you guys all in with everybody all in all the time.
It's funny. I was thinking about that the other day, Pop because when I joined the band, I remember auditioning with Robbie and Gord and Gord Sinkla're handing me a Little Richard record and say here's a song. The go can't help, but we're going to do our version of that, and we're also going to write some of our own tunes. And what's really cool about it is that in that time period, you know, we were influenced by different bands,
but those bands were career bands. It was The Stones, Aerosmith, you know, you name it, and so we made a commitment to each other.
Then.
I don't think that people do that now, and I don't know that I would. I would do too well in a band if we had to start it now. But back in those days, you know, we just wanted people to hear us. And if it was six people, and then you know, next time we came to that town it would be fifteen people or something like that.
But the thing about it, which is captured in the movie by Mike beautifully, is that it was the commitment that we met, that we made with each other, and the luck that we had to meet each other in the first place. I think that that really kind of comes out about it, but that people don't seem to have that anymore. They want to be an individual and then have a bunch of players. This guy plays keyboards in that band, and he plays bass in that band, and he's the backup singer in that and they try
and fragment themselves. And as my drum teacher used to say, my beautiful drum teacher, Jim Blackley, just you know, stay the course, just do that. And we did that, and there were hard times in the beginning, so I'm glad we did.
Okay. Today is different the Internet, et cetera. You know, in the early seventies there was a whole DJ movement and now you'll go to a club and they'll have somebody spinning records. But when you guys are playing out in Kingston, how many opportunities are there? Where is there to play? What does it look like you're booking the gigs, Robbie, What are the opportunities?
They were more than you'd think. I thought the same thing when we started out. But we were just eager to play, and we thought the only way we're going to get better is playing anywhere and everywhere. We played sweet sixteen parties, We played parties at health clubs. There was a biker bar that had urban folk dancing that
we became kind of a house band. There there was another bar in town that featured mostly blues and R and B acts, and they were very serious about that, bringing in blues and R and B authentic roots music, and it used to bother them so much that they'd hire us on an off night and we'd set a new bar record and pack their place out. So we became a house band there as well. So we're playing
two competing bars as house bands. But then we'd go and play a biker picnic, and then we'd go and play at the university to college kids, and it just it seemed, you know, a high school dance. We would play anywhere, and at a certain point I was like, well, we've played every place you can possibly play in this town. We need to start casting the net further and further.
And at a certain point, probably a year and a half in, we thought London, Ontario, which is in western Ontario on the far side, few hours west of Toronto. We thought, it's a bit like Kingston. It's a kind of a they have a snooty university, kind of a Canadian version of the Ivy League, and it's a big city that has a big ceed underbelly, kind of like Kingston. We thought, let's go there. And do the same thing that we just did in Kingston, Let's do it in London.
And we did. In a weird sort of way. We surrounded Toronto and then we'd make little forays into Toronto. And the guy who booked the Horseshoe Tavern, which is quite a famous venue in Toronto for roots music, booked by our old friend x Ray McCrae. It was a Kingston guy. I called him up one day cold call and said, Hi, we're the Tragically Ip and we're from Kingston. He said, Kingston, what are you coming through? I'll book you. It was really pretty much that easy, okay.
A was anybody calling you, b if they said like, oh, come, we'll give you fifty dollars in beer, you would.
Say absolutely yeah.
The deal. The deal I had was everyone in the band gets fifty dollars and we drink for free and you pay for the pa in lines.
But we had to work up to that though, Bob, because I remember I looked in a little a book that I had, uh and it was in nineteen eighty five, nineteen eighty six, and I remember we played this place, Lake Ontario Park. Robbie booked the gig. It was an afternoon gig. I don't think anyone showed up, but we got one hundred and six dollars of that gig. We didn't have to pay for PI. So we were, we were on the move. We were we were starting to really get some gravity.
We did have standards. There was one gig where we were on the Marquee. We were book built second to Shepherd's Pie, and I think we were we were in a no show. I think we pulled the plug on that one.
But okay, And how many nights a week were you working then?
At that point we were probably working like two nights a week.
And then how much most of you, if you were working two nights a week, how much were you rehearsing?
Uh, not very much rehearsals for the band After that first couple of years, first year and a half, most of the rehearsing happened in sound checks, dressing rooms, hotel rooms, you know, and on those occasions when we did get together with a specific purpose. You're gonna play on Saturday Night Live or you're gonna you know, you're going out on tour. For three months, we've rented a place for you to go and rehearse and we would get together and we'd jam. For the most part, there is very
little rehearsing. Like you know, if you ever saw the band live, it's not like we rehearsed our endings very well.
Okay, when you're working two nights a week for fifty dollars a piece in beer, inside of you saying oh yeah, we're gonna make it. We're gonna be on TV, We're gonna be famous for you saying we're getting high with our buddies. This is what it is.
Yeah. I think by the time Push came to Shove, we'd been doing it for about three years, and by that point we were probably making about three hundred dollars a piece each a week, and that just seemed like an that we could pool our money and rent an apartment, be like the monkeys, you know. That was you know, I'll ride trikes around our apartment together. Yeah, when you're working two days a week, that's not really a I don't think we ever really had dreams of a world conquest.
It was always just kind of putting one foot in front of the other. So if we were playing two gigs a week, the ambition would have been we need to get another gig every week. That was we aim low.
You were the booker was just like on your brain twenty four to seven, were you calling people incessantly? How much work and how much mental capacity or a mind share? Was this taking.
More than I liked, more than I had capacity for it? But no, it wasn't on my mind twenty four to seven. Being in a band was on my mind twenty four to seven. The booking part was a little bit of an annoying task, not one I was really well suited for. But after about the first you know, first six or eight months, we had a handful of gigs that were regulars.
You know, as I said, there was the Urban Folk Dancing Club on the one side of town, and then there was the Roots Bar on the other side of town, and we were kind of operating as a house band of both of those. So that's you know, that was good for a bunch of good paying gigs every month, and then it was just a matter of filling in what we could. And it started with me making calls, but then the calls started coming in. You know, whether it was a you know, if you got a high
school dance that was that was a good gig. They might pay eight hundred dollars for that, you know, So.
Yeah, okay, it's probably the statute of limitations. Usually these gigs paid cash. Did you ever to clear the money pay taxes on it?
Well, yes, at a certain point, I think around the time up to here came out. I asked my father, who had been filing my taxes for me, or I thought he'd been filing my taxes. I went to him and it turns out that I was in about eight years of arrears tax so I had some I had some sorting and explaining to do. But yeah, we we always operated very above board. We were union members from
long before we needed to be union members. You know, I don't know, I just that's kind of we're sort of a middle upper middle class kids from a small town, and our parents were all professionals, and it was all like, you do everything above board. That's the way we were and still are.
Okay, So you get together. At first, it's kind of a garage band. You're playing covers. How does original material come into the equation?
It was it was done pretty holistically. It was just kind of we're going to play these covers and then sneak a couple of these originals and our courts and Clothes really doing a lot of the writing, and Robbie and and you know, we had some kind of bluesy kind of numbers. And then in those days you had to file a list, and the bar owners in some cases wanted to see the list. So Robbie could tell you better than I could about some of the names
that were used that were fictitious. But we do, as I said, you know, a little Richard tune and then one of our tunes baby blue Blood and what were what were some of the names that we we had to sort of file in as.
The Reformed Baptist blues and yeah, heart Attack love.
By written by but written by.
We would we would say, oh this is off of Yeah. They did say we don't want any original music, just covers. Yeah, but we weren't playing but we weren't playing hits like we weren't. We never played top forty. If we were going to play a Rolling Stone song, we weren't going to play Satisfaction or nineteenth Nervous Breakdown. We were playing something off the first record or off the hook or yeah, have Mercy or off the hook or something like that.
So if they'd say, what's that song there, and if it was one of ours, we'd say, oh, that's off of a German bootleg of the Doors, and they'd say, oh, okay, that's good. That's good because Bob.
In those days in Canada anyway, it was like as easy top cover band. It was a Owling Stones cover band that they were from actually Kingston called the Blushing Brides. And then you know other other covers are CCR. Yeah, there's a band band called Green River. So they were being booked and then we were kind of creeping in
like that, and people wanted to see what the material was. Okay, you guys are getting a little bit of traction, but let's see the let's see the setlist and who's who's whose tunes of those they're kind of quirky, but go ahead, you know. And and so that's how we got better at our own tunes.
And I think by having a really obscure setlist, you know that we could put the Monkeys back to back with Howl and Wolf. Uh. People really had no expectations and it allowed us to slip our material in and you know, they didn't know any of the songs we were covering so our songs fit in beautifully.
And then we got then we got requests for those songs, which was really cool, which pumped our tires. Which is an original band, that's what you want. Yeah, and so it's like, okay, well we weren't going to play it tonight, but we'll throw it in. So that was cool.
Okay. A lot of bands quite consciously write rigial materials, say the only way we can break if is if we have our own material. Was this a very conscious thing? Okay, we want to make it, We have to write original stuff.
Yeah. I don't think anyone who was thinking too much about making it. I think that the idea of writing our songs, writing our own material was just a natural extension of you know, you've been learning songs for the last ten years, over and over, learning other people's songs. You pick up a little bit about how to write a riff, what song structure is. It seems natural. After a while, It's like the mystery is kind of blown.
It's like, not the mystery of how to write a great song that will always be a mystery, but the mystery of how to put a song together is no longer a mystery, and it's like, oh, I think I can do this, you know, a simple chord progression. We just need some lyrics. And Gorge Sinclair was really natural. He was the one that was really kind of he was coming forward with song ideas and everyone, I think everyone in the band felt like, well, we all want
to be songwriters. He's actually doing it, and it kind of kicked our asses a bit to step up and dig in and start putting ideas.
Forward, you know, jumping a little bit forward. There's a point in the documentary where Gordon down he says, I need to write all the lyrics and it's a little uncomfortable and it's hinto there's a little tension. Tell me what was going on there?
Well, I he did need to write the lyrics. You know, he's as the lead vocalist. It made sense that he needs to be in tune with what he's singing. He needs to feel it. But as songwriters, it did feel a bit like Paul Langua and Gorge Sinkler were both writing lyrics at the time, and you know, Johnny and I were collaborating on musical ideas and Gordon I were collaborating and we were all collaborating together, but Paul would
come in with a finished song, music and lyrics. Gorge Sinkler would come in with a Finnish song, music and lyrics, and suddenly it felt like their wings were clipped. And I think that led to some resentments that carried forward. But Gord truly developed into an outstanding lyricist. You know, he was already becoming one, but he really developed, and I don't think maybe that would have happened without that, Maybe it would have. I don't know. It did lead to some problems for sure.
Okay, you know it's depicted. You're all from the same town. You're all middle upper middle class. In the document, everything's groovy, everything's harmonious, except for that little blip. Was this really the case or were there ever any argument ever? Anybody threatening to quit?
Yes, no, I don't think.
I don't did anyone threaten to quit?
No, I don't think anyone threatened to quit.
But we had we had arguments, Yeah, okay, you had arguments about what. Uh one of our doozies. One of our doozies was the night that we met Jake Gold and Alan Gregg. We went out and met them and uh, we played a gig at Larry's Hideaway. You were there that night, Bob uh when was given an award recently, and we kind of touched on that Larry's Hideaway gig.
And then we went to the Pilot House in Toronto and talked to Alan and Jake and we were trying to feel out management and and I don't think anyone didn't think that they weren't the right people. But we just were asking questions, which is what we did, which is what we needed to do. You know, are these the guys for us? And you know, and we had we had a pretty good We had a doozy that night, I think, didn't we rob Yeah, we did.
I was I may have been the holdout on that one. I was really upset that night because Alan, who we perceived as the brains of the management. We were you know, maybe jumped the gun on that, but we perceived him as the brains of the management. And he curved Gordon Downey as the face of the band and Gorge Sinkler is the premier songwriter. He took them to one end of the table and bent their ears and charmed them and Jake was left at the other end of the table.
With the three dummies, and I was irritated beyond belief. I was like, I don't want to be with these guys. That's a divide and conquermentality. And anyone who tries to divide the five of us, you know, I was scorched earth about that. Not a chance. But also we operated by unanimity throughout our career. For the most part. We never enforced decisions a three to two or a four to one vote on something. So I was the odd one out on that, I think, and I would have said, Okay,
that's it. There are managers, And it turns out Jake was a brilliant manager. He came up with great ideas and very very smart, savvy, street savvy manager.
Okay, let's go back. Now you're making three hundred dollars a week, and you see, we can live in an apartment with strikes like the monkeys. Where was everybody living? And did you like Jefferson airplane? This is a famous motif everybody gets together in a house. What did happen?
We were kind of on the road a little bit there, but we needed to have sort of a It got to a point where we needed to have an apartment in Toronto. So we had with our road manager at the time, an agreement with some girls that we would just flop on the floor in one of the one of the rooms. So we found out later that we were giving him the money and then going back to Kingston.
I think we were still maybe staying at girlfriend's houses or parents, but when we were on the road, we were on the road, we were in kind of limbo and this this road manager guy was ripping us off. He never gave the money to the girls and so we had to go and play a gig to pay off our It was a good learning experience we had to We had to pay off this rental debt that we had.
Yeah, it was a good lesson that anyone involved with the band has to be part of the family. There has to be trust and commitment all the way around.
Okay, you're talking about the vast distances in Canada. You're talking about being in Kingston starting to play London. Rock and roll lore is about burning the candle on both ends, being high, being drunk in car accidents. So what was your experience with all that late night driving.
Yeah, there were many car accidents, That's what I'd say. You know, we always had someone who would do the driving, the road manager or lighting guy. There was always someone who could do it, and we could all pile into the van. And I don't think we ever had Did we ever have a major accident, Johnny.
No, we didn't, but I was. I was looking at a non itinerary a little while ago and Paul Langwall and Gord Sinkler used to do the lion's share of the driving for us, and they both smoked, so they cracked a window and they you know, they would have the sig out the window and they could keep going. Those guys. But Jake had has booked at this thing in London at the Casby Awards, and then Ottawa, then London, then Kitchener then back up to Ottawa and then after
that gig. I remember that last Ottawa gig. We didn't have enough money to get hotel rooms, so we didn't so we went to the Chateau lauriermus Canadian Hotel and we kind of just bummed around one of the ballrooms. I don't know how we didn't get kicked out. We just kind of tried to catch a couple hours of sleep and then we played this gig and then we
had to pile in the car. And I remember talking to Paul about this that I don't know how to this day that he stayed awake because you always had to have someone in the driver's seat beside him talking to him because it was and I fell asleep and I was just in the periphery of my vision. I was seeing these purple bunny rabbits poke their heads up just as just as we were going back. I was like, did you see that? You said? And Paul was like what. And then I drift off to sleep and I was like,
how did we stay alive that night? And that was the power of Paul. He could just do it. He could like he could drive. He and Sinclair really were the reason that we're alive today. And you know, for so many of those late night, no hotel, no sleep gigs and we go up and play for half an hour, Bob and then Violin drive eight hours to London then back to Ottawa, and these were showcase gigs and it was Jake was like, you got to play this. I
know it's terrible routing, but you gotta play this. This is going to be big, you know.
Yeah, when Jake and Allen sold themselves to us. One of the things they said is we're going to you know, look at this routing that you guys are doing. It's terrible. We'll end that routing. It'll all make sense from here. The routing will all be very logical. And of course the only thing that happened was the bad routing got multiplied by a factor of ten.
Okay, when usually in the United States were talking about showcase gigs, You're in New York or LA playing for industry, hoping for some kind of leg up, what was a showcase gig outside to Toronto about.
It was about getting college gigs. College gigs, yeah.
Yeah, college bookers.
Okay, So you know, at first you're playing anywhere that'll have you to what degree are you conscious at first you're being paid to rehearse, you know, work it out on stage. At what point are you conscious of audience reaction, wanting to get the audience involved, and at what point do you get enough of a reaction do you feel wait a second, something is happening here.
I think we're always very conscious of audience reaction. That was I've always felt that, you know, the five of us could be playing in a room and we're just you know, working out an idea. The second a stranger comes into the room, we're all performing. We're just naturally that way. Everyone digs in differently and you're try trying to get a reaction out of the person that's walked into the room. It was like that from the very first gig on, very conscious of trying to get people involved,
get people to pay attention. It was kind of a dance crowd at the time, like you wanted people up and dancing, and then at a certain point it starts to get more crowded up front and there's not room to dance. But we'd look out and if there was a fight happening, and we'd say, hey, we're doing a good job. The energy is so high that people don't know what to do with their energy. And then of course you get tired of that and you move on to you know, it's become a bit more focused about
the kind of attention you want. But yeah, always very important to us to try and make that connection with the audience.
Okay, was there a breakthrough gig in your mind based on audience reaction or the way you felt to the whole field? We go wait, a second. We are on our away.
You know, in the movie, there's a gig that we play and Bruce Dickinson is in the audience and it's kind of a make or break kind of thing and it was at Massey Hall, and that was Dickinson, Yeah, our man, and he came up to see us. He'd heard of the band, and it could have gone horribly wrong, and we might have thought it did. But I think that that was a moment that really shaped us getting our record contract and then working with the great Don Smith.
So I think, you know, looking back at it and seeing it in the film, that was obviously one of them. But you know, leading up to those those gigs there there were so so many of them, and you know, you're you're always promised that this is going to be the one, this is going to do this, and and it does pan out, and we seem to have all these kind of gigs and then other people would just they'd play the same gig and they'd get something from
it and we didn't. Sort of we were living through it together, which was really great and beautiful, and we were a support system to each other. But it didn't happen overnight for us.
Bob.
It was just it was a long, long, long haul. And after forty years and it's our fortieth year now, I don't know. I have trouble sort of saying there was that one gig. You know, we had all these crazy things that happened to us. But I don't know, Robbie, there's one for you.
No, I can't think of one. I mean, in retrospect, that one with Bruce is a good one, a good choice, because you know, we always used to say it's not a good gig until something goes wrong, because all the best gigs, you know, if we walked out and had a sound check and everything was smooth soundcheck, we'd say we got a problem. If the sound check was terrible or a fraud, then we'd probably go on and have
a great gig. But you know, a gig when you come on and something's malfunctioning at the beginning of it, oftentimes you just dig in. We weren't. We didn't get thrown by stuff like that. We would and Gord was very good at just improvising his way out of something.
And I think that's what Bruce Dickinson saw that night, was that what could have been a disaster, Gorge's mike tipping over and the mic blows up and the cable's out, and he just started into this pantomime thing and we just jammed while they sorted out the mic issue, and it worked smoothly because we were by the time people were seeing us in these larger venues, we were already kind of seasoned on stage. It was not new to us, and we didn't really have great expectations that, oh, this
gig is going to break us. Now, we're just going to go out and we're going to do what we do, which is have fun together and try and connect with the audience, try and you know, try and stick in people's minds.
Okay, It almost is played in the documentary like you're out doing your thing. If somebody says, oh, you should meet these managers, you meet Jake and Allen, that's it. How much previously did were you interviewing managers and saying no, were you trying to get managers? Were people coming up to you? Was this really like one and done? Or were there all these things going on?
There were people in Kingston that were approaching us and they were saying, well, I think there's something really special about you guys, I'm not a manager, but I'd like to manage you. We had like a couple of people that we sat down with and then I think the conversations guarded and it's like, well, yeah, we do need management.
You know.
Robbie was being pretty taxed with the gigs Gord Downie was doing, using his his connections to get them. And I remember I got like a gig at my high school because I was still at the high school there.
So it was time to move outside of Kingston. And I think that, uh, we had this guy who worked for the band who was a good friend of Robbie's Fraser, and he got a tape into the hand of somebody who got it into the hand of Alan Gregg, and we had heard that he was in management or they were, you know, he liked music, and I think that that's it came. Came kind of like that. But we hadn't
really been talking about management. But we knew we needed to make that that that dive into the deep blue water that we needed to, you know, for us to really take another step, we needed to do something with a manager. Proper manager.
Okay.
One thing that's in the book, which I didn't know. Is that they say that or in the book it has said that Alan greg put in multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. A. Was that true? B? Could you sense that?
I don't know about multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars? But he did finance the Baby Blue record to the tune of probably thirty grand, and he financed the first two videos and that may have been to the tune of you know, eighty grand or one hundred grand. So yeah, he was probably in for over one hundred grand.
Yeah, okay, So you talk about those videos, you get action on Much Music. And with explosion of MTV, unless you were in Canada or Canada savvy, you didn't a know about Much Music. There wasn't MTV Candada at that point. It reached everybody. It focused on Canadian bands. Your video got on Much Music. How did that happen and how did that affect the trajectory of your career?
Ah? Well, Much Music was weird. It was fortuitous for us that it had just kind of really taken off in Canada and it was a different time. So on a Friday night or Saturday night, if you went to someone's place, there was a good chance that Much Music was showing and you're watching the young bands coming up, and there's something called CANCN where a third of the
material has to be Canadian in origin. So what often happened is they'd have ghetto wised the Canadian artists into an hour or two hour special and then the rest of the day would be Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper
and whoever else. But just the fact that we had a video on Much Music gives you a certain credibility and it allowed us to go and play in thunder Bay, thunder Bay, Ontario, or Sudbury, Ontario, or Saskatoon, and people have seen your video, so they're going to come out as curiosity seekers, As music lovers and curiosity seekers, they come to check you out, and then your job is be good, turn them on. And if you turn them on, the next time they'll bring a friend or a couple
of friends. So you go from playing to forty people, the next time you cross the country, you're playing to you know, two hundred and fifty people, and then you're playing to one thousand people. But your job is always the same. You've got an audience deliver. You have to deliver.
Okay, you make a deal with MCA, they bring in a seasoned professional. Don Smith was originally an engineer starting to produce. You know, what was your experience of making that first record and because your newbies really and where you sat a fied with the.
Result he was done was just such a great breath of fresh air. He met us in Memphis and it was the wintertime, and he did this with the two records we did with him. We met up and we had a week before we started tracking, and we took over this abandoned Mexican restaurant next door to the studio.
It had terracotta flooring and it was freezing, and we rehearsed and he would make us rehearse the songs that he thought we should track, and I think we had quite a few extras, but he was focusing on a couple of the New Orleans is sinking blow a high dough every time you go, and he just made us go over them and over them and over them again. And you know, practice makes perfect. So those records, those first two records anyway, were rehearsed and we went in
and we executed. We were looking for versions of them, and so that kind of erases the red light fever.
A little bit.
And he was really a beautiful guy to work with. He would come into the studio and listen, and he'd go back in the tracking room, come back in the studio and listen, and then go back. And he said, what I'm doing is I'm making it sound in there like it sounds in here. And he had that great ability to do that. He did it with Keith Richards, he worked with the Traveling Wilbury's, he worked with Tom Petty. He was like a live guy. So it was a great experience and I really think it for our trajectory
of recording from there on out. It really set us up with knowing what a great high watermark looked like.
Absolutely a lot of times the first record is done and when they get the actual product at the end, the being says, this isn't really who we are, or we were naive. Were you guys totally satisfied, or were you such newbies? Were you so green that you felt that, wait a second, we should have pushed harder for something.
I personally thought. I personally thought it was the greatest thing since slice bread. I couldn't believe that that was us I couldn't wait to play it for friends in those days, Bob's you know your setup for the record. You know, we had a release and it was like we were finished in like March, maybe end of February, and then we had to wait five months before anyone before it came out. So I was chuffed about it personally.
Yeah, me too. I was so excited. I loved the experience working with Don and when we got those mixes back, I was blown away. The thing you just described about feeling dissatisfied or this doesn't represent us. I think I felt that way a little bit about the Baby Blue record that proceeded at the EP, because I don't think that we even thought we were making a record when we went in to do it, so the song selection
and everything else. But having said that, just having a record meant it was such credibility at that time that you had an album out. We were pretty excited and it was something to show your parents, like see this, you know we're doing it.
Yeah, so okay, you have the cover with the scratch polaroids. How did that come to be?
That was suggested to us. Michael Going was the photographer and he was known for mostly photographing like golf courses and travel destinations and things. But he was suggested and I got to be the the shepherd on art projects. So the you know, I wouldn't say it was the art director for the band, but I was the shepherd.
Yeah, yeah, you were, Yeah, you were. You're the art director for that, Yeah, definitely.
So he he was suggested and his photographs were beautiful. I'd seen his work before in a an airplane magazine, you know, one of those flight magazines, in flight magazines, and yeah, he was a great guy. He just came on the road for a couple of days and did portraits of us, took some live shots and a fantastic guy and interesting, interesting art. But at that point I was not an art art director really. I was just
I was a go between. The directord company was kind of this is what we're going to do, and I would I would nod a lot. I wasn't given the chance out of the gate.
Okay, So it is implied, and I want to dot the I that the publishing is shared amongst the band. A is that true?
True? Yes?
Okay, at this late date, most of people know when it comes to the actual recordings, most of the money is in the songs that bands break up over that. Certainly, certain bands, certain members are much wealthier because they wrote the songs. How did you guys decide that the publishing would be shared.
We were in Paul Langui's basement and we had just received cassette tape mixes about to hear this is my recollection of it anyways, and we sat down and had the conversation about it, and it was decided. Although Gord Sinclair was still probably the pre eminent songwriter amongst us, Gord Downey was starting to write a lot more lyrics and there is a lot more collaboration and five way collaboration happening. We all want to be songwriters. We just thought.
We sat down at the meeting, we just said, if this will eliminate a lot of fights, sharing everything equally, deciding whose song gets picked as a single is going to create a fight. Having someone's song take off and be a hit. They're going to show up at the next gig in a Mercedes and everyone else is going to be taking the bus, and it's like, you know, that's the recipe for a disaster. So we always thought the only way we're going to make it as a
band is by lasting. We even even Bruce Dickinson when he signed us, he said, you're not the type of band that I'm going to sign and you're going to have a big hit on your first record. You're the type of band that's going to take four or five records to build some kind of critical mass. And you're going to do that through laying live, by doing what you do, writing the songs you write, and by delivering
those songs live. And he wasn't wrong. I just I feel sad that I don't think bands now get that opportunity necessarily.
Okay, the first album comes out, what are your expectations and what actually happens?
I think maybe the first you know, the Baby Blue record, and I agree with what Robbie's saying. It was just like, here's the record. We're going to put a record out, according to Jake, and it's like okay, And he was right. It got us from Halifax to Victoria and that that was what we needed. And then we come back to do this other record and we put it out and we knew it was a full length record because as Robbie said, we refer to that as the Baby blue
record because it's just really an EP. So we were looking to maybe you know, bump up in venues size and play to more people. And that didn't happen right away. In fact, something that happened we started to get into the States because it was more of a you know,
MCA was pushing us down there at first. And I remember we played in sort of Wilkesburg, Pennsylvania, and we didn't play to very many people, or maybe it was Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, I think, and yeah, and Dave Powell came in and said, guys, hard times out there, I know, but guess what back home, you're about to go gold with up to here. So while we were down to the States, the radio was doing its thing, Jake was doing his thing, and it
was starting to get some traction. So we had that little baby blue record and then we were going in the right direction, you know, and so up to here was taken us up to there and it was it felt good, but we didn't really know that until we were down in the States playing a few people. And then of course that becomes a story later on.
You know. Yeah, as you said earlier, Bobby, you're talking about connection with the audience and how important that was to us playing to those four people in Bloomington, Indiana. There's a gig in Hoboken, New Jersey where we played to two people and that you know, we got up and delivered. We gave him a full show. We didn't pull any punches. It was like, it doesn't matter two people, two thousand people, you're still performing and you give it
everything you've got. And those two people came to probably sixty shows after that over the years, so there were lifelong fans. Same with two of the guys from Bloomington, Indiana. We were so excited. We thought it was John Mellencamp going to come to our gig tonight. He didn't make it that night. Now four people showed up, but one guy smashed his chair demanding an encore and he got it.
So okay, first album runs in cycle. At what point do you start thinking about the second album and what's the experience of recording the second album.
Well, there's one thing that happened. We were we were doing some shows, you know, you know, in the States and back in Canada, but we were keeping in touch with with Dawn Smith. He would phone, you know, phone us up and and see how we were doing. And uh,
I remember I had a conversation with him. It was really interesting because he said, we're going to do another record, right, So I got a guy on the inside at uh Ampex take and they've got a really good batch of tape because back in those days it was the adhesive on the tape, and so they would talk to the guys in the factory and he said, Petty just got a hole. He got one hundred rolls of tape and he goes, I'm going to get this guy to send twenty extra roles of this good batch because we're going
to make another album. So we didn't know where, we didn't know when, but Don Smith is collecting tape because he's wanting to work with us again. And that felt pretty great too, and so we sort of started the ball rolling on that one. We're in the tour for up to hear we're talking about the next record. We
haven't written many tunes. There's like gams going on in the stage, but you know, later on we're starting to you know, we borrow people's houses to do you know, a little bit of writing here and a little bit of writing there. Somebody's cottage. Somebody's parents are away. So we're thinking of the second record, but we haven't sort of figured it all out, but we want to work with Down again. That's kind of how it started.
The record is cut. What's your experience when the record is done?
The second album?
Yeah, I think we're all aware of kind of the sophomore curse, and I think it's almost expected, you know, as they say, every band spends years writing their first record and then they're not really prepared for their second record, And.
On some level that may have been true. But I really think that we were going in with a solid batch of songs and we were much more relaxed in the studio and stretched out a bit, and I think the second record showed a lot of growth from the first. And we're with Down, which we just knew that it would sound great, you know. We really trusted in Down
fully and completely. He was a yeah, just a master, and he put us at ease, and we relaxed into the process and just had at it, and we came out of there again feeling like this is we don't know how it's going to be received, but we're really happy with this. This It reflects where we are now, and it was also felt a little closer to our live show, just being able to stretch out and take
songs in different directions on stage. So we just immediately said about touring like there were a few years there from before up to here through the end of Fully Completely, where we were probably playing two hundred shows a year.
So okay, you don't use Don Smith on the subsequent album. Why.
I think some of it was that Don was very Don's approach was about trying to capture the live sound of the band, and he was really focused on the kick drum and the bass and the interaction and the micing and getting a live feel. But he wasn't so focused on lyrics, and I think Gord, as an aspiring poet, wanted a little bit more involvement with someone in that respect.
I don't think Chris was the guy that was going to give it to him Chris Anderides, but I think it was felt like we've done two records with Don, we should try something different, and going from Memphis to New Orleans, it felt like there was a bit of a this search for the source happening, and London felt like the next step in the search for the source.
Because it was the London bar scene from the mid sixties or early sixties that really informed our initial approach as a band, So going to London seemed like a good choice, and we just kind of put feelers out for who might be interested in doing the record, and Chris Sanrin's was one of the people because we loved his work with Concrete Blonde, and he was so instantaneous in his enthusiasm. He said, when's your next show, I'll
fly over. I want to be there, I want to see it, and he was Yeah, he bowled us over with his enthusiasm, and that's all it took.
The record has done. How do you feel about the record compared to the record you did with Don.
It was I think it took for me a little bit of digesting. You know. It was a different work ethic too. Uh. Chris was very nine to five and he, uh, you know, Fridays were kind of a wash. You know, you'd have lunch, tea and then things you kind of wind down. Then we had uh, you know, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday night. We were on our own. There was no sort of access to the studio with down we worked. We worked on a Saturday and then we we do
a lot of listening with Don. That was the other thing is we knew what we had and Don would listen to what we were saying. And if he heard Gord Sinclair and I say, oh we can get that better, he'd say, Okay, let's track it again tomorrow. Let's have no problem, let's do it. Let's keep pushing it, keep pushing it. With Chris, it was not like that. It was very British, you know. The Brits have that way
of doing it. It's like we're going to do the game, get the bed track, the backing track, then we're going to do the guitars. And then they don't fluff around. They just they get it. And then they're already booked for their next gig. So we're going to finish on the fifteenth of January. Is when we're done, when we go to mix, and the mix is the balance. They
also erase tracks britz that we to. You know, when the guys we've worked with they don't need it and they don't hear it, they erase it, and when they go to mix, it's just a balanced mix of everything that's there that they've done. And if you're very focused on it. It's great. They don't like to add stuff. You can't come in and say, well, I want to do this, I want to do that, And we were kind of getting into that. I loved the record with Chris, but I really didn't know what we had until maybe
we were on tour. I had no idea how it was going to be received.
Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. You know. We spent three and a half weeks doing bass and drums, and I did all my guitar parts in just over two days, and then we never sat back and listened like a listening party or you just don't know what you've got, and then you get a cassette tape a couple of weeks later and it's like, oh, really interesting, and you have to listen a bunch of times. But with the previous records, you left the studio knowing exactly
what you had. You come out feeling a little bit shattered as a musician, because you should be, you should feel a little shattered after a recording experience, but also feeling really confident in the songs fully. Completely. Was definitely a change from that, and I remember thinking that the songs that were less developed, really developed with Chris, and the songs that were already strong live didn't jump forward
as much much as I thought they would. But now with the you know, with the perspective of time, I think it's a fine record. I think it was you know, a good a good effort, and Chris did a fantastic job. But it was a strange experience to make.
It was great. And you know what else happened, Robbie. Remember we were working with Chris and we were in this great studio that was used to be called Morgan Studio. So Zeppelin had been in there the faces and then they expanded it and became part of the Zomba music group and they built studio on studio on studio. So
it was a bit bit of a complex. And one day where there's this singlish, very English guy and he's great to have you here, and we'd see him every day, and you know, as time went on, his enthusiasm was kind of, oh hello, gents. One day, one day he comes in and whispers in Chris's ear, and Chris is like what who oh, come on, and he and then the guy came back in and and Chris said, okay, well,
they booked the studio with Daryl Hall. He's coming in and they know they shouldn't have done that, but they're moving us to the studio up the road. The good news is that's where they did the guitars were back in black. So we went up there and you guys did your guitars at a different studio, and Chris Anderitas was like that ruddy Daryl Hall is in our studio and fuck him, you know, And so we had a good we had a good laugh about that, but we got booted out of the studio because he called him
Daryl Ball. It was. But Chris was a beautiful man. He was, he was, He was great. And yeah, Robbie's right, like, I don't think we really kind of knew the you know, kind of record that we had until it was being played on the radio and Encourage got leaked, which gave a little bit of a pump to it, and Jake had to break some arms to get it. Radio stations to stop playing it because it wasn't part of the setup.
And yeah, stop playing our record was a different problem to have.
Yeah, yeah, until we're ready to put it.
Out, okay, you end up essentially self producing thereafter, But then you go to work with Steve Berlin, and in the documentary, you guys are testifying about Steve Berlin, how great he was for the band. Hey, why did you decide to use an outside producer again? And what was that experience like that made it so great?
No, I just remembered it was a suggestion of Jake's. We were on tour and we had done one record like that, and I think Jake sort of was smart enough to know, you know, I think you need a producer. You've already tracked some stuff. I think Steve Berlin would be great. He brought him on the bus and we knew him with Lost Lobos and Robbie will tell you about that whole thing.
Yeah, the making of Trouble at the Henhouse, I think that it was a good record and it was necessary for us to self produce necessary exercise. We had our own studio by this point are the Clubhouse, which we made into a bit of a studio, and it was important that we do that. But it was a tough album, and I think it exposed some fractures in the band, and there was jocking for position power and who's going to be closest to the producer's seed and who's going
to make these calls? Because when you're in a five way collaboration, you know, imagine five people trying to do a painting together, and once one guy has a big, great, big brush and he wants to paint everything black. It's you know, you get into creative differences. This is how it happens. And we just felt having an outside arbiter who could make the call, had worked for us in the past and would work for us again. And it did.
And because we knew Steve Berlin from the roadside Attraction tours where Los Lobos came out on the road with us, he just seemed like a natural guy. We just got along famously with him, and he stepped in. He knew how bands work, he knows about the dysfunction that happens in bands and what his role would be and he just slipped into it very naturally. And he's and again a beautiful guy and part of the Hit family.
So Okay, at what point does the Tragically Hip become Canada's band and become the biggest rock band in Canada? And is that palpable? Do you feel it?
Uh? I've never bought into much of any of that. I don't. I don't know legacy stuff and the biggest band in the country. You know what about Rush, They're the biggest band.
You've always been huge Canadian acts, but the relationship that Canada had with the Tragically hip was different and that the country really owned them. And as I say, this is from the outside, so I guess I'm asking, were you just seeing yourself as another arena band in Canada or were you seeing yourself as something different.
I don't think we've ever viewed ourselves as something extra special. There's so many great talents in this country. We're just kind of look at it like we're happy to be part of it. But I don't think anyone's like, yeah, I mean some of the things that happened and some of the people that wear your T shirts. She's like, did you see that? It was a young young swimmer who won some Olympic medals. She's seventeen years old. Her name is Summer McIntosh. I remember watching TV and her
I think her dad was wearing a hip shirt. I was like, that is super super cool because her daughter is a star and what the hell are we doing on her Dad's T shirt and I thought, wow, that was that. You know, you have little brushes like that. But I don't think we ever sort of said, oh, you know, that's it. I agree with Robbie. You know, the Pope was in our film Geddy Lee. It's like the Godfather, like you know when he speaks, and that guy knows it very smart. He's a very smart businessman.
He's a very incredible bass player. My god, and to have him in the movie, it's just like with all the other people, it's just like amazing, amazing.
Okay, you have this great success, but you're working two hundred nights of a year on the road, you're recording music. At what point do you get a check? At what point do you say, I put in this hard work, I'm actually seeing some money. And what did you do with the money?
I bought a house, still living, been here for thirty five years, same house. You know. It wasn't like, you know, being a big Canadian rock star is like being the world's tallest midget. It's not quite a global phenomenon. We were doing just fine, and we were expanding, and we were playing a lot in Europe, and we had a good thing going on the States, playing too, like a thousand or fifteen hundred people every night, occasional arenas in
some of the border cities. You know, things were good, and that was a time, you know, around day for night where we were actually, you know, you could make a little money off records, but it was always about playing live, touring live for us, and we were always focused on the tour, but also on what's next. What you know, we need songs for the next project, whatever that will be, and we just stayed focused on that. There was never a five year planned, ten year plan.
It was more like a you know, a lot of it was a five minute plan or a five day plan.
But you know, it's interesting also that Jake really was the guy who first said, here's your money, you're just don't spend it all in the same place. At the same time, he goes, you've got to live off of this hump for not a year, but a year and a half because you've still got to do some writing and then some recording. Then we go on the road. He was always conscious of us going to the trough too many times. Now we've got to disappear, and back in those days you could disappear for a year and
there'd be no media on you. You would just disappear. And if you weren't around, maybe people played your records a little more than because you weren't going to play some shows. But and the other thing is that I don't think the five year or three year planning, which is why we've got this movie and this great book
that Robbie's worked on. The five year planning kicked in when the career after we played our final show, which is kind of cool because what we have is our music and that's our legacy, so we keep that chip shape. Then that's great, and that's Jake coming back into the fold again. That that's when those we were we were kind of rudderless. The boat wasn't really it was just kind of floating around, and we knew we needed to get the tapes sorted out, our new old music digitized,
and to just keep some things going. The movie, the book that was the That was when the five year plans started to kick in, which is kind of it's just cool because a lot of bands don't do that.
Okay, you know this is something that is you can't see my ear quotes on audio, but Haunted the band for its entire career, that the success in the United States is not as big as the success north of the border. Mentioned a couple of time times in the documentary, to what degree are the two of you consciousness? Does it bother you? Do you not care? What are your thoughts?
It doesn't bother me. I think we had a career that almost any US band would envy. That was our career in the States. You know, we're playing playing the Beacon Theater and the Fillmore in San Francisco, you know, Cobo Hall in Detroit. We were playing solid venues, doing great business. And how could the success be the same as it was in the States or as it was in Canada. You know, it just the story got magnified that,
you know, nothing's happening for themselves at the border. And a lot of this is perpetuated by natural Canadian inferiority complex that Canadians say, oh, he's really good, this Neil Young is good, but you know he had to go to the States to make it, or what's he doing in America? That everything is you know, the only stamp of approval is well, they're doing well in America, And that never really mattered to us. Because I don't think we thought so much about the border that way. They're
obvious we took the border very seriously, trust me. But it was just people playing to people. And there are a lot more people in America, and they're just like the people up here, and they're a lot like the people in Europe. People are people, and they respond to the same type of things. They want, you know, a lot of them want some kind of authentic expression and something they can connect to, and we just focused on
that that. The rest of it is a story, you know, and when journalists after journalist comes to you with this, this is a this is the story I'd been told to write about the discrepancy between your success in Canada and the US. It does get in your head, and it does, it does affect you. But I never really took a lot of it too too seriously. I think we had a great career in the States.
I agree. And as we were growing up as a band and things were, uh, you know, we're watching bands in the US. There was one band, the Smithereens, and there are guitar band and and I remember you know them being on MTV and and uh, and then we started playing in the States, and I remember there were a couple of cities that we played that we played the same venue, and I was like, you know, you're you're not always getting all the information the correct in about,
you know, you know, the myth of the hip. We didn't. We weren't playing as big places down there, but we had a good, healthy following, you know, we had little pockets that we were doing well.
The Blues Traveler guys I remember being they came out with us. They opened a whole whack of shows for US across Canada and in Europe, and we went down to the States and opened some shows for them at Red Rocks and run around. It was huge on the radio for them, big pop hit. And asked John Popper, what's it like, you know, you just had a big breakout single and suddenly you're playing to like fifteen twenty thousand people. What's it like? And he said, it's really
it's really nice. It's a lot like it was before this happened. And in three months we'll be playing the five thousand people again. I thought, that's exactly right. He said, we were just going to enjoy this well at last, because it's going to go back to the way it was, and I thought, yeah, that's really grounded. That's the right response. You're doing it for the right reasons. It's not. You're not chasing some you know, brass ring that you'd keep
reaching for and can't hang on to. You're you're doing it for the music and the camaraderie and the connection and community.
So, okay, how did both of you find out that Gourde was ill? Gord Downy And when it was presented to you, was it that he was going to die or what he's ill?
Let's see, I found out well, I found out through uh our our management at the time had said that he had had a seizure and that he was in Kingston and they were they were sort of doing a biopsy and they was sort of having a having a look at what was going on, and then you know, just to sit tight. And that was the first I'd heard of him. And then they they you know, they
did some more investigative work and then they operated. So that all happened pretty fast, and so I found out about it through the management, and then I talked to Pat Downey afterwards to get more information. That's how I kind of came into it.
I'd been with Gord the day before, at day before the big seizure, at a celebration of life for his father in Kingston, and we had a lovely day that day and lots of hugs, and we had made a plan to go see another artist, Daniel Romano, who was playing at a club in Kingston that we had played at when we were up and coming, the Grad Club. And I got a text from Gord at about five thirty or six in the evening saying, not going to be able to make it tonight. I'll explain to you later.
And I had no idea that he was texting me from the hospital where he was being investigated. So and at first the initial report was that they thought he had a tumor or illsion, but that they thought that it was probably a good case scenario. And then within you know, forty eight hours, that bubble burst.
So okay. You know, this is a typical of bands. Usually a band member dies way before their time, you know, the twenty seven Club, and we've seen a lot of classic acts where you know, they're running out a runway to sort of put it. Where's this happened? When you were vibrant and still healthy young men. Is they say you've gone on about what friends you were, what harmony there was? This happens to gore down. It's an incredible tragedy. It really, to the degree it can be accepted, it's
very singular. However, it does affect everybody else. So what point did you think, holy fuck, what about me? And what am I gonna do? And when you ultimately did think about that, what were your thoughts?
Well, you do feel guilty about it. You know, it's like you're losing a friend he's got a terminal diagnosis. But I was also keenly aware that I was losing the dream, that this was the dream that we shared, dream that we had and we are living it, and it was just like, this is our golden goose. We loved We all loved being in this band. Even though there were tough times and acrimony at times, it was a beautiful thing and it treated us very well and
we loved it. And suddenly it's like it's winding up. And I didn't think that it would ever happen like this, And you feel guilty about mourning your own loss when you're when it's your friend who's dying. And then like I watched my father and people of his generation, older men who were so entwined with what they did for a living that their sense of self identity was what they did, and I said, well, I'll never make that mistake.
And of course the band played its final notes and my friend died, and then I was like, what am I now? I'm nothing? The band's gone. I'm not a guitar player and a popular band. This has been my whole life. What am I? What do I do now? Maybe I'm nothing? Maybe I have to completely reinvent myself and start over. And I went through a really difficult time trying to come to terms with all of it and trying to figure out where I fit or what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
So do you think you've come to terms with it? Or is the type of thing you can really never come to terms with? In how are you coping in terms of what you're doing marching forward?
I think I have come to terms with it. I you know, in trying to figure out what I was going to do, I thought, well, I just need some time. I just need some time to process this. And what I did with that time was I set up my prot Uel's rig and I worked for fifteen hours a day writing songs and recording, and at the end of it, it was like, oh, I write songs and record music that probably no one will ever hear. And when I'm not doing that, I go and do paintings that no
one will probably ever see. And I'm okay with that. That's fine. I get the same a lot of the same satisfaction. There's no monetary plus to it, but that doesn't matter. The band treated me very well and our fans treated us very well. So I'm I think I'm contented with it. I think i'm I think I'm in a good place.
In Johnny, I had a different situation because I had I had a family crisis that kind of butted up against Gord getting sick, and so at the end of the tour, I became you know, I knew it was going to be finished. I became very reflective of it, and I'm reminded of it as the years go by by things that happened, things that happened to other bands.
I was talking the other day that, you know, Gord had this horrible thing that happened to him, but he was able to get the other parts of his body and take these infusion drugs and get his brain working to where he was remembering things and he could get up on stage. Steven Tyler's voice is gone. It's gone. And that just happens like that. And if we'd had COVID hit when Gord was getting ready to get up and get on stage, that that could have killed that tour.
So I'm very thankful for it because a lot of bands don't get to even do it for a couple of years, you know, a lot of bands don't get to say goodbye. So I became very thankful for it for what we had. I uh, you know, it's a long time to do it, and then I had to focus on some other things, so my brain was in a different place, and for me it was just kind of I was just, you know, sort of saying how great it was that we were able to do it, and then you know, not long later, you know, Gord
was gone. And it's also worth mentioning that he when it was announced that he was sick, he had to think of his family, but he was thinking of us as individuals too. He did that final tour for us to to make sure that we were going to be financially good, so you know, at the end of his life, he's sweeping up and making sure things are good for everyone,
his family, his beautiful kids, and his other family. So that that makes you think, Wow, how lucky we are that we got to say goodbye, How lucky we are that we were able to do it for so long. And so I think I was more reflective and then had other things to focus on. But we all, as Robbie said, his was different than Paul's, different than Court Sinclair's.
And we all did it separately, which is so weird after spending thirty five years together, you know, cooped up together and going through everything together. When the shit hit really hit the fan, we were all on our own. Yeah, Yeah, that was Unfortunately, that was a mistake we made him. We made a mistake. We probably should have been in therapy from the beginning, but at some point, you know, we probably needed help.
But having said that, the movie and the book was great therapy to go through because those interviews you didn't know what the other guy was saying, the way that Mike broke them up, and that was really interesting, and I don't think everyone was very and I think that was a good thing because Mike did it in such a way that he asked these questions and I didn't think, oh,
I wonder what Robbie's going to answer to this. I wanted to answer it and be fully conscious of the moment and the question about how I felt about that at this moment, having some time and all the stuff that had happened. And I think that that turned into
a therapy session of its own. And you know the other day when we watched the movie and there was a little parade to go and watch a a band do some hip tunes that Jake had had arranged for It's a beautiful sunny day, and we walked behind these people and there were fans there, and I think that
was like that was there. It was again, and I had my boys there and they heard people singing hip songs and that was like seeing it through ten year old eyes, and I was just able to relive it and the thing that we set out to do in the very beginning and make music and make music with each other and commit to each other. There those songs are that people know is for and that's beautiful. That really, to me, it was just such a special day.
Okay, Rob, you talked about each grieving separately. Now that the movie has been made in the present day, is there more interaction between the four members or did everybody just come together for these projects and everybody living their own separate life.
We have zoom calls every second week. Management and Johnny are in Toronto. Paul Langua, Gorge Sinclair and I are all in Kingston, and I get together with Gorg Sinclair on a fairly regular basis, maybe every other week, to do something in person. We get together and listen to albums actually, which is really really nice. It's kind of where it all started for me, was hanging out with Gorge Sinclair and listening to albums from a very young age.
So that to be at that stage in my life where I'm returning to my childhood and my infancy, it's kind of really pleasant.
Okay. I have to ask the question that everybody asks, which is Gord is dead. But we have act after act, which is going on the road, moving forward with new lead singers. Used to be this never succeeded. Then we had Sammy Hagar with Van Halen. Now we have a new lead singer for Lincoln Park. I know, you guys say this is off the table, but is it really off the table.
We've always said, you know, never say never. Gord Sinkler said that the other day, and I agree with it, and it's just, you know, on any given day, you could ask each guy what he thought about it, and I might wake up on a Tuesday and say, you know, it would be really great to go out and play tunes.
I live in Toronto, so I see, you know, practically hip grace too, all these cover bands, and I'm reminded of the fact, and my friends point out that people just want to hear those songs, you know, they want to hear your songs. So I think that we would never say never, but it would, but you know, you'd have to get me on a Tuesday, and Robbie on a Thursday, and Paul on a Friday kind of I don't I don't know.
And Rob.
Yeah, I'm also in the never say never category, but it would almost have to be something completely different. Like, you know, if Zoe Daschanel wanted to sing for the band, I'd probably say yes. But you know, we did the thing with Leslie Feiss and that seemed to work. There'd been a bunch of names thrown out, and it just kept. It didn't feel right, and it kept. All I could think was like, well, you know, Bill, they're all going to get compared to Gord. Everyone's going to compare everyone
to Gord. And when Leslie Feis's name came up, it was like, no one's going to compare it to Gordon. It's a different thing entirely, and that's that's fine, But then you're doing a different thing entirely. So I don't know. I got to say, it took me a long time to get to a point where I'm okay that the dream ended. It was a pretty great dream. I had a really good time, and I loved being up on stage and I loved being on the road with my best friends on Earth, you know, brothers from other mothers,
and I did it for a long long time. I currently don't really have a drive to be on stage. I play guitar every day. I'm driven by that. But yeah, I just and you know, you brought mentioned some examples. I personally think that after David Lee roth Aim should have stopped. And you know, you don't replace Robert Plant and led Zeppelin or you know, I you know, I think that who should have stopped when Keith Moon was gone? Personally, that's how I feel, So I.
Thought that who should have stopped when they said they were going to stop in Toronto?
Which time?
Yeah? Which time?
In any event, gentlemen, you're not the typical rock stars, very aerudite and articulate, and I want to thank you so much for speaking with my audience. Certainly watch the documentary on Prime. It's included in Prime. You'll hear all this and much more, the nitty gritty of the band in depth and at length, and of course the book will give you even more So Johnny, Rob, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me.
Thank you so much, Bob.
It was a pleasure, Bob, great chatting with you, and thank you so.
Much for doing us.
Until next time. This is Bob left Sex