One of Canada’s most respected and beloved rock singer/songwriter/piano playing Strange Animals has teamed up with up-and-coming rock sensations, Stuck on Planet Earth, to offer their own wonderfully compelling bit of holiday cheer in the midst of these most uncheerful times.
Can You Make It Feel Like Christmas was released a week ago to great acclaim. It is a singular voice amongst the cacophony of holiday tunes on the market as it was created to not only make your spirits bright, but within the very specific and very timely context of the discomfort, dislocation and dishevelled lives brought on my the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea for the single came initially from Gowan’s label, Anthem Records/Anthem Entertainment, who initially wanted to bring Gowan and Styx bandmate in on a project to honour the 50th anniversary of the classic Jose Feliciano Christmas song, Feliz Navidad. But then the idea morphed into doing something more tangible and memorable to help shake people out of the Covid doldrums for the holiday season.
“They said there are so may Christmas shows that are coming up and we need something that will lift people’s spirits. They said they had seen an a Capella group do a version of Strange Animal on BOOM FM in Toronto which was quite funny. They asked if I would do something like that, but I said I don’t really want to do something like that this year. I didn’t want to be involved in any sort of parody like that because there’s a lot of great ones out there. At the same time, they asked me if I would work with this young band called Stuck on Planet Earth. They had some Billboard success earlier this year and were really getting going when suddenly this whole pandemic stopped them in their tracks,” Gowan explained from his home in Toronto.
“I checked them out and thought they were good, they were a band that could really play, they’re the kind of band I have always been in. They’re all really good players and they’ve got some cool tunes. So, I spent the next three days kind of feverishly trying to write a song that connected to 2020, that connected to what we were all going through and still had enough of an overview to make you think back on what this season has meant to you over the course of your life and how to bring those vibes forward into this challenging year. I called them back and they said they definitely wanted to do the song, so we went into a studio in Toronto, and under very safe circumstances with lots of cleaning and masks and all the proper protocols, we recorded Can You Make It Feel Like Christmas and we all felt really great about it.”
Can You Make It Feel Like Christmas is available on all streaming platforms, including YouTube, as well as through both Gowan’s solo social media accounts as well as those of Styx.
The day this interview was conducted was Dec. 8, the 40th anniversary of the tragic murder of the legendary former Beatle, John Lennon. Knowing there was a deep inspirational connection between Lennon and Gowan, it was something that needed to be elucidated upon because of the auspiciousness of the anniversary.
“It’s hard for me to not sound like I am gushing and effusive, because if there was a guiding light in my life, it’s him, in a musical sense – it’s definitely him. And in my own time on this planet Earth and probably for a billion other people, he really centred what music could do to enrich your life, mainly through his songwriting. So, he is the beacon, and in some ways, he might have even been that for Paul McCartney and George Harrison and Ringo in that you always felt that he led that group. Although I do think they were all of equal strength in a weird way. But his whole character was at the centre of it; the great humour and the wonderful human insights and uplifting songs and his musical phrasing and lyrics and everything. I can’t give you a succinct quote, but there probably isn’t a single day since I first saw him and saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show [in 1964] when I was seven years old, there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t played or listened to or somehow thought about something he wrote,” he said.
“And here’s a funny, kind of tragic little story, which I don’t know if I have ever told to a journalist before. But when the Beatles came to Maple Leaf Gardens in 1966, the kids next door to us had some kind of connection to the old Toronto Telegram newspaper. They knew I was a Beatles fanatic; they knew I was a music fanatic but particularly a Beatles fanatic. They weren’t all that enamoured with The Beatles, they were just kids that wanted to go to a show because it was a popular thing and they got free tickets from the Telegram to see the Beatles. Their mom sent one of the kids over and they knocked on my door and said, ‘we have an extra ticket to go and see the Beatles and we know Lawrence is a big fan and would he like to go to the show?’ My mom is at the door and I absolutely just about fell down because I couldn’t believe my ears. Oh my God!
“Because at that age, I had never been to Maple Leaf Gardens at all. I hadn’t quite turned 10 yet and I had never even been in the Gardens. But apart from that, I was like, ‘oh my God, I am actually going to go and see them.’ And my mom, in her Scottish brogue, she had read all the articles about the screaming girls and the police and things getting out of control at Beatles shows, which was quite right because they didn’t really have any handle on how to control concerts like that back then. So, she said, ‘oh no thank you. But with all the screaming I am worried about his ears. I am worried about his hearing.’ I am like, ‘oh no, oh no, no, no, you can’t take this away.’ Then she said, ‘You know something, next year you will be 10 years old and then you will be old enough and you can go see them then for sure. So, of course next year never happens [because The Beatles retire from touring later in 1966.] I always say it’s a great testament to how much I loved my mom because I never once brought that up, ever.”
Gowan did his best to follow in his hero’s footsteps and by the late 1970s and early 1980s was firmly ensconced in the Toronto club scene with his rock band Rhinegold. It was while playing in a packed club just north of the city in Richmond Hill on Dec. 8, 1980 where he was informed of Lennon’s death.
“We were doing four sets that night and we were about to go out for our final set of the night at 11:45 p.m. We would play until 12:45 a.m. and that was last call. At just about 11:30, our sound man, who is till my sound man, Bob Shindle, who is also now the sound man for the National Ballet and the Canadian Opera Company, he comes up to me, and he is this great big guy, and he had this kind of crestfallen look, this kind of stunned look on his face. He said he had something to tell me, and I thought it was a technical issue, like we needed to get some guy a new speaker or our cables are screwed up or something. So, I said, ‘I really don’t want to hear it,’” he explained.
“But he just sort of blurted out, ‘I just heard that John Lennon was shot.’ And I remember looking at him like, oh no, you’ve got that wrong. That was my main feeling was that he was completely wrong about that. I ran out the door of the club and got into our van and turned the radio on. And Imagine is playing and I immediately thought, ‘well, that’s a coincidence.’ It’s now about 11:40, and as the song was coming to an end, and this sounds horrible, I kept hoping that Bob got it wrong and that it was somebody else who got shot, somebody that knew John Lennon or somebody whose name sounded like John Lennon. When the song ended, the disc jockey said, ‘John Lennon, dead at 40.’
“I don’t think I have ever instantly burst into tears as quickly as I did when that happened. I went back into the club and Bob sees that my face is all red. I went straight on stage and I could see the audience was starting to get the news even though this is long before cell phones etc.; there were people whispering around the club. And I played Imagine right then. I didn’t announce it or anything, I just played it and by the end of the song, most of the people in there knew what was going on and it wasn’t even midnight yet. So, that’s how that day ended for me.”
Fast forward about five years later. Now a burgeoning solo artist, Gowan found himself working on what would be his breakout album, Strange Animal, recording the songs in the Ascot Sound Studios within the grounds at Tittenhurst Park in the UK countryside. From 1969 to 1971 it was the home of Lennon and his partner Yoko Ono, and it was where the Imagine song and video were recorded. At the time of the recording of Strange Animal, the home and studio were owned by fellow Beatle, Ringo Starr.
“Here I am in his house and playing on instruments and singing into and using all the gear that was used to make Imagine. And Ringo was living there and coming into the studio periodically and commenting on the songs on Strange Animal. And, yeah, I did think there’s some kind of guiding hand here. The universe is handing me this unbelievable gift,’ Gowan said.
“I would sit there quietly at night when we were there, and I would play Imagine on that piano and then the next day I was recording Criminal Mind on that same piano. And it’s funny how the years are twisted around because it wasn’t until 1987 or so that I saw the movie Imagine, which was long after making my own record and I remember seeing the film and saying, ‘oh my God, he is singing into the same mic, the same everything.’ Nothing had changed in that studio. So, yeah, I have always felt that music brings up all kinds of coincidental things that you attribute to something larger than life.”
While plans are on hold for both Styx and solo shows moving forward well into 2021, Gowan said he continues to be really busy with both virtual shows involving his own music as well as with Styx and believes that the paradigm for how people enjoy music has changed fundamentally through the adaptations of artists and musicians to keep being able to bring music to the people and make some semblance of a living.
“I have actually been very fortunate. I am actually busier in some ways that I would have been had the Covid thing not happened. Now, the drag is there isn’t anywhere close to the same amount of remuneration involved in that. But in some ways, it’s incredibly rewarding because we’re toughing it through. And I like that feeling that we’re toughing it through, knowing that we’re going to be the last ones back,” he said, adding that he believes that live shows will be welcomed back with open arms once the concert going public and promoters believe its safe.
“Through this whole thing, people started to realize the vital importance that music was to their lives. I believe it will carry through. I believe there will be an explosion of people wanting to get back to shows once we’ve got the immunity to this thing under control. I really think people are going to flood back to it. At the same time, I don’t think that all this stuff we’ve developed is going to go away.
“I believe we’ve leaped ahead a couple of decades here. Now, today, because of all that I have had to do, I have great connections through technology with tens of thousands of people. I mean, the Christmas single that we just put out a couple of days ago had over 50,000 as of yesterday. So, I think that’s pretty incredible. And then I am getting all these messages from people about how they feel about the song and how timely it is and what a great surprise it is and asking what I am doing next. I am feeling this far more profound connection with people because I know that I am not going to be seeing them next week at a show in Miami or wherever. It’s going to be this kind of relationship for the foreseeable future anyways and we’re thriving with it. And that’s part of what the song was aimed towards is to make it feel that we’re still very much connected, and that technology has afforded us that opportunity, as remote and distant as it is, it’s become a great tool.”
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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