The Oracle of LA charts Drake's rise from the bottom to the top

How Drake’s astrological chart predicted an icon in the making

Andrea Warner · CBC Music · Posted: Oct 24, 2019 10:00 AM ET | Last Updated: October 28, 2019

When we connect with the Oracle of Los Angeles, she admits she doesn't know a lot about Drake. But that's OK. We're not looking for an expert on Drake. We're eager for the Oracle of LA to share her expertise in all things astrological and esoteric in honour of the Scorpio star's birthday on Oct. 24. 

Amanda Yates Garcia has operated as the Oracle of LA for years, and spent her whole life immersed in all things pagan. She's a well-established working witch with a wide clientele who not only famously participated in a binding e-spell to prevent Donald Trump from doing harm, but has also just published a memoir, Initiated: Memoir of a Witch. 

Yates Garcia knows some of Drake's songs, and what her Strange Magic podcast co-host has told her ("sexy" and "kind of emo for a rapper"), but from this journalist's perspective, limited background is the perfect way to dive deep into a famous person's astrological chart.

There's minimal chance of unconscious influence or bias. When issues of legacy and community, fatherhood and ego, intense vulnerability and vengeance come up, it's purely what the chart tells us. Yates Garcia can help us see how Drake, born Oct. 24, 1986, was destined to become an icon in the making. The acclaimed astrologer takes us through her reading of Drake's chart. 

CBC Music: Scorpio [Drake's sign] has an intense sexual energy, but also an unquenchable thirst for everything, right? 

Amanda Garcia Yates: It's fascinating. Drake has a really powerful stellium in Scorpio, but in the fourth house. A stellium is when you have more than three planets in one sign or in one house. And what that can mean is that you can tend to develop obsessions in that area. It's almost like a lot of gravity in that place, that just kind of attracts a lot of things. That can be helpful; it can give you gifts in a lot of ways because when you have an excess of that energy, you're often quite gifted in that place. It can also mean that it's difficult for you to pull out of it or pull away from it, but it's this major attractor that kind of determines the focus of your life. Scorpio is the energy of sexuality, regeneration and rebirth, and strength and power. It is, itself, a very obsessive energy. It's one of the most powerful signs in the Zodiac. It's also the sign of the healer, because it's willing to go into territories that are dark and difficult and hard, and really see it and meet it with truth. 

What's interesting for Drake is that his Scorpio stellium is in the fourth house, and the fourth house is the house of home, the house of family. It's kind of like your umbilical cord, the thing that connects you to your history, to your own personal history, but also the history of  your people, your family legacy. It's also the house that is native to Cancer, so the sign of Cancer features really prominently in Drake's chart as well.

Cancer, too, is all about home and family and connection and nurturing and love. And you can feel like people are picking on you. You're just so hurt and offended and put off by something when really, it's just sort of ordinary life, but you're taking things really personally. That's part of the Cancerian imprint, that kind of energy, but the gift of it is an extreme sensitivity, a tenderness and a longing for love and connection. His moon is in Cancer and moon is your emotions, your emotional life. He's got a very watery personality with a Scorpio stellium and a Cancer moon, and his emotions are going to be really close to the surface, really easily accessible, and that's probably what makes him so good at what he does. 

One of the things that makes him connect with and resonate with people is that Cancerian side, which can often be very vulnerable, but they're also like, man, do not f--k with them, because they will f--k you. They won't hurt you by telling you how badly you've hurt them, they will storm out on you. They will f--k you up in a way that they will make you think that you are the worst person that ever lived. 

But he's also got that Scorpio power, which means that he's going to be able to come off in a way that has real power and backbone. His rising sign is in Leo, and so that's the mask that he presents to the world or sort of the way that the world perceives him as a performer, as an artist. His fifth house, which is ruled, in his case, by Sagittarius, that's kind of where we look to see what kind of art people are making. Sagittarius is all about justice and being a visionary. It's all about philosophy and intellect, and sharing one's vision for how the world could be. Interestingly, too, his Saturn is placed there, which gives me the sense — I mean, I don't know anything about him or his family — but it's likely that there's some kind of drive to address injustices specifically based on his relationship with his father. There might be some kind of pressure or a feeling of wanting to come out from underneath the confines of a father archetype in his life, or to be urged on by the visions of his father and trying to break out and break free and break beyond them.

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Queering the Canadian music industry

How Rae Spoon, Witch Prophet and other LGBTQ2SIA artists are radically reimagining the business of music

Andrea Warner · CBC Music Posted: Jun 06, 2019 2:00 AM ET | Last Updated: June 5, 2019

Read the original on CBC Music

When Tegan and Sara Quin released their first record as Tegan and Sara, 1999's Under Feet Like Ours, the twin sisters already openly identified as queer. The pop-rock duo has had significant success over the last 20 years, selling more than one million records and navigating the record industry with the necessary combination of skill, savvy and luck.

Tegan and Sara have had a high profile from almost the very beginning of their career (they signed to Neil Young's Vapor Records in 1999) and yet it still took them almost a decade to achieve "mainstream" success. And it was another seven years after their breakthrough when Tegan and Sara made their most anthemically queer album yet, 2015's Love You to Death.

"We're very invested in trying to reach a broader audience and to diversify the mainstream," Tegan  told Charlie Rose, speaking about the personal and political motivations behind their art. "There's not a ton of queer women in the mainstream and we're queer and we saw an opportunity."

If Tegan and Sara were still struggling to see themselves in their culture and in their industry as recently as 2016, even with their myriad privileges (white, cisgender, thin), imagine how difficult it is for independent artists who identify as Indigenous and Two Spirit artists, or racialized and queer, or transgender, non-binary or gender-nonconforming.

Ayo Leilani (Witch Prophet, Above Top Secret) and Rae Spoon have known that struggle. Leilani began making music in 2009 and, under the moniker Witch Prophet, released her debut solo album, The Golden Octave, in 2018. Spoon released their first album, Honking in Minivans, in 2001. Around 2015, Leilani and Spoon founded independent record labels — 88 Days of Fortune, which is now Heart Lake Records, and Coax Records, respectively— that are all about eschewing capitalism in favour of community, transparent and ethical practices, and making space for historically under-represented and marginalized artists.

In just four years, these labels have helped radically disrupt the stubbornly homogenous Canadian music industry. Consider that since the beginning of 2019 alone, Heart Lake Records has released five different offerings, while Coax Records has released nine albums and EPs, almost all by queer, racialized, non-binary and gender non-conforming artists.

Both Leilani and Spoon release music on their own labels, and though they have seemingly arrived at a similar place simultaneously, they have approached Heart Lake and Coax from distinctly different vantage points.

Ayo Leilani

Leilani is a queer Ethiopian-Eritrean woman and mother who co-founded 88 Days of Fortune, a queer hip-hop space and loose collective of DIY artists in Toronto, in 2009. This is also where she met DJ/producer/artist Francesca Nocera, who goes by Sun Sun, her partner and collaborator for the last decade. They started 88 Days partly as a response to rejection from music industry's gatekeepers, but also because they knew there was a demand that was going unfulfilled.

"When we started wanting to perform, and to expand our network and our net worth, we were met with a lot of people telling us, 'You know, nobody knows who you are,'" Leilani tells CBC Music over the phone. "You have to kind of have the cosign from somebody, right? So instead of doing that, what we did was say, 'Well, we're just gonna put on the shows ourselves,' because we know that the scene is here, and it is thirsty for something new. And we did do that. And we proved that that was the case. Toronto was begging for something community-oriented, where it was a queer safe space, where it was integrating all different scenes together to uplift music and DIY artists."

Eventually, 88 Days expanded its platform to release music by some of its artists, but as the various collective members went on to pursue different projects, Leilani says it made sense for her and Nocera to move away from the 88 Days brand and make something that, though founded on the same principles, was a little bit different.

"Heart Lake Records is a queer women-run label, which really focuses on supporting people who look and feel like us and also don't get the platforms that other people do," Leilani explains. "We focus on supporting and releasing music from mostly queer, women-identified people and non-binary people. And our allies, because of course we're never going to say no to working with somebody just because of their gender identity or sexuality or anything like that. But we do like to focus on women and non-binary people typically just because of the way the industry works."

Leilani says Heart Lake helps support artists to get grants and distribution, and they have also sponsored artists without officially signing them. Last year, they released Scarborough-based hardcore rapper Yasmine's debut, No Squad in the Wild, as well as Leilani's Witch Prophet debut.  

"As a queer woman of colour, I continue to thrive as an artist who is committed to telling true stories of my life in hopes for change and to inspire the world around me," Yasmine tells CBC Music."88 Days of Fortune is family. I've been working with them since I was 18 and almost 10 years later they continue to support my work, my growth and have helped get my music and art on multiple platforms, such as NXNE, Nuite Blanche, and most recently Red Bull Festival, just to name a few. They've allowed my music to reach the masses and continue to encourage me as an artist."

Yasmine credits Leilani and Nocera for modelling compassion and professionalism in their work ethic, and for allowing their artists to "be who they are and live in their truth." 

"They have given the opportunity for queer artists to be heard and to let the city know that we're here, too, and we're hella f--king talented and can stand next to our fellow straight artists," Yasmine says. "They have created spaces for acceptance for all. Home should be your safe space and they have always created that for me and for others." 

"Pretty much our business plan at the moment is just support who we really want to see shine, whether that be with resources or financially," Leilani says. "It's strange, because we do a lot of the things that we were already doing with 88 Days. We [even] still kind of [put on shows]. I do a lot of like booking for people and like, sending them showcases, like, 'Make sure you apply for this.' Some [people] I have been supporting without actually saying, 'Here sign this contract and I will do it for you.' It's just really about passion and wanting to see more women in the industry."

Rae Spoon

Spoon is an award-winning, non-binary musician and author who is almost 20 years into a music career that started in country and now encapsulates indie pop, rock, folk-punk and electronic. They founded Coax Records after their Calgary-based label, Saved By Radio, went on hiatus in 2015. Outside Distribution agreed to continue distributing Spoon's records, and so they pushed it a step further.

"When they said yes, I was like, 'Oh, can I actually have a label?'" Spoon tells CBC Music over the phone. "There's not very many labels left, or indie labels, or really many ways to get albums into stores anymore. But there's still a really good, strong independent record culture. So I feel like for independent artists, even though maybe we're not selling tons of records through stores, it's really about being able to extend that. So that's kind of how the idea began. After playing for so many years, I knew lots of indie musicians who were playing regularly, like at festivals, but didn't have that support to have the records available for stores, especially vinyl. If you're trying to distribute your own vinyl, that would be very, very difficult and expensive."

Spoon has been learning the business of being an independent artist for two decades, and along the way, mentors helped pave their way. They were just 20 years old when they met Meegan Maultsaid, a musician, manager, community organizer and artistic producer (Under the Volcano, Rock for Choice).

"Meegan really took me under her wing when I was 20," Spoon says. "I went from living in Alberta to a year later playing at the Vancouver Folk Festival, which would have never happened without her. So, as I was kind of approaching the age she was [when she helped me], I was like, 'Oh, you know, maybe I have space to help some folks out.' I know so many artists in Canada — especially if you belong to more than one category that's oppressed in the music industry — it's a lot harder. There are definitely folks who do super well, but there's not a lot of in-between support for smaller people starting out."

Spoon wanted to expand their own circle, and asked friends for recommendations about artists they should approach for Coax. They were particularly interested in providing resources and support to marginalized artists, but it wasn't that simple.

"I get approached by white cis straight men 10 times more than anybody else for help, because I think they feel comfortable asking for it," Spoon says. "I actually realized that I would have to purposefully try to work with people who didn't belong, you know, to just that one category. But on top of that, I like to try to work with folks who are just trying to learn new things."

In 2016, Spoon began working with LAL, a Toronto-based electronic duo comprised of Rose and Nic (Rosina Kazi and Nicholas "Murr" Murray) that has been making music since 1998. LAL's press release describes the pair as a "Brampton/ Bangladeshi queer weirdo" and an "immigrant Barbadian, West-Indian, straight cis Blackman nerd." LAL has released its last two albums via Coax, including Dark Beings, which just dropped on May 17.

"I really liked Rae Spoon's ideas around how to create a symbiotic music infrastructure," Nic tells CBC Music. "It feels really powerful to be on the label with so many super talented artists. Also it feels like we are creating something new that will serve generations to come."

"We work mostly with queer, trans, Two Spirit and/or Black, Indigenous, people of colour and our friends, plus those who have a critical lense," Rose says, noting that LAL has historically found more support in theatre than in music. "Possibly because theatre has a more critical — in our community at least — and lengthy process around creation. I'm not totally sure why, to be honest, but definitely we are part of an ecosystem of artists, activists and community-minded and DIY/grassroots peoples. We aren't interested in [being] super rich or just exploring our own work. Our work centres our experiences in a wider community and we often work together to make amazing art and f--k with mainstream."

LAL observes multiple ways the traditional Canadian music industry has continued to uphold barriers.

"The biggest way would be a sort of idealism that reinforces a type or form that can be commercially successful, or have a career which is almost always informed by the patriarchy, racism, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, etcetera," Nic says.

"The traditional music industry is mostly controlled by white cis men in Canada, and though we are seeing changes to this dynamic, it's still folks who believe in capitalism, and we don't think this system works for most peoples," Rose says. "We still aren't seeing enough BIPOC and/or queer/trans/Two Spirit  communities in positions of power, but most of us are just now creating and focusing on our own worlds, which we have been doing regardless forever. The lack of accessible venues, DIY and music venues being shut down in Toronto is scary, and I'm not sure if the traditional music industry is aware or is fighting on a political platform to make room for all, not just those who have access and can afford to pay to play."

Rose says the lowest points in LAL's 20 years have been marked by not seeing themselves reflected in the music industry. Coax is helping to change that.

"For me as a singer who is gender fluid/non-binary, big and brown, it has been that I'm too weird or confident for the industry," Rose says. "But more so, I was trying to get into the industry when I actually didn't belong there. The high point for us now is just doing what we do with like-minded folks and building a wider dialogue nationally." 

Among those like-minded folks is Kimmortal, a musician and artist whose bio describes as "a queer, Filipinx second-generation settler based on unceded Coast Salish territories a.k.a. Vancouver." Kimmortal uses they and she pronouns interchangeably, and she released her newest album, X Marks the Swirl, this past April.

"I have been navigating music on a relationship basis with trusted friends in the community, and specifically the queer POC community," Kimmortal tells CBC Music over the phone. "I've heard about Rae Spoon through friends, specifically through one of my good friends who's queer and Asian and someone that's been in the scene a lot. And then also LAL mentioned Rae Spoon and I've always listened to LAL as queer, brown and Black artists in music who are really just trying to change the terrain."

Kimmortal contacted Spoon last year as she readied her first record in five years. Mainly she wanted advice about how to do it right independently, but soon she realized that Coax might be a home that aligned with her own values.

"Rae was just like, yeah, totally, let's do it, this is the process, and it was super transparent," Kimmortal says. "I really like how Rae actually uses Coax as a community service, like giving back, because 100 per cent of the profits don't go to them. That also shocked me. I was like, really? I've never heard of that. That speaks so much to me and that's the kind of people I want to work with in music. I definitely have been approached by other folks who were like, 'We can get you on different markets in Asia and South America,' but they didn't know what I was about. They didn't really care for my message. And my words are why I do what I do. It just felt so right, especially with all the artists under Coax Records. These are folks that I already follow and I look up to and I would love to work with."

Decolonizing the music industry is actually learning what it is to be in community.

- Kimmortal

Both LAL and Kimmortal are grateful to work with Spoon, a person who has also mostly operated from a position of otherness outside the mainstream music industry and the status quo.

"It is nice to have a working relationship with someone like Rae who gets the struggle," Nic says. "I also feel like disruption as a way of being is not a choice for us, based on the history of colonization in Canada."

"It's like, should I put my energy into always trying to explain my intention to disrupt?" Kimmortal says. "You don't have to if you're already working with artists that are doing that. You can actually focus more on the art. I'd rather be around people that are already living that truth. It's so much less work."

By removing a capitalist inclination to competition, Kimmortal says, Coax and other independent labels like it are doing substantial community building.  

"Decolonizing the music industry is actually learning what it is to be in community," Kimmortal says. "Shifting that way of understanding, we can rise and shine together and share skills. That's also something for me to rewire in my brain. It's easy to isolate myself for so long, like, 'Oh, I have to do this all by myself.' But when you see people actually want to support and build — there's such a beautiful thing that happens when you're part of group projects. That's even more exhilarating than doing solo work for me these days."

The future of Canadian music

Last fall, Jeremy Dutcher won the Polaris Music Prize for his groundbreaking debut, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. The Two-Spirt, Wolastoqiyik member of Tobique First Nation was the third queer musician in a row to win Canada's largest cash prize for music, and Dutcher's win also marked the fourth time in five years that an Indigenous person won Polaris.

Music is changing this land, and what you see on this stage tonight, this is the future. This is what's to come.

- Jeremy Dutcher, accepting the Polaris Music Prize

"It's so exciting, the kind of space that's really opened up in this music scene," Dutcher told CBC Arts. "For Two-Spirited artists, trans artists, queer artists ... anyone under the umbrella. It's really incredible."

Award-winning musician and author Vivek Shraya also spoke about this earlier in the year, in a piece about Tao-Ming Lau, the queer woman of colour behind Blue Crane Agency, the first music booking agent of its kind in Canada.

"I've been making music officially in Canada since 2002, so like, 17 years, and this is the first time I've had a booking agent," Shraya said.

It was also the first time in a decade that Shraya, a trans woman of colour, had any kind of music industry representation at all.

"Because of all the bad experiences I've had, I'm very, very cautious about who I decide to work with," Shraya said. "Between Tao's background in the business and also understanding the barriers that queer people, racialized people, feminine people face, I felt like it made a lot of sense."

Heart Lake Records and Coax Records' founders understand the barriers well, and LAL's Rose only wishes this kind of support had been available earlier on in the band's existence.

"I think if Coax had been around from the beginning of our careers, we would definitely be in a different place, because we would have focused on alternative avenues versus trying to find our space within mainstream communities," Rose says. "We may not be known beyond our communities, but we would have a stronger base and support system nationally and internationally. So this is what LAL is now focusing on."

Spoon has modest goals for Coax's future. Right now they do all of the administration work, as well as helping to write grants and handle all the mail orders. But they're happy to be home a bit more now after 20 years on the road.

"I've been very lucky," Spoon says. "When I started writing books, I kind of diversified my income. So I have a little bit more free time, but I don't have to be on tour every day. I used to have to play, like, 250 shows a year to make a living, and I don't have to do that anymore. I imagine in the future I might hire an admin person. Like, have that as part of what I contribute to the label. But for now, it's just me. And, you know, most of the time I get it right."

At Heart Lake Records, Leilani and Nocera are working on their most ambitious project yet. They purchased a 50-acre farm and forest in Caledon, an hour outside Toronto. They've been renovating the farmhouse on the property for about a year and a half. They live in part of it and are turning the bottom half into an artist residency that they call Stregavilla, which means "witch house" in Italian. The couple wants to start producing outdoor music festivals on the farm, possibly as soon as next spring or summer.

Leilani is also looking ahead at Heart Lake's release schedule, which includes a solo Sun Sun beat album, as well as another Witch Prophet record called D.N.A Activation. There are plans for a new Above Top Secret record, as well as something from Yasmine.

"Ayo and Sun Sun are family and I owe them a lot," Yasmine says. "They took this young, shy, 18-year-old who spat over unrecorded instrumentals and really saw something in me I couldn't even see then. They've always had my best interests [in mind] and have shown that with their actions. In life people don't have to do anything for you and they've just always came through for me and continue to do so. I'm truly forever grateful." 

Labels like Heart Lake and Coax are doing the work. If the traditional music industry continues its exclusionary practices, Leilani says, it'll be to their detriment.

"What they're missing out on is the future," Leilani says."Regardless if they want to acknowledge us or not, we will take over — and we are."

The Sorority: The feminist future of hip-hop

Andrea Warner · Posted on CBC Music May 04, 2018 12:00 AM ET | Last Updated: March 18, 2019

Read the original at CBC Music

There's no better origin story for a feminist hip-hop group than meeting at an International Women's Day Event and throwing down in an all-female cypher that then went viral. Shortly thereafter, the Sorority was established, and if their jaw-dropping debut is any indication, Canadian hip-hop is never going to be the same.

Haviah Mighty, Lex Leosis, pHoenix Pagliacci and Keysha Freshh are the four powerhouse MCs who make up the Toronto-based act. Just last month they dropped their first record, The Pledge, and now they're on a cross-country tour modelling their vision for the feminist future of hip-hop. The Sorority dropped by the CBC Vancouver office to talk about the radical power of sisterhood, collaboration and putting their activism into action.

It's a great story when you meet at an International Women's Day event, but did any of you know each other or know of each other beforehand?

Haviah Mighty: I was aware of pHoenix through Twitter, but I had never met her. I knew she was a Toronto artist, I didn't even really know she was a rapper. Lex and pHeonix had done a track together but had never met. I was aware of Keysha, but that's it. We all met each other that day.

What was it about that moment and coming together and identifying with each other?

Lex Leosis: Just the vibe, too. We had a little soundcheck with the mic before and everybody was just supposed to spit four of their bars and then realizing that everybody was dope in that moment. I was, like, "OK, I'm not about to rap on a track with a bunch of wack people! Awesome."

pHoenix Pagliacci: I was not so much surprised as I was excited when they all dropped their bars, because we were all saying different things in similar ways, we still had different perspectives about being a female in the industry. Hearing Haviah attack it with that forgive-or-not vibe, and then Lex came with the straight facts, like, when it comes to females in certain roles, 'Why not?,' and Keysha came with the respect and homage, you know, like, "Look, man, we've been doing this so respect us and we'll just do what we do." And then I just slipped in there and I fit. It was all natural chemistry. All our reactions were genuine. When we heard something we liked, it showed on our faces and I'm just glad we met that day, for real.

You hear from people all the time, "Oh, you're a woman MC? A woman rapper?" as if you're a leopard with no spots or something. But obviously there's a big enough scene in Toronto to encompass each of you and have you never cross paths before two years ago. So what does it mean to come together as a unit and disrupt the gendered nonsense about who makes hip-hop?

pHoenix: I'm a scorpio, I'm so comfortable with disruption. I think that we, as females, struggle with enough things as is, and then as female rappers, we get put into an even smaller box, so it really meant the world for us to come together and say, "Yeah, I'm sick of that, too," and actually put action behind it. For so long hip-hop has been a misogynistic, male-dominated, disrespecting females kind of realm, so we wanted to literally disrupt that. We wanted people to question why it was the way it was, when, if all you have to do is be talented, why are we the exception? We really did decide, as the four of us, we "pledged" to be the difference, to make the difference.

I like the act of taking up space. As a fat woman, I interrupt spaces for people and I've been thinking a lot about what it is to disrupt spaces in many different ways. What is it to choose, at this time, to be an activist, which is a huge part of lyrical hip-hop?

Keysha Freshh: I think that it's important. Hip-hop came from free speech, from people wanting to express themselves, to go against the system and against the grain. It came from a marginalized group of people whose voices were being silenced. That is what hip-hop initially was and truly is down to the core. And not just in MC-ing, but in graffiti and DJing it's all self-expression. The way that we do it, we provide a voice for women and women of colour and we try to be reminiscent of that time, where it came from, we keep it true to that and that sets us apart. It's very important that we discuss these things, it's important that we include them in our songs. pHoenix makes it a point in our verses that it's body positive, that the conversation happening, creating safe spaces, inclusivity, and making people feel like they're welcome anywhere that we are. We want people to associate that with the Sorority, and I think we're just keeping it true to hip-hop, to be frank with you, with what we're doing.

Lex: I think it's also just who we are before the Sorority, as individuals. It was cool to connect with people who are like-minded and fighting for the same things.

Haviah: There's a lot of like-mindedness, but there's also a lot of learning, just in regular conversations that we've had in rehearsals and planning and a lot of that content makes it into our live set. When we were performing for Canada 150, we did a lot of Indigenous education before that show. I learned a lot in that process and it's the willingness to learn and absorb knowledge.

How collaborative are you in the writing?

Keysha: Definitely it comes in different sizes as far as how we work collaboratively. Writing is difficult to accomplish all together; there's four of us, we all have busy schedules, we all work, so it's not always easy to get us in the same place to actually write. Also, two of us might be feeling the need to write and two of us might not be. Writing is such a sacred thing to artists. We throw beats into the Google Drive that we share, and then each one of us listening and saying, OK, I have a vision for that, and then OK, you take the lead on the song and we build from there.

Lex: In the recording process, that's where we get more collaborative. Someone will jump in the booth and that's where we're really honest with each other. We're kind of truly a family at this point. Like, you could do this better, attack it again or the first half was good but you fell off short at the end. That, in itself, is a collaborative process, because we have someone pushing us to be better. Or, on the other side, like that was amazing, don't do it again. [They all laugh.]

Haviah: Even writing choruses. Like, I wrote a chorus for "On Me," but I felt like pHoenix would sound better singing it so she executed that. Or, Keysha wrote a hook and she was like, "Haviah, I think you should try it."

I've heard this over and over again, "Oh, women working together, must be cat fights."

[Every member of the Sorority laughs and nods in agreement, talking over each other: "We've heard that, too." "If I had a dollar…."]

But my most successful collaborative relationships have been with women and non-binary and gender-nonconforming people. It's good competition, not bad competition because you want to be better, you want to impress each other. And that feedback loop is so critical. I have it with two writers I've come up with, we have a "Yay, team!" thing. So to see it come through in your performance onstage, it's really nice.

Lex: We have that "Yay, team" mentality for each other, too, even in our solo careers. Someone will perform and in the group chat it'll be, "pHoenix, kill it tonight!"

pHoenix: Yeah, if we can't make it out to the show, we always send love.

This is your first tour in support of your first record, which just came out last month. How do you feel?

[A variety of squeals and shouts.]

pHoenix: How do you put that sound into one word?

I believe it's six Hs and seven exclamation points.

Keysha: We played in Victoria last night and after the show, people came up and they gave us flowers. That was a very emotional moment. We've never been to Victoria, none of us have even performed solo, so to have that type of love. Like, people went to the store, bought flowers, wrote a card — that thought means that we have people who really listen to us, that we inspire people, and that we touch people so much they want to buy us flowers. For the tour and this album coming out, people are literally taking the pledge to stand with us in our sisterhood and stand with us in our mission to promote safe spaces, unity and feminism. That makes everything worth it. It makes me very emotional and confident, and just proud of Lex, Haviah and pHoenix, and our DJ for taking this journey with me and allowing me to do this and pursue my goal and meet all these great people. Even being here at CBC, this is a dream come true.

Celine Dion, Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman and the weird, wonderful history of 'It's All Coming Back to me Now'

Andrea Warner · CBC Music · Posted: Feb 21, 2016 12:00 AM ET | Last Updated: April 5, 2019

Read the original on CBC Music

Céline Dion says she has "mixed emotions" about the end of her Las Vegas residency. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)

Andrew Lloyd Webber reportedly called it "the greatest love song ever written," but depending on what side of the power ballad yay/nay binary you land on, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is either a swirling, bloated mess, or a gothic and grandiose weeper.

It clocks in anywhere from a little over five minutes to almost eight, depending on the version. A flurry of strings, the music box-like piano, and then the bruising, violent downbeat. What follows is an almost epic battle of thundering crescendos and hushed, broken whispers. There is no middle ground in a Jim Steinman song. He is a man of excesses and extremes: he wears Darth Vader-like sunglasses inside and thinks leather is an all-season fabric. His earliest musical inspiration was Wagner. He helped create Meat Loaf.

In 1996, Steinman wasn't the most likely Celine Dion collaborator. With just three English-language albums under her belt, but already a huge star on par with Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, Dion had worked with the likes of David Foster, Diane Warren and Ric Wake, but never somebody like Steinman. They shared a certain fondness for highly theatrical, emotional songs that were big on feelings and bombast. Sure, he'd worked with Dion's hero, Barbra Streisand, once in 1984, but he was mostly known for those Meat Loaf collaborations (chiefly Bat Out of Hell in 1977 and the 1993's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell), Bonnie Tyler's 1983 album, Faster than the Speed of Night ("Total Eclipse of the Heart"), and Air Supply's hit, "Making Love Out of Nothing At All."

But Dion fell in love with "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," a song Steinman had penned about a decade earlier and inspired, in part, by Wuthering Heights. She loved it so much that she sequenced it first on her 1996 album Falling Into You, released it as her second single in North America, and made what was rumoured to be one of the most expensive music videos of all time to go along with it with famed director Nigel Dick (Guns 'n' Roses, Oasis, Britney Spears).

As it turns out, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" has a secret history that's as sensational and head-scratching as the song itself, and everybody and everything it touched has been changed by its existence — and not always for the better. For the 20th anniversary of Dion's Falling Into You, CBC Music takes you inside the funny, strange and sometimes sad history of Steinman's confounding masterpiece, including an interview with the first woman to record the song, and a deep dive inside the filming of Dion's epic music video with Dick.

In case you're not familiar with the "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," here's Dion doing a much more scaled down version during her massive stage show. Now meet the man behind the song.

Jim Steinman

It's no surprise that Steinman got his start in musical theatre. A 1996 profile in the Sunday London Times recounts one of Steinman's earliest influences: the full 22-hour radio broadcast of Wagner's Ring Cycle when he was just nine years old. He wrote music and directed plays in college, and in 1969 wrote the book, music and lyrics for his first musical, The Dream Engine. He continued with musical theatre and met Meat Loaf (aka Marvin Lee Aday), when he was cast in 1973's More Than You Deserve, for which Steinman wrote the lyrics and music.

"Meat was the most mesmerizing thing I'd ever seen," Steinman told Classic Rock Magazine in 2000. "He was much bigger than he is now, he was f--king huge, and since I grew up with (German composer Richard) Wagner, all my heroes were larger than life. His eyes went into his head, like he was transfixed. [At the audition], he sang 'You gotta give your heart to Jesus'...I can seem arrogant at times because I'm certain of things and I was certain of him."

In 1975, Steinman and Meat Loaf began touring with the National Lampoon Show, replacing Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, but Steinman was also writing new songs for a Peter Pan project called Neverland. But Steinman and Meat Loaf decided that the best of those Neverland songs, including "Bat Out of Hell," should form the basis of a rock album.

"I never really saw classical music and rock 'n' roll as different. I still don't," Steinman told Classic Rock Magazine. "I grew up liking extremes in music — big gothic textures. I never have much regard for more subtle stuff. Dire Straits may be good, but it just doesn't do it for me. I was attracted to William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, I couldn't see the point in writing songs about ordinary, real-life stuff."

Steinman and Meat Loaf didn't find much support at first for their collaboration. Everybody rejected the pair until they finally met American musician and producer Todd Rundgren — whom Steinman has called "the only genius I've ever worked with." Rundgren reportedly "rolled on the floor laughing. It was so out there, I said, 'I've got to do this album.'"

Finally, Bat Out of Hell was released in 1977. The title track is nine minutes long, but that didn't stop it from becoming a huge mainstream hit despite all the factors working against it. In 1995, it was double diamond-certified in Canada.

In 1981, the pair released another album, Dead Ringer, and Steinman became an in-demand composer, producer and songwriter. His hallmarks — bombast, gothic or tortured love, angst — were reflected in every collaboration. Even Andrew Lloyd Webber came calling for help writing the Phantom of the Opera, but Steinman turned him down since he was committed to producing Bonnie Tyler's record.

In the late '80s, Steinman assembled Pandora's Box, a female pop group that included New York-based musician and session singer Elaine Caswell and Bat Out of Hell collaborator Ellen Foley. The group released one concept album in 1989 called Original Sin, and dropped one single in the U.K., a little song called "It's All Coming Back to Me Now."

Pandora's Box

Never heard of Pandora's Box? Neither have most people. Named after one of Steinman's favourite mythologies, the group consisted of Caswell, Foley, Gina Taylor, Deliria Wilde — and Steinman, who was credited as the keyboardist. But, even before Pandora's Box was in existence, Steinman had been searching for a woman to record his new song. He found Caswell, who spoke with CBC Music over the phone from her home in New York to talk about being the original singer of one of Celine Dion's biggest hits.

This is a story that's a bit lost to history, but you recorded and released "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" seven years before Celine made it super famous.

It's a pretty crazy story. [Laughs]

Do you remember the first time you heard the song?

Oh my god, yeah, very vividly! I'd been working in the studio with Eric Troyer and Rory Dodd who are two singers doing all the background vocals for Jim. One day Jim was looking for someone to do the song and they said, 'Oh, you gotta check Elaine out.' They took me over to his manager's apartment. They were supposed to send a demo of it for me to hear and for me to meet Jim, he wanted to hear my voice with the song, and they sent the wrong version. They sent a guy's version, so it was in the wrong key, so Jim was freaking out and he's calling the studio and I said, 'No, I'm cool, I'm cool. Just show me how it goes.' So he played a few lines on the piano and I started singing the song and it just sat in my voice perfectly. It was just one of those things where I went, 'Man, I could get into this one.' He looked at me like, 'Oh my.' And then we went out to dinner (laughs).

It was the first time I ever dined with him, which was so much fun. He's a gourmand and a wine connoisseur and he ordered all of this stuff and wines paired with just the right things. It was one of the biggest banquets and feasts I've ever attended, and I was like, 'Well, I guess I'm gonna be singing this song, this is really awesome.'

Then we went into Avatar and worked on it quite a bit. He rolled out, like, 5,000 24-track machines, this was back when everybody was using tape [laughs], and he kept saying, 'Oh, I wanna open more tracks' and kept recording takes and takes and takes. I'd just gone through this horrible breakup and I'm just singing this song and really starting to have a hard time. I ran to the bathroom and I called my best friend and I'm like, "Suze, I can't take it, he keeps making me sing these lines over and over and I don't feel like I got anything left in me,' and she said, 'Goddamnit, slap on your red lipstick and get out there and sing. This is the moment you been waiting for!' So I put on my lipstick and go back out and sing more, and then he liked to tell me later, 'You know, I basically used almost the first take you did.' I said, 'Don't even say that to me, it's not funny; I think I basically did cough up blood.' [Laughs] No, I didn't.

That sounds so intense!

The next phone call I get from him is, 'Hey, we're gonna do the video, pack your bags and sit down, because I'm going to tell you who's going to direct it.' He tells me it's Ken Russell, the iconic filmmaker who did Tommy, The Devils, Women in Love. I was like, 'What? Steinman and Ken Russell together? That is like so incredibly, amazingly over the top.' We go to London and do the shoot, which was completely over the top. I mean, I'm kissing snakes, I'm dead on a tombstone, this motorcycle's crashing, there's fire, I'm being molested by all my past lovers. It's crazy Steinman. But I was told, 'This song's going to be a huge hit.' That's what everybody said, what Jim said. It was going to be his new 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.'

But it wasn't.

I leave and the record comes out in England. They were going to do what they did with 'Total Eclipse,' which was break it in England and then release it in the States, which is what they did with Bonnie Tyler. So I'm like, 'Cool, they've got a plan,' and I leave and the record comes out. Then something went awry with Virgin Records, I'm not sure of all the details, but something went wrong where he wasn't happy with the way they were handling things, and then on the tail of that, they released another song, and the record ended up not being released in the United States.

So there's this gazillion dollar video done by an iconic filmmaker and this bigger-than-life song that Jim wrote and me singing it and me in the video, which was completely an honour, and then all of a sudden it's like, 'Hmmm, this isn't going the way they told me.' This is three or four years into working on this thing. Okay, fine, it's a good thing I have a career as a session singer in New York as well, and I just kept doing that stuff while I was at it. The record never does become the big hit they promise it will be, and then a few years later, I get a call from Jim and he's like, 'You know, I've finally found somebody who can sing that song in your key' and I'm like, 'Good for you.' You know, that would have been real sweet if that was the new 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' but I'm like, 'Okay, I'm dying to hear who it is' and he says, 'It's Celine.' I said, 'Well, have a nice hit.'

[Editor's note: this video is NSFW.]

The video is crazy. Like, I started watching it at work and was making notes, and suddenly you're basically dead and there's an orgy with men in assless chaps and it's not even the three-minute mark. Did you know what you were getting into?

I had no idea. I was game. When I found out it was Ken Russell, I was all over it! It was totally cool, hanging with him during the shoot and drinking wine in the graveyard where we were shooting half of it. I didn't know anything. They said, 'Be at the studio at six in the morning for full body makeup.' I'm like, 'full body makeup? I've never done that.' 'Well, you're going to do it tomorrow because you're going to be under a sheet on a tombstone and we want every part of you all made up so it's all even.' Okay, getting up at the crack of ass and the car takes you there and it's cold and you're standing there with some stranger and you're naked! It was kind of trippy. But I'm not a very shy person, so it was ok.

I get out there and I was like, 'Holy cow.' He brought in all these dancers from Cats in London and had them doing all this crazy stuff. They fit me for a leather, studded, custom-made outfit that was pretty over-the-top. I should have kept it, because it was really cool, but I remember I was so distraught after all the disappointment that I dumped it into a Salvation Army bin. I was so sad. It was such a bittersweet thing for me, like, I can't look at this anymore.

Oh, that's so hard. I can't even imagine.

The hardest thing was when the song resurfaced on the radio with Celine singing it. It was the same exact track I sang on. They just took my vocal off and put her vocal on, and I think Jim told me it was Todd Rundgren who arranged and did the background vocals. I would hear the downbeat of the song (hums a bit) and I'd be in a taxi and I'd just start crying. I'd just have to get out. Or, I could be in the laundromat or the grocery store, it was a huge hit, it was everywhere.

Then I got called to come sing on a track on that record [Falling Into You], which was even harder for me, because she'd already recorded her vocal on 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now,' and I meet her and she was very, very nice and said, 'I've been listening to your vocals. I've been traveling through Europe and I've just been listening to it constantly, you did such an amazing job.' She was kind of like, you know, 'oh, I hope I can sing it as great as you' and I said, 'Really? I don't think you're going to have any problem.' I think I actually said, 'Have a nice hit.' I tried to be funny, because how can you deny it?

What was the other track you sang on?

'River Deep, Mountain High.' I'd sung with Ronnie [Spector] and Darlene Love, all those people, before. But it was a trip and it kind of a bittersweet experience. It was once in a lifetime, a ton of fun, and very emotional. It's ["It's All Coming Back to Me Now"] a very emotional song. People either loved it or hated it.

Celine Dion vs. Meat Loaf

"It All Coming Back to Me Now" is the first track on Dion's fourth English-language album, the multiplatinum Falling Into You. The song is almost eight minutes long, and, as Caswell pointed out, people either loved it or hated it. It's an incredibly gutsy way to start a record, but it's not simply an act of hubris. Dion didn't yet have the weight of the Titanic theme behind her, and the reviews for her last record were mixed at best. But she had a solid fan base and she knew she could control and command the enormity of the song's emotions. Dion, like Steinman, is not a person of half-measures, so she was uniquely suited to the challenges of the track.

But Meat Loaf wanted the song for himself. According to one version of the story, Steinman and Meat Loaf agreed to record "I'll Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" for 1993's Bat Out of Hell II instead of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," saving that for Bat Out of Hell III. When Steinman said that Dion would be recording the song for Falling Into You, Meat Loaf sued but Steinman won and Dion was able to record her version and it became a blockbuster hit.

Meat Loaf eventually recorded his own version of the song for 2006's Bat Out of Hell III, but as a duet with Marion Raven. He told Billboard magazine that he was still bitter that Dion got there before him.

"That was my song. I wanted to record it for Bat II and Jim said, 'Let's wait for Bat III' and I took him at his word. The next you know, Celine Dion is recording it." To add insult to injury, when Falling Into You was released, several critics invoked Meat Loaf's name with regards to the Steinman-penned song, including the Toronto Sun, which said it "sounds like a Meat Loaf reject."

Like Dion's music video for the song, Meat Loaf's music video is also set in a mansion seemingly haunted by the ghost of a past lover, but even when it deviates into Eyes Wide Shut territory, it fails to live up to the sheer spectacle of what Nigel Dick created for Dion. Though, as Dick tells CBC Music via Skype from Los Angeles, that had less to do with any of his own decisions. Despite being one of the most successful music video directors ever, Dick says only one man's vision made it onto the set for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," and that was Jim Steinman's.

Nigel Dick

You had directed music videos for Guns N' Roses, Tears for Fears and Oasis and many other rock bands. How did you get involved with Jim Steinman and Celine Dion?

It started in January of 96. I'd just come back from a holiday and I get a phone call, 'Can I do a job with Celine?', and within 15 hours of getting back from Thailand, I was on a plane going to France. I was living in LA at the time, so I basically flew into the south of France, met Celine and did the video for 'Falling Into You.'

That happened very quickly, and then we started talking about this video in March. Obviously the first video went down very nicely, and so I get the call, 'Can you start writing some ideas up for the Celine video?'

What did you think of the song?

Well, the truth of it is, I'm not a huge fan of Celine's music. I love Celine, she's fantastic. She's a wonderful lady. But I learned quite early on in my career that you very often do your best work for music you don't necessarily love. There's probably many reasons why that is, but perhaps you just try harder because you're not just listening to the music and grooving to the music, so you're forced to focus on other issues. I'm a huge music fan, but I learned quite early on in my career to actually sort of ignore the music, which is quite ironic when you're making a music video. If you just get fascinated by the music then the [indistinguishable] images become less potent. It wasn't like I went, 'Oh my god, this is brilliant!' That wasn't really my approach, I'd gone way past that need to do work. What I'd then discovered and continue to do is enjoy working with great people, and Celine is a wonderful lady and that's why I really enjoyed working with her.

What were your first impressions of her?

When I first met her in the south of France, she was actually very down to earth. I mean, this is 20 years ago, I haven't seen her since, maybe she's changed, but she's very funny. She's got a very ribald sense of humour, and she's very open. It just makes you instantly very relaxed. It's much easier to do work. The trouble is when you're making music videos, it's not like a movie where you spend three weeks in preparation with the artist. You spend two months on set refining the character and your communication and relationship with that person. When you're making a music video, it's pretty intense. You probably meet them for three hours before the video at the wardrobe fitting, and then the next time you see them is when they're on set in makeup and you've got 12 hours — if you're lucky, you've got two days — to get it done. So having somebody who breaks down the barriers for you and is very open and warm and easy to talk to, makes it so much easier. I've worked with some huge stars in my time. I've been very lucky. And some of them, you're just having to batter your way through a barrier to communicate with them. I'd like to think that I'm polite and respectful and sometimes those are two words that aren't necessarily appropriate for directing somebody.

How did you get at the final concept for the video?

When I was first approached about writing for this song, they said, 'Can you send a whole list of ideas, we want a lot of ideas, we don't just want one.' So I wrote, literally, about a dozen ideas, and then I get the phone call, 'You know what? We talked to Jim and Jim has an idea, so we'd like you to get on the phone with Jim.' So my dozen ideas were thrown in the bin and I get on the phone with Jim and he's — this is the only time I've ever dealt with Jim, so I have a very one-dimensional perspective on what he's like to work with, never met him, just spoke with him on the phone.

He went into great lengths about the idea, and what it came down to, on some level, it seems that every idea he has involves a motorcycle [laughs]. Which is something I've come across many times, actually, with an artist or a writer or somebody who works in visual stuff, who has a career of their own and they become famous for one thing, it's because that's the one thing that they do. I'm thinking, 'Celine and a biker?' If you look up Jim Steinman on the web and you look for a picture of him, he's dressed like a biker's worst nightmare with studs everywhere, which I find kind of ironic, because I was a motorcycle messenger in London for a while. Unless you're really trying to make a bit of an impression, you just wear a leather jacket and as much warm clothing and waterproof clothing as you can.

So Jim comes up with this very involved idea, as is quite common when non-directing people give you an idea, it was very top-heavy, very front-heavy. The motorcyclist having the crash and basically he dies and then Celine's wandering around this mansion having visions of him. Eventually I wrote his idea out and he said, 'No, no, no, you've got this bit wrong' and so I'd have to rewrite that. Eventually we had this very complex treatment, which was Jim's vision. That's ok, a lot of my best videos have been ideas from other people — I think the thing that was different in this case is usually the person gives me a very postcard-size of the idea and then I write the novel, if you like. They give me the thumbnail sketch and then it's up to me to have a vision about it. This case, Jim had many, many details that he insisted on being in the video. Which ultimately, I think, looking back now — I mean, he should have directed the video. That's the truth of it.

How did you end up in Prague?

So we have this very complex idea and I can tell it's not going to be cheap, what has been written down on paper, and it needed to be somewhere very fabulous and all the rest of it. In March, while I'd been putting these ideas together, I'd made my first trip to Prague to shoot Green Day and at that time, it was a very cheap place to shoot and there was a producer and a bunch of people at a production company who had access to all these incredible set dressings and whatnot because the Communists had just left quite recently, maybe only a couple of years before, so it was very accessible and very affordable and I knew it had all this fantastic propage: pictures, fireplaces, all the stuff we'd need. So, I convinced everybody to go and shoot in Prague and I said, you know, this is the only way you're going to make the money work, to get his idea. But I wasn't really thinking it through because the whole shoot is at night and if you go to Prague in June or July, I think we were there over July 4th weekend, I can't remember now, but there's only six hours of darkness. So you're doing a night shoot without very much night, so I'd actually screwed myself royally right at the beginning (laughs).

What was the first day of shooting like?

It was in this palace, which I think had been the summer palace of the King of Czechoslovakia or something, I can't remember the details now. It was about 200 years old, this beautiful piece of architecture in the middle of some lovely grounds and we had complete access to it. Somebody gave us the key and we went in. I walked up and there were literally dozens and dozens and dozens of people around. I suddenly realized that the art department alone had 90 people in it. We shot the second-half of the video on the set that was built in one of the film studios in Barrandov, in Prague, which was built by the Nazis. I shot it in what was then one of the biggest stages in Europe. The corridor and her bedroom was a set that was built with a real, live fireplace and it was all one piece and it was the biggest set I've ever had built in my entire career. It was beautifully done, a huge, huge production. This massive bunch of people, more than one catering truck, and just this huge deal dealing with the logistics of it all.

It was a very big job, and it was the biggest job of my career, I think, in terms of music video and the budget, a very large amount of money in a short period of time, which brings a huge amount of responsibility. Even though I'd done quite a lot of prep work, it suddenly dawned on me on the way to the shoot that there were no cutaways. The kid dies within the first 20 seconds and then it's just Celine. You can't cut to the drummer or to the guitar player or to the other people in the story. The other person in the story is dead and the only time you'll see him is when he appears in mirrors and things. I'd never done such a complicated story in my career with so few moving parts. If I didn't get every shot with Celine absolutely right then I was in trouble.

That sounds like a bit of a nightmare.

You're making a movie is what you're doing [in terms of the song length]. There was lots to be frightened of, let's put it that way. So you just do what you do and get on with it how you can. Celine is fantastic, so when we had her running across the gravel — I got her to run, like, five times, to get a great shot, as you do, and she's barefoot. The next day when she shows up, her feet are in bandages because she didn't tell me she's cutting her feet up on this bare gravel. She's a real hard worker, I'd work with Celine everyday of my career if I had my druthers, really, she's wonderful to work with.

This video always ends up lists of the most expensive music videos ever made.

It's actually nowhere near as expensive as many music videos. It was about $750,000 and within four or five years of that, there were so many videos being made which were, like, a million bucks. Michael Jackson's video that he made with Mark Romanack was supposed to be seven million dollars, so yeah, it wasn't close to being the most expensive video of all time, actually. For me it was super expensive because I never got those huge budgets. I would get the medium range ones. I remember one director whose name escapes me right now, who said in the very late 90s, early 2000s, 'It's impossible to make a video for less than a million' and I'm thinking, 'What are you talking about? I do it all the time!'

Had you ever seen the original Pandora's Box video?

No, I actually very quickly went online last night to remind myself about Jim and whatnot and saw that in Wikipedia. It said the Pandora's Box thing. Why, is it similar? (Laughs)

No, but it does involve a motorcycle accident. It devolves into a full-scale dream orgy within the two-three minute mark and there are a bunch of dudes in assless leather chaps. It's completely crazy.

Yep. That sounds like Jim. Like him or not, he obviously has a certain language of imagery which is special to him, very bodice-ripping sort of, for want of a better word. To be honest, I think that's one of the big failings of the video. The scene when she's in the hall of mirrors and the guy, every way she looks, there he is and the camera's going around her, what Jim wanted to achieve in that scene was not really possible with the technology available at that time. It's one of my big regrets of that video: we were trying to do something that, on some level, we just couldn't do.

I find it very difficult to watch some parts of the video because I just feel like we could do it so much better now. It could actually achieve a lot of the things that Jim wanted to have in it. The technology just wasn't there, even with the huge amount of money we had, we couldn't access the kind of special effects we needed at the time in 1996.

Can you specify what those things were?

The whole thing about the video is she's running around the house having these images of her dead lover, it's all coming back to me now, I wish he was here kind of thing. I think all the sense of this haunting, the ghost of her lover being there, could have been better created. To be honest, it was the first really complex special effects shoot I'd ever done. I just feel if I'd been able to do it five years later, or 10 years later, I think I could have done a much better job and I'd have been much prouder of the results. Even with this huge amount of money, we were, on some level, trying to do too much. And because it was somebody else's very detailed vision who was never there, you're just throwing darts at a dartboard and you have no idea if you're hitting the target or not. Having many times done work based on other people's ideas, the thing they let me do is, 'here's the idea, now run with it.' And Jim is very specific about what he wants and on some level it was a compromise, unfortunately.

"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is still a hotly contested, love-it-or-hate-it song that has permeated pop culture. Glee covered it, reality show singing competitions contestants continue to tackle it around the world, and it has been used as the backing track for countless fan-made videos on YouTube for all manner of fictional couples whose love has faced ups and downs: Scandal's Olivia and Fitz, Grey's Anatomy's Meredith and Derek, and Sailor Moon, and it was even used for a choreographed dance at a Florida competition in 2010.

Its legacy is forever tied to Celine Dion, and rightly so. She knows how to shoulder a pop opera, and it's one of her best performances ever. It's a perfect precursor to the biggest hit of her career, which would come the following year with 1997's Titanic theme song, "My Heart Will Go On." And while Meat Loaf may have been upset that he didn't get there first, that Dion was able to put her stamp on the song, it's actually Caswell who suffered the biggest burn. After all, she actually did record "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" first.

"She was such a big star!" Caswell said. "If I was Jim, I'd do the same thing." And, though they haven't spoken in a few years, she laughingly admits she does savour one victory. "Jim always liked to tell me that there were all these fights on the internet, fans going back and forth about which version was the best, and he'd like to tell me that I was still winning."

An oral history of the Indigenous music Juno Award category

This article was originally published on March 21, 2018 via CBC Music.

Buffy Sainte-Marie, Elaine Bomberry, Quantum Tangle, more on the award that changed Indigenous music forever

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Indigenous music album of the year category at the Juno Awards. In that time, the Indigenous music community's incredible artistry and innovation has sparked breakthroughs and breakouts. There are countless bands and artists, established and emerging, Indigenizing "mainstream" music coast to coast, north and south, one city at a time.

All of this success is not thanks just to the creation of the award — as category co-creator and winner Buffy Sainte-Marie jokes, "It's not as though the Junos invented us!" — but it helped amplify Indigenous artists, getting their music out to a bigger audience.

Ahead of the category's quarter-centennial, CBC Music spoke with Sainte-Marie and Elaine Bomberry, two of the category's co-creators, in addition to Lawrence Martin, the first-ever recipient of the award, and a selection of winners and nominees past and present, including DJ Shub, Leela Gilday, Vince Fontaine, Murray Porter, Crystal Shawanda and Quantum Tangle's Grey Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik.

From the first pitch and the first win, through countless milestones, life-changing moments and inspiring stories, to the divided opinions about its very existence and its future, this is the oral history of the Juno Award category for Indigenous music album of the year.

The storytellers

• Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree): multi-award-winning singer-songwriter, activist, artist, educator and philanthropist.

• Elaine Bomberry (Ojibway and Cayuga from Six Nations): broadcaster/manager of Murray Porter.

• Lawrence Martin (Cree): musician and politician. Records as Wapistan; won the Juno in 1994 (the category's first recipient) for Wapistan is Lawrence Martin. Nominated again in 1996 for Message.

• DJ Shub (Mohawk from Six Nations): solo artist. Formerly of A Tribe Called Red. Nominated for the 2018 Juno for his debut EP, PowWowStep.

• Leela Gilday (Dene): solo artist. Won the Juno in 2007 for Sedzé. Nominated in 2003 for Spirit World, Solid Wood and in 2015 for Heart of the People.

• Vince Fontaine (Ojibway): Previously of Eagle & Hawk, which won the Juno in 2002 for On and On, and was nominated in 2004 (Mother Earth), 2006 (Life Is…) and 2011 (The Great Unknown). Currently the founder and guitarist of Indian City, nominated for the 2018 Juno for Here & Now.

• Murray Porter (Mohawk): blues singer-songwriter and pianist. Nominated for the Juno with Pappy Johns Band in 2005 (Full Circle) and won in 2012 (Songs Lived and Life Played).

• Grey Gritt (Ojibway-Métis): singer and guitarist for the duo Quantum Tangle, which won the Juno last year for the EP Tiny Hands.  

• Tiffany Ayalik (Inuk): singer for Quantum Tangle, also an actor.

Elaine Bomberry co-founded the Indigenous Music category at the Juno Awards in 1994. (Courtesy of Elaine Bomberry)

Elaine Bomberry: I was doing rez radio [in the early '90s] and started my own show called Aboriginal Airways. I was asked to be a judge for what was then called the world beat category I believe. It included so much! Native Canadian was listed, but it was, like, typewritten at the last minute. I kind of went off. I said, "Our music doesn't fit here. It doesn't fit in any of the categories," and the president of CARAS [Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences], Daisy Falle, says, "Well, why don't you start a category?" and I just laughed, "Yeah, right, start a category!" They said maybe you can explore if there's enough music out there, and I said of course, there's tons of music out there. I had to document at least 15 Indigenous recordings in the previous year, and 15 in the coming year. I ended up documenting 25 in the previous year and 40 in the coming year. My fax machine was just pumping.

My friend Shingoose [a musician whose real name is Curtis Johnnie] was one of the early folk guys. Both of us were getting the documentation and everything and it was a few days before our presentation [to CARAS] and I suddenly get a phone call from Buffy. I let out a little scream. [Laughs]

Buffy Sainte-Marie: People had been talking about [the category] for a long time but it hadn't come together and then all of a sudden it did. I was so grateful to Elaine and Shingoose for having carried it as far as they did. I was just thrilled to be a guest. They did all the work, I just offered to help.

omberry: I told Buffy what we had worked on so far and her and Goose were friends, of course. They knew each other and worked with each other over the years. She goes, "Why don't you guys come down to my hotel for dinner and we'll talk about this stuff." We went to her hotel room, I brought my letters and I had one or two albums of hers to sign [laughs]. The next day was the presentation, and we had 20 minutes to it. She goes, "Let's talk strategy," and I went, "Strategy or not, you're the first person to walk in that door!"

She was like the flag bearer and we went travelling behind her. Buffy starts and she'd written an essay, which she had read to us the night before. So, she made this amazing speech and then Shingoose gave his info, and then I gave just the numbers and talked about the different musicians. After our presentation, we felt good. About 20-25 minutes later, they brought us back in and they said, "You have the category but you can't tell anyone for three weeks until our media conference." We're just like, "Oh my God, we're gonna sit on this for three weeks?" The next night, Buffy was going on a national talk show and she's talking about what she's touring now and stuff, and then she mentioned, "Oh, yeah, the Junos are coming up, wouldn't it be nice to have a Native category?" [Laughs] That was her way of dropping a hint so that was kind of cool.

In 1994, the category for best music of Aboriginal Canada recording was born. In 2003, the category was renamed the Aboriginal recording of the year, and in 2010, it became the Aboriginal album of the year. In 2017, it changed again, this time to the Indigenous music album of the year.

Sainte-Marie: You don't get that category because someone feels sorry for you or because they respect your ancestors. It was not a cultural mandate. You have to prove that you have the numbers. It's really kind of a business thing. There have to be producers and studios, songwriters and artists and musicians and genres, and there have to be fans and performances. There actually has to be an Indigenous music community [and that's what we proved].

I knew that across Canada there were Indigenous musicians, a lot of them, and they already had a career but nobody was kind of throwing a little net around that for the public, a little sparkly net of realization. I thought the general category would give opportunity to Indigenous artists who were already playing and so, you know, let's celebrate it and get it recorded. I thought it would be an opportunity for Indigenous musicians to have a stage but I also thought that audiences worldwide were missing a good thing. I had been there, I knew we had the numbers, and that we really did exist — it's not as though the Junos invented us! [Laughter]

Lawrence Martin: I had just turned 36 years old, my first grandson was born, and I had a whole bunch of songs in my briefcase that I'd never recorded because my dream was to record in Nashville. So, I drove down to Nashville that summer before the Junos and my friend says to take this sweetgrass with you to this guy named John Stewart [a songwriter and producer] in Nashville. He wanted to learn about Native history and Native people, so I met John in Nashville. He listened to my songs and he says, "Those country songs are a dime a dozen and we have much better singers than you down here in Nashville so forget about that, but those Native songs — nobody is doing that. Garth Brooks is not doing that. Why don't you go home and write some more songs that talk about your Native culture that you can sing in your language and incorporate some of that weird chanting that you do?" So I did, and a couple months later I go back down and meet up with him, and I have saved up a little bit of money and we did a demo. That demo became my album.

We submitted the album as is to the Junos and next thing you know if we get a notice that it's been nominated! I was able to play one of my songs called "Elders"' [at the ceremony], and as soon as I finished the song, I was told to just go stand off to the side of the stage behind the curtain and to listen to the announcement. I hear, "The winner is Wapistan is Lawrence Martin!" Oh shit! I go out there and then I see the crowd and I just freeze. I didn't know what to say so I started speaking in Cree just to give myself a little bit of breathing space and finally start getting my thoughts together and I spoke in English and my children were just screaming their heads off. That's all I could hear, I recognized their screams. [Laughs]  

Murray Porter: There was a point where I couldn't get accepted into blues festivals because they were under the assumption that I was going to be wearing a headdress and banging a drum but that's not the truth. They didn't understand that we have musicians in every genre. When Elaine and Buffy and Shingoose started this category, it just opened up a whole new avenue for all of us for real.

Martin: Being the first winner — I definitely benefited from that and I think it sent a lot of messages to a lot of young people. I was mayor of Sioux Lookout, and I remember coming back after [winning] and being met by a lot of Sioux Lookout people at the airport and then having hundreds and hundreds of letters coming in from children from First Nations communities everywhere. That was the highlight.

We did something great as a First Nations people. We entered into this mainstream society; all of a sudden we're all over the news and I was being interviewed by CBC and I did a tour of Canada and a tour of Australia. I went to Europe a couple times. Like, wow, this is really cool: being able to sing my songs that are in Cree and English, a way for me to promote my language and culture. Then seeing other musicians, Native musician coming on and doing the same thing, that was really cool. It was a political movement and a musical triumph for us.

Porter: Originally, we had no chance of winning any kind of award, it just wasn't going to happen. When the category started is when every Native person thought, "Wow, I have a chance to win a Juno. I'm going to get busy ready-ing my songs. I'm going to get busy recording," and that's what really happened. It was a big giant avalanche of people starting their recordings just because they had a chance to win and they could be on a national stage. It just changed the whole outlook of our Native artists.

Vince Fontaine: A new generation of artists began jumping on board. I started the band Eagle & Hawk. I didn't even actually think that the Junos would be something that we could participate in because we didn't have a record deal and it would seem like it was an industry event, but we still had a real desire. But there was a door for us to try and go through. We decided we were going to put out some original music, but we didn't even submit our first album! I don't even know why. I just didn't even really feel I was a recording artist yet, but it was kind of funny because we had a great album.

In 2002, the Junos went to St. John's and that was incredible. Eagle & Hawk was up for an award and it was like, "Are you kidding me?" We got called up to the podium! It was so cool but it was also so funny because you get your award, you do your onstage speech, then you go to the photo-op and then you go to the media room and then the greenroom, and the next thing you know, you're in the hallway going back to your seats. It's like, holy smokes, we just had a two-minute whirlwind and now we're walking down the hallway by ourselves, like, what the heck this is like Spinal Tap. Then suddenly the artist Shaggy — very big-time, international artist at the time — he comes up to us and goes, "Congratulations, mon." We went to some of the after-parties and we got to hang out with and meet Blue Rodeo and Jim Cuddy and those folks and Nelly Furtado. It was really incredible.

eela Gilday: The first time I was nominated was in 2003 and it was for my very first album. I had already graduated from music school and went to Toronto, but of course you can't be full-time in music right away unless you're very lucky. I made this album over the course of a year. It was sort of a compilation of songs that I had written over the past five years, and it was really a huge step for me as an artist. I studied opera and when I graduated, I was intending to stay in classical music. But, I decided, "Oh, I'm just going to try songwriting because I have this creative voice inside me that I'm not hearing represented in what I'm singing." I got nominated for an award at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards and then all of a sudden this whole other audience kind of opened up for me.

Elaine Bomberry called me up the night before the deadline of the application for the Junos and she said, "I really think you should apply for this." And I was like, "Well, I don't think I'm there yet." I'd been performing for many years but I felt nervous to apply because it was my first album, but I rushed and I put together an application, I brought it over to CARAS and got it in before the deadline. I was floored when I got a nomination. The Junos were in Ottawa that year and they put me onstage performing one of my songs during the first evening, the industry awards, the same night that my award is usually handed out on. So there I am singing "Village of Widows," which is a song about uranium mining in front of, like, Avril Lavigne. It was really a fantastic experience and it sort of changed everything for me at that point, just being able to reach a lot more people.

Porter: Some people say, "Oh, Junos, whatever, it's awards for music, who cares, doesn't make a difference," but I think it actually can be pretty important to the artists particularly if their music is political and meaningful and purposeful.

Fontaine: In Calgary, when Derek Miller won, he went up there and the first thing he said was, "You know. I wish we had clean drinking water." And there have been other artists that have said their peace publicly, like Buffy shared some of her wisdom and her convictions. This is an opportunity for artists to use their voices, and to not only reinforce their music identity but their Indigenous heritage.

Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Leela Gilday helped inspire When They Awake, a film about the power of Indigenous music. (Shawna McLeod)

Gilday: [Winning my Juno in 2007] was super emotional. Sedzé means "my heart" in North Slavey. I was really happy when we were nominated because I knew the impact that the first nomination has had on my career, and I totally did not expect to win. My parents came down from Yellowknife and my best friend came out from Ottawa and they called my name and I was really confused for a minute. Then everybody around me was like yelling and then I just started kind of hyperventilating a little bit. I got onstage and I hadn't really written a speech because I didn't really think that I would win and I just ended up talking about Indigenous voices and the importance of representing, of hearing us in the mainstream.
 

Grey Gritt: It had kind of been this dream of mine to be nominated since I was a kid but I didn't know that it would ever happen and I had never thought about even applying for the Juno up to that point. Under some encouragement from a friend of ours, we submitted.

Tiffany Ayalik: The category was just synonymous with Buffy Sainte-Marie: a beautiful woman with fringe and beads. She's my hero and then Leela I know from growing up in Yellowknife. Her dad was my music teacher and I just was always thinking the Gildays were a super awesome family, and those were the two names I associated with the category.

Gritt: Being nominated was such a gift and also such a validating experience. To be acknowledged by your peers as promoting excellence, and good music, and hard work. Honestly, we were writing our thank-you speech at the table because we didn't think we were gonna win and as the night went on we're like, "I suppose we could win, I mean, it's one in five, so maybe." The category is announced pretty much at the end of the night and so we're just seeing these tables get up and speech after speech and we're just like, palms getting sweatier and sweatier. In the end, we didn't even use the speech because we were so flabbergasted that I forgot how to even use a phone and I couldn't turn up the brightness on my phone.

Ayalik: Let's be honest, we all had tears in our eyes. It was hard to look down because they were full of water.

Gritt: We cried all friggin' day. It was an incredible weekend.

Ayalik: We're just two kids from the north on a red carpet, and there's Kiefer Sutherland in the corner, and Buffy's over there, Tribe is over there having some steak. Be cool, be cool!

DJ Shub: The nomination [for 2017's PowWowStep] is a real compliment. It's a compliment of what I've been doing, especially of my solo career now that I'm by myself and on my own. It's good to get that recognition as a solo artist and I think that was the biggest thing for me personally this year.

Porter: The big thing for me is that we don't always get featured on the big show. I received my Juno in 2012 at the big dinner the night before the Junos. At some point I would like to see us on the big stage on the big night at the big performance. There's no reason we should be shuttled down to the non-rockstar categories. It's sad the way they do it actually; pop stars and rock stars are the only ones featured. What about the jazz artists, the classical people, blues artists and folk artists? Are we not important enough?

DJ Shub is nominated for a 2018 Juno for his debut solo EP, PowWowStep. (Courtesy of the artist)

DJ Shub: It was kind of the consensus of [A Tribe Called Red] to not submit [in the Aboriginal category]. I think we were more stern on being recognized as artists. I've always had split thoughts on the whole category. For one, I definitely think that it's brought Indigenous music to the forefront and it wouldn't have been anywhere close [to that] without the category being that way. I think it's done a lot for the artists, especially just seeing different artists that you wouldn't have been able to see before, or hear, brought to that mainstream level of notoriety.

I was not a big fan of being an Aboriginal artist. I mean I look at myself as an artist first, not as an Aboriginal artist. That's my only thing I had against the category. I think there were a lot of Native artists that kind of shared my same thoughts but that's nothing compared to what it does for you. Especially, the youth coming up and knowing that you can do your work, do what you do as an artist and be recognized at that top level.

Gritt: I think without the Indigenous category, I'm not sure how we would have fit in. I'm not sure if we necessarily would have been given the time of day and I can certainly understand why some people don't apply to this category or don't apply to any category at all, and that's totally valid and I support that. I think it's in the same way that it's broad, but it allows us to fit in.

Ayalik: When people say, "Should we even still have this category?," I think that Canada's so huge and there are so many different people and we are far from a monolithic kind of culture. Some areas in Canada, like are we still in 1950 right now? There's still rampant racism. There are considerable barriers to Indigenous artists that frankly do not exist for any other category of artists. Even talking about barriers like having poor internet. Applying for the Junos is tricky.

Gritt: We know someone who wasn't able to apply because their internet doesn't allow for it. They couldn't upload their material, it's dial-up speeds. But also, we've got to create, but how am I supposed to record when I don't have water? Or I don't have food security? Or I don't have an ability to travel out to get equipment or to work with people?

Gilday: I moved back home in 2002 when I released my first record but I still wasn't really able to afford to live at home because the north is very, very expensive. I was basically on the road 11 months a year.

ritt: The financial barriers — I mean even for us to exit Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, it's not always that affordable and it takes a lot of time. So you take that all into consideration. Some people call for the eradication of that category, but we've literally had it for only 24 years so that doesn't seem remotely equitable to how much time we went without it. We should have that category and we should also be in other categories at the same time because we were just excluded for so much time that if you want to make good on that, and to make a difference and to make things equitable.

It might seem to some folks as unfair but if they were seeing things from this side, this perspective, they might see how that is only like a tiny, tiny, tiny drop in the bucket of what can be done. When else in history do you have a band that won a Juno who has a female Indigenous and transgender, two-spirit, Indigenous, kind of queer band winning a Juno? I've been openly queer and two-spirit and transgender and non-binary for the past six years, and other identities for even longer, so for me to be in the category and to go up and win, I'm like, when else has this ever happened?

Gilday: People talk about stereotyping and marginalization when it comes to this category and I really don't think that's what's happening. It's not a poverty category, it's a strong category and actually I wish the Indigenous musicians who haven't submitted to it would submit so we can continue to increase and raise the level of professionalism and musicianship in the category. But that's their choice.

Bomberry: One thing though the Junos did was [add] flexibility for craft categories. Like, blues Aboriginal, roots, those that aren't based on sales. They allow you to submit into two craft categories, that's just within the last maybe seven, eight years. The Indigenous category is there to help people get their feet in the door.

Sainte-Marie: [The category] has acted like a ladder whereby a person can raise their profile a little bit so that they can be seen because most artists, there's a visibility problem. Even with YouTube and, you know, somebody who's lucky enough to be using all this nice technology, it's very, very hard to compete with big record companies who have billion-dollar budgets and budgets for publicity. Most artists don't even have a publicist. Just to get your music heard in a category, I mean, it's such an honour. It's a little boost, but you have to make the most of it.

omberry: Hopefully one of these days they'll have enough recordings — we were hoping that we would have been able to split the category [between traditional and contemporary] but it just didn't happen. Splitting the category was always the ultimate goal.

Sainte-Marie: Here's what I would like to see for the future of the Junos in general, not only our category but everything: I would like to see more people applying for positions and involvement and participation in the Junos. If you want to vote, if you want to become a part of it, consider it. Just go to their website, there's all kinds of things that you might be doing including becoming a judge of a category where you have some expertise. The future of the Junos would be greatly beautified and enhanced if more roots people — women, Indigenous people, roots people of all kinds who are music lovers and, you know, do have something to do with music would apply for and take seriously filling those positions.

Gilday: My overall feeling from my friends, who are my colleagues, is this has been important in all of our lives, and it can be going forward. When something first starts, you feel like you're all alone, but we're not. When I was first emerging as a young artist in the industry, I was really embraced by other Indigenous artists. For young Indigenous artists right now, having strong shoulders to stand on, it's so important. I see a lot of really talented young emerging artists coming up and I'll do all that I can to support them and to really place their voices forward. No other category has an honoring ceremony for its nominees. That's really unique and it builds community.

Bomberry: I'm also tremendously proud — with some organizations, we were able to hire someone to organize the very first honouring celebration for the Aboriginal nominees and that started a tradition that happens every year. So it goes community to community, and it varies, one year I think they did a showcase in the bar. But the original intention was to bring it to the community and have the community come and meet the nominees and we'd have food, and we'd honour them with gifts and prayers and songs so it's still happening. We're a small category but with lots of heart.

Find me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

Lucille Starr: the Canadian country queen you’ve probably never heard of

This article was originally published on Sept. 5, 2017, via CBC Music.

“I had some cancer surgery, and you feel kind of sluggish but everything's fine and I’ll be OK. I always tell everybody God’s not ready for me and the devil couldn't stand the competition, so here I am!”

It’s less than two minutes into CBC Music’s phone interview with Lucille Starr, the one-time Canadian queen of country music. The mischievous delight in her voice seems as fiery now, at 79, as it probably did when she was a little kid, sneaking her way onstage for the first time.

It was a play at Saint Boniface church, the centre of her tightly knit francophone community in Winnipeg, Man. Her mom refused to let little Lucille join the older kids in the tiny production, but Starr wouldn’t listen.

“She came to the play with my aunts and next thing she knew she saw me up onstage!” Starr recalls. “I'd had somebody put makeup on me and I had my clothes and I was dancing my little heart away. I was so proud of that. Later on when we got home, Mum says, ‘Where did you get the clothes? What did you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I went down the street and I asked some people if I could borrow some things,’ and Mum says, ‘Oh my God, they're going to think we don't have anything!’ However, Mum never forgot that when I said I wanted to do something, sing or whatever, she'd better let me.” Starr laughs. “And that's how I really started.”

Performing was what she always wanted to do, and even as a kid she could command a price for her talents.

“When we lived on the farm for a while, the help would teach me little songs — and I wasn't going to school, I was pretty young — and they taught me some naughty little songs,” Starr says. “In the evening to amuse themselves, they'd have me sing for a penny each song. Till Mama caught on to what I was singing. She put the kibosh to that. I started working for pennies, thank gosh I didn’t finish that way.”

Lucille Starr - La Vie En Rose (1965)

She was born Lucille Marie Raymonde Savoie, and her family moved from St. Boniface to Maillardville, B.C., a francophone community outside Vancouver, when she was young. Classically trained but in love with pop music, she’d sing anything, anywhere, any time. Then she heard about a young man who needed a “girl singer” because he’d stopped singing with his sister. His name was Bob Regan, and soon the pair were releasing country, rockabilly and folk records as Bob and Lucille. They married and headed for Los Angeles.

“Everybody was saying, ‘You’ve got to move to the States’ and blah blah blah,” Starr says. “And so we did and a gentleman by the name of Uncle Art Satherley, who was Gene Autry's manager at the time, and he liked us — he said I had a tear in my voice, and probably I did.”

Lucille Starr - Are You Mine (1966).

They were dubbed the Canadian Sweethearts, but their homelife was anything but. Regan was abusive, and increasingly jealous of Starr’s growing popularity. Their marriage on the rocks, Regan’s behaviour only worsened and became more controlling when she suddenly became a star, quite literally, in 1964.

She met Herb Alpert (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Band), who was also a producer and co-founder of A&M Records. They changed her name from Lucille Savoie to Lucille Starr, and began recording Starr as a solo act.

LUCILLE STARR The French Song First Recording

“The first song I recorded was ‘The French Song,’” Starr says. “Herb and Dorsey Burnette, my producers, were in the studio encouraging me. I sat on a stool, feeling very much betrayed and alone. I was crying tears and I guess [that feeling] came through on the record.”

The song, which is sung in French and English, was released to little fanfare. Starr remembers her mother calling to ask how the record was doing.

“I said, ‘I don't know, we haven't heard anything for two weeks. And Mum says, ‘Well, it's a good thing you changed your name, so nobody’ll know Savoie didn’t make it!’” Starr laughs. “And right after that it took off everywhere. It just kept playing and gold records kept coming and it was a good feeling.”

At a time when the Beatles were the biggest deal in music, Starr’s bilingual tune made her an international sensation. She was being booked in Australia and Europe, and every time she went onstage, she says, she felt like a queen because the applause was so deafening and the excitement was so high.

“That felt good. I felt like I had arrived and I thought, well that's as far as that's going to go. I've done well, I've made my parents proud, and I always wanted to do that.”

But her relationship to Regan kept getting worse.

“The man I was married to at the time did not like that,” she says. “He would do everything he could to make sure that I wasn't going to get ahead. … Every time a good break would come in, he wouldn't tell me about it. So then people thought that I didn't want to listen to the bookers. I wanted out, but nobody seemed to know. But eventually I went on my own, I had the courage to go on my own, and it all worked out for the best.”

Starr left Regan and they divorced in 1967. But they would continue recording and touring together musically until 1977. After venturing out on her own, she fell in love with Bryan Cunningham, to whom she’s still married.

Lucille Starr - If I Give My Heart To You (1969)

“He's been the light of my life for almost 40 years now,” Starr says with affection. They went to Las Vegas to get married and essentially stayed. When they arrived, the airline had lost Starr’s luggage with her wedding dress. Cunningham suggested they go shopping and pick out a new one, but Starr had a different idea.

“I said, ‘you can't just buy a wedding dress just like that. But I have a good idea: let's buy silk sheets for everybody and we'll stand on the bed wrapped up in a silk sheet! Both of us. And the preacher can stand there in a silk sheet and marry us. That’ll be really different!’” Starr laughs at the memory. “And for some reason he wouldn't do it. They found my suitcase and I had my wedding dress just in time. Bryan took a deep breath and thought, ‘thank God.’ After we were married, I said, ‘I can promise you one thing: I will always always love you. And our marriage will never be dull.’ And he’s said quite often since then, ‘You were right! I’ve never been so tired since I married you!’”

It’s the way Starr has lived her professional and creative life as well: always moving, always working, and never dull. This is how Starr has so many incredible milestones to her credit. She was a great yodeler and provided the yodeling vocals for the character of Cousin Pearl on the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies. She was the first female solo artist to perform onstage at the famed Grand Ole Opry in 1965. And in 1989, she became one of the first women inducted into the CCMA Hall of Fame. Marg Osburn was posthumously inducted that same year.

Lucille Starr - Yodel Love Call

She’s grateful for the friends she made along the way. Being the first solo female at the Grand Ole Opry? That was a distinction made possible by touring with Hank Snow.

“Hank Snow was very helpful to a lot of people, actually,” she says. “A lot of folks don't know that. But Hank helped a lot of people and I was one of them.”

She remembers that night at the Opry quite clearly, even though more than five decades have passed since then.

“I wore a yellow dress and a black crystal necklace, and I did 'Freight Train' and another song, a fast one,” Starr recalls. “The audience was really nice. And as a matter of fact, on that night backstage was Bonnie Owens and Merle Haggard. I see Bonnie and I said, ‘Oh Bonnie, how are you?’ and she's holding hands with Merle and they said, ‘We just got married!’”

Lucille Starr - Freight Train (1963).

Starr says that touring with Snow was a thrilling experience, and one for which she continues to be grateful.

“Hank Snow was giving me good advice,” Starr remembers. “I didn't always listen but he'd laugh when I'd be in trouble. He'd say, ‘You didn't listen, did you?’ I admired that man. He treated me so well. His best advice was: ‘Remember how to treat people on the way up because you'll have to meet ’em again on the way down.’” Starr laughs. “I don't know how far down that's going to be! I hope it ain’t too hot!”

The gallows humour is Starr’s trademark, but she delivers every zinger with genuine joy despite the fact that she hasn’t been able to perform since she had brain surgery in 2011. She can’t see very well, and there’s the recent cancer surgery, too. But she misses performing and would love nothing more than to make a miraculous return to the stage.

But there are so many ways in which her legacy lives on. Starr’s songs and life are the foundation of Back to You, a jukebox musical written by Vancouver-based actor, producer, playwright, and choreographer Tracey Power. The show made its debut in 2010 and has toured across Canada.

Lucille Starr - Before The Next Teardrop Falls (1967).

Power was actually researching Mary Pickford, another strong Canadian woman, when she came across Starr and started listening to her music.

“I loved the passion and joy in her sound and once I began to learn more about her journey from Lucille Savoie to Lucille Starr, I thought it would make for a kick-ass night in the theatre,” Power says. “Lucille was one of Canada’s pioneers in the music industry. She played right across the country and at a time when there were no laws about Canadian content, and she did what she needed to do to be heard as an artist, on radio and TV. At that time it meant moving to the States. She was a survivor, one half of a musical duo [who] then had to learn to go it alone. A singer who lost her voice and had to find it again. After I’d spoken with Lucille on the phone there was no doubt in my mind that her story should be celebrated.”

Starr is happy that her name is still out there, and that people remember the songs and the milestones. She was so young when they happened, she didn’t get the impact of it all until years later. It’s hard to know one is blazing trails in the moment.

“I see some of these trophies on the wall, and I think, ‘My God, Lulu, you were really on your way,’” Starr says. “I appreciate people that choose to give me credit for what I've done. And it's been a productive life in many many ways. It sure hasn't been a dull one.”

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

A candid interview with Ferron, an unsung Canadian treasure

This article was originally published on July 10, 2017, via CBC Music.

“I don't know if I won't start crying. Especially since I've been lost and found so many times in the last 10 or 12 years.... I'm afraid that I’ll be very choked up.”

It’s an early June day in Vancouver. Singer-songwriter Ferron — a queer, feminist folk icon to some, utterly unknown to most — has just made the journey to CBC’s downtown office from her part-time home on Saturna, a small island off the B.C. coast. In six weeks, she’ll make her proper return to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, July 15-17, for the first time since her debut in 1979. In her 40-plus years as a singer-songwriter, she’s influenced everybody from Ani DiFranco to the Indigo Girls, and started her own record label in the late 1970s. She broke out in the States, too, a leader in the intersections of her various communities — songwriter/lesbian/working-class/women — who flirted with major-label success but was always, ultimately, a DIY indie queen.

Ferron - Testimony

An outspoken advocate for social justice issues, one of Ferron's first hits, 1980's “Testimony,” became an unofficial anthem for the post-folk women’s music movement, and women everywhere looking to see themselves in something real.

“There's godlike
And warlike
And strong
Like only some show
And there's sad like
And madlike
And had
Like we know
But by my life be I spirit
And by my heart be I woman.”

— Ferron, "Testimony"

Ferron may not have the national recognition of Neil Young or Joni Mitchell or Buffy Sainte-Marie, but for plenty of music fans around the world, her name belongs alongside those legends in the Canadian singer-songwriter hall of fame. And for a little while, the music industry agreed. This is a story of a woman who is ready for a comeback, whose music has been lost and found again and again. She has been both a lighthouse and the one lost at sea. Her songs are how she’s found her way home.

Ferron - Still Riot - 08 Ain't Life a Brook

Ferron, who was born in Toronto and raised in Richmond, near Vancouver, left home at 15 with a Leonard Cohen album in her backpack and not much else. She built her fanbase touring small venues and festivals, singing heartfelt, crushingly honest songs about everything from class and love to injustice, equality and social change. She sang and spoke about her trauma, her troubled childhood, sexual assault and depression, and learned through her fans that she wasn’t alone.

An out lesbian long before k.d. lang came on the scene and a feminist trailblazer who modelled women’s liberation, Ferron gained momentum on the women’s festival circuit throughout the '70s. One of her earliest songs even featured a then unknown Tori Amos on backing vocals.

Harmless Love - Ferron Ft. Tori Amos

By 1985, the LA Times was predicting big things for the singer, cataloging her achievements to date: a four-star review from Rolling Stone for her 1984 album, Shadows on a Dime; the New York Times calling her “one of the most respected Canadian folk performers for more than a decade” in 1994; a steady stream of comparisons to Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. Ferron was even signed, briefly, to Warner Bros., for two years in the mid-'90s. The contract was supposed to be for seven years and three records, but was terminated early by the label. Despite it being the dawning of a “new” era for women singer-songwriters (Lilith Fair’s groundbreaking three-year run began in 1997), mainstream success eluded her. Or, she eluded it. Even Ferron isn’t sure.

In 1996, she received the OUTmusic Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards, and returned to DIY projects while also teaching and mentoring young women and aspiring songwriters and musicians. In 2008, Ferron released Boulder, produced by popular underground artist Bitch, featuring duets and collaborations with DiFranco, the Indigo Girls, Le Tigre and more.

Bitch and Ferron: Shadows on a Dime

But the last decade has been particularly hard on her. In a Facebook post from 2016, Ferron opened up about the painful effects of arthritis throughout her body (she can barely hold her guitar), her decision to make most of her songs from her 40-plus-year career free and, like many musicians who turn to Patreon or GoFundMe, she asked her fans for their financial support as she pursues the next phase of her career.

“I have more music and I need your support,” she wrote via Facebook. ”I'm boxed in and soon to be homeless once again. Please help me to lift myself up. I need to learn digital recording through a school. I need money to get a place to live in, as I do not qualify for a loan of any kind. I need a safe and quiet place to think and write.”

Since that posting, things have turned around, at least a bit, Ferron says. She has a proper manager now, and she’s booked to play most of next summer. It seems like she’s due for a comeback. That she’s been passed over and forgotten for far too long — particularly in Canada — but Ferron doesn’t see it like that.

“You don't want anything that isn't real, or at least I don't,” she says. “So if it hasn't happ — if, like, I'm in line somewhere for something, that's fine. When it happens it'll be real. I've had a great time and I'm so proud to still be Canadian, even though the Americans would like me to become that, no, I can’t do that.”

Ferron, who lives part of the year on Saturna and part of the year in the States, says that Canada has been more than a touchstone over the years — it’s at the very core of how she makes decisions and how she feels.

“My dream is to die a lesbian, First Nations, Canadian,” Ferron says, “and it’s happening.”

She talks about discovering her family’s Métis heritage. She says her siblings have gotten their papers, and she plans to do the same now that she’s back from the States.

“It took a long time for everybody to come clean,” Ferron says. “There's been so much shame and wounding around that racism and I'm hoping that every time one of us does any healing step, it heals us all.”

Healing has been a key outcome of Ferron’s songwriting throughout her career.

“I haven't done everything right,” she says. “I was in survival mode most my life.”

She had a stammer, couldn’t talk, was shy and embarrassed and terrified of making mistakes.

“I needed to hear myself say some things and then there was some kind of grace or gift that came in that allowed my words to kind of bounce on the page,” Ferron says. “I put two words side by side and I could just see them vibrating, like they're not supposed to go together but they do. Then that grew into understanding sound and colour and light and vibration and harmonics and, ultimately, to get back to people.”

ferron ... our purpose here

“As you can see, I would have done anything to be understood,” she continues with a rueful laugh. “To harmonize with somebody, to have a ding that happens where I'm not alone. Even at a very young age, it was just this wind blowing through a huge chasm, terrifying me. I don't have that anymore. I never forget it though.”

Her songs won’t let her. That survival mode, operating from a place of vulnerability and scarcity, is an almost impossible balancing act.

“It's like you're trying to save yourself as you're falling out of the car,” she says. “Songwriting certainly did it for me. I'm falling and I'm saving myself at the same time.”

Ferron: Misty Mountain

Ferron calls “Misty Mountain,” released in 1978 and one of her fan favourites, her cry in the dark. She was 22 and depressed, holed up in a room in the basement of a friend, novelist Keith Maillard. She felt safe.

“I think I was suffering PTSD but I only knew that many years later,” Ferron remembers. “It just seemed like I was kind of nervous and nutty. I don't think they really saw me much for about three weeks. I just slept and didn't give a shit really. Then Keith came down and he said, ‘You gotta get up, you've got to care.’ The only thing I cared about right then is would he please get the f--k out of my room.”

He left, but it stirred her enough that Ferron got up and took her guitar into the windowless, mirrorless cedar bathroom. She strummed in total darkness, her preference for playing guitar — “You use your ears to know where you are, you can't trust anything else” — and she wrote the song.

“I just started singing it and it was, I suppose, a prayer,” Ferron says.

Two of her other most acclaimed songs are also prayers: “Testimony” and “Girl on a Road.”

“Somebody could say, ‘What is the formula for writing a song like ‘Testimony’?’” Ferron says. “I don't know, almost die? Be very depressed and not know who you are and who your father is and where you're going and what is the purpose of life and why does everybody hate each other and why did they hurt me? If you put all that together and sit down somewhere and weep, you might write ‘Testimony.’ It's not a craft. Survival was the craft.”

Ferron wrote “Testimony” while in Toronto searching for her biological father. She says that she’s never been so achingly alone as she was there, and she channelled all of that into the song. It was written late at night, and when she woke up in the morning, she remembers thinking, “What the f--k is this?” It was so personal, she was afraid to sing it, worried that people might throw tomatoes at her onstage, Ferron says with a smile.

“The blessing of my life is when I’m that broken, just like Leonard Cohen says, the light comes in,” Ferron says. “But I wouldn't have known that, I was in the process of it and it turned out to be, lucky for me, a process that was valuable to some other people. That's my job, to go right to the edge and look down the vast purposelessness of everything and make it become something.”

Ferron : Girl On A Road

One of Ferron’s most evocative songs is 1994's “Girl on a Road.” It’s almost impossible to listen to without crying, no matter how many times one hears it.

“I cried pretty hard writing it,” Ferron says with a small laugh.

She wrote it fast, waiting for her turn to soundcheck in Chicago. She found a junk room with an old desk that reminded her of her childhood. She remembers squeezing herself into the seat and the song poured out. Everybody she played it for later that night burst into tears. When they recorded the song, she asked everybody to pull back from any kind of flourish, to find the core beat and not embellish.

“Even now, just talking about it, my hair stands on end. I don’t know what it is. It just killed us. Then we took it to the mastering guy and he cried. Nobody can say why they cried, we don't know why we're crying. Maybe we just hope that forgiveness actually can heal things.”

The song has only one autobiographical line, Ferron says: “My momma was a waitress, my daddy was a truck driver/ the things that kept their power from them slowed me down a while.”

“That was all I had to say about it,” she says. “I couldn't believe that, but that was enough. That was the same thing I was asking from the [session] musicians: say it and don't embellish it. And so that fascinated me. The tenderness of forgiving, and identifying and forgiving. You can't forgive like a priest. No, you forgive because it is you that's forgiveness.”

The years haven’t diluted the song’s power, Ferron says. She’s still struck by its stillness.

“Maybe it’s like the tracks of a train. That grief and sorrow, and I grow up and I try to love somebody and I can't. At the end you're just like, ‘Ughhh, I just want to be human.’ Deeply human and I have to define it myself. I have to live it myself and it runs there. Then on this track is all the dreams and all the hopes you have for yourself and what you think might save you,” she finishes in a whisper. “And they just run together, naturally, and that’s your life. It doesn’t really touch and maybe that’s what makes us cry. You're going to say, ‘This hurt and this hurt and this hurt’ and then you're going to say, ‘I thought it would be different.’ But in the face of it not being different, let it be graceful.”

At 65, Ferron doesn’t think much about her legacy. She’s not even sure what the word really means when it comes up. “The music, once it leaves the womb, it's not mine,” she says.

But she does dream of her home on Saturna becoming a trust and a place for women to go and rest and write.

“Without Saturna, without my foster parents, I don't know if I would've made it,” Ferron says. “I wouldn’t have found a kernel of me, to save me or to save. But I did, and I did on that island, so I've got this little home and that's what I want to do. That it just stay available to broken girls like me.”

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

Deborah Cox on Whitney Houston, the Bodyguard, and taking on those iconic songs

This article was originally published Mar. 7, 2017, on CBC Music.

Growing up in the ’80s in Scarborough, just outside Toronto, aspiring singer-songwriter Deborah Cox didn’t hear many Black artists being played on Canadian radio. But there was one: Whitney Houston.

In 1995, Cox broke out from her role as a backup singer (including six months with Céline Dion) to claim the spotlight for herself. Clive Davis signed Cox to Arista Records and she released her self-titled debut. Immediately Cox found herself being compared to her idol in media and in the music industry, an assertion that was amplified when “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here,” the first single from her sophomore album, One Wish, climbed to the top of the charts and stayed there. Houston herself even invited Cox to sing with her on the song “Same Script, Different Cast” for her album Whitney: The Greatest Hits.

In 2015, just three years after Houston’s tragic death at the age of 48 and 20 years after those first comparisons were made, Cox was asked to provide the vocals for Angela Bassett’s Houston biopic, Whitney. In 2016, Cox finally accepted an offer 10 years in the making to star in the U.S. touring production of The Bodyguard, a stage musical inspired by Houston’s 1992 blockbuster film with Kevin Costner (there’s also a Canadian production running through April 9 in Toronto).

Cox spoke with CBC Music from the road in Columbus, Ohio, to talk about finding her voice, the 25th anniversary of The Bodyguard, and how a heart-to-heart with Houston changed her life.

Do you remember the very first time you heard Whitney Houston's music as a child?

"She sang 'You Give Good Love' and that just stopped me in my tracks. I had to know who that was singing. The soul that she had and the clarity, and the range — all of that in one was just not like anything I'd heard before. There weren't any Black artists really being played on Canadian radio at the time. We’re talking about the late '80s and it was just like, ‘Who is that?’"

Whitney Houston - You Give Good Love

You must have been so young! It must have been an overwhelming feeling.

"At the time I was singing a lot in my room, just fantasizing about being an entertainer. It made a huge impact on me because her voice was just so pure and soulful and it was not like anything that I had heard on the radio. I mean, I heard Aretha Franklin, I heard Gladys Knight, I heard all these artists that were played on my mother’s stereo, but, there was nobody that sounded like Whitney. She sounded like she could sing any style of music, and there was a soul that came out whether she was singing jazz, pop, even dance music. It was just the versatility that she had in her voice, and that she brought that strong gospel sound to every song that she sang."

It's so exciting when a voice is so modern but you can hear all of these different things that go so far back beyond a place you can even imagine, really.

"Exactly. Like, ‘How Will I Know.’ I was just living when I heard that song. Because the background vocals sounded like her choir, you know? And her lead vocal just had, again, just clarity and the amazing range in an up-tempo song. That in itself was just something that was really very different."

The Bodyguard turns 25 this year, it came out in 1992.

"Wow! It's hard to believe, you know?"

Do you remember if you saw it in the theatre? Was it a must-see movie for you?

"Oh, yeah. It was a must-see for me. It was right around that time I was actually on tour with Céline, and so, ‘I'm Every Woman’ — that was the second release [from The Bodyguard soundtrack] — when we would do soundchecks we'd all sing ‘I'm Every Woman’ as well. And I remember how that soundtrack was the soundtrack for that tour.

"I was beginning my career, I was in search of my own recording deal. I was out on tour. I have so many great memories when I think of The Bodyguard, the film, and it was right around that time that I was exploring my own career path. I just loved ‘Run to You.’ It inspired a song I wrote on my own album called ‘Where Do We Go from Here,’ which I don't think anybody really knew that."

That's amazing! You can't see my face right now but I’ve got this smile that's kind of ridiculous.

"Thank you."

What about it moved you to that extent to write a song inspired by it?

"It was the kind of ballad that was powerful, but it sounded really vulnerable as well. There's a strong vulnerability in there, and the way it was performed — I just loved that. Whitney just delivered every note; you could really just hear her spirit in that song, you know? It's produced so well."

I was thinking about two songs in particular: "I Will Always Love You" and "I'm Every Woman" and the women that had originally recorded those songs were such powerhouses in their own right, and then to have Whitney Houston record them as part of this soundtrack — it's kind of a magical experience.

"Right. And she never performed a lot of duets or anything, you know, they're very selective in what she would do as far as outside performers. I just feel really fortunate and blessed to have had that opportunity in 2000, when we recorded ‘Same Script, Different Cast.’ It gave me an opportunity to really sit one-on-one with her and have that mentor-to-student sisterhood moment where we could just talk and kick it and have that conversation about the business and family and all these things. It turns out that the very thing that I loved about her, which I thought at the time was just how she had — she seemed so balanced with her life, like her personal life and then her career. I mean that was something that I strived for as well, and then when we sat down and spoke and she was like, ‘Look, you know, all of this stuff that I have and the success and all that, that's one thing, but what you have here with your husband is something that's real and you guys should definitely go for it. Have your family, go for it, and just, you know, do it. Don't wait.’

"And at the time, I was between albums trying to figure out what my next move should be as well as switching labels, so that advice came at a very key moment for me. So now, fast forward to me in this show, in The Bodyguard, now it's like I completely understand and I've caught up to the advice that she'd given me. Which was all that glitters ain't gold, you know? I’m just happier as a person and as an artist and as a wife and as a mother because I was able to have the balance and be able to do all those things that I was kind of putting on the backburner for the business. You know?"

Did you have reservations in your own heart about stepping into this role and occupying this space?

"I had reservations in the beginning because I knew it was going to come with a ton of judgement. I’ve developed quite a thick skin being in this business anyway, and I know that there's a lot of haters and whatever, so I try not to be distracted by that. But that was why I was reserved about doing it in the beginning because I just wanted to make sure that it was gonna be executed right. That people would understand that my intention for getting involved is to always bring something positive, something inspiring, to bring something truthful and authentic to the role. I mean everything that I’ve done is always pretty well thought out. I don't just do things on a whim. That's just not my personality. I think through [things].

"This opportunity had been presented to me years ago, while I was doing Aida [on Broadway], and I never jumped at it because it was not something that I wanted to do at the time. I knew that they were still sort of developing it and everything and so, you know, they developed it in London and they did it and I was still across the pond, recording, putting out albums and remixes and touring and I still had a very busy recording career. That's kind of what stalled things, but then last year when the producers asked me about touring with this show and bringing it to a whole new audience, I read the script and I was really intrigued by it, and I thought it could be something that I could really get into. There's always judgment when it comes to tackling such an iconic person, you know? But I know myself that I have the discipline to take it serious enough to give it the integrity that it needs."

I know that you did the biopic Whitney, and I just can't think of anybody else who could do it justice the way you could.

"Right. Thank you. I pride myself in that, I mean, years of comparisons have brought me to this place, so I absolutely pride myself in that. We all know that there's only one, but it does take a special understanding of knowing her tone, timbre, phrasing, like there's a lot that she just did technically as a singer that is just all the right things. I know it intimately, and that's why we have a very similar approach."

Establishing yourself as a Black artist in Canada, you certainly didn’t get as much support as I believe you deserved, so what do hashtags like #BlackGirlMagic mean to you at this point?

"Oh wow. It's so special. It's great that we have social media now that can coin phrases and we have hashtags that we can keep the conversation going and I love it. I'm all about sisterhood and supporting each other, because I think that was what was sort of lacking in the forefront when I was coming up. There's room for all of us. We all are unique in our own way. It sounds cliché, but it's the truth! We have to do more celebrating and we'll start to see more come out of that, more creativity come out of it, and more stories being told. It's just so much better when you have a support system, you know, rather than being on your own. You're better when you have a team."

The year in protest music: radical hope, resistance and rising up

This article was originally published Dec. 18, 2017, on CBC Music.

It has been a year of opening eyes and ears, of toppling mythologies and industries, and asserting over and over the basic right to live in our bodies and in safety. To protect the land and preserve the Earth, and be free from oppression, tyranny, hatred and corruption.

Ultimately, the human default is hope: glorious, foolish, soul-saving hope. And at the centre of every protest song or activist anthem is, usually, a glimmer of that hope. A desire for change or challenging something that isn’t right, to fix what’s broken, or rally around a cause or find a community that’s ready to resist, rise up and heal together.

In Canada, there’s never been a shortage of protest and activist songs. This year particularly — in light of conversations around Canada 150, Canada 150-plus, reconciliation, decolonization and truly honouring the Indigenous people of this land — there was much on which to reflect. And there are the concerns artists here share with the rest of the world, including racist, gendered and sexual violence, and violence against LGBTQ people, land exploitation, environmental destruction, inequality and so much more.

It all came through, record after record, song after song. Canadian artists made some of the boldest and bravest protest and activist music of 2017.

Below are CBC Music’s favourite songs of resistance, advocacy and radical hope from this year.

Song: "The War Racket"
Artist: Buffy Sainte-Marie

“You twisters of language; you creeps of disguise,
Your disinformation; like worms in your eyes.
You privileged bankers; you gambler thieves.
You profit on war; there’s less money in peace.

“That’s how it’s done time after time,
Country after country, crime after crime.
You pretend it’s religion and there’s no one to blame,
for the dead and impoverished in your little patriot game.
Honey, that’s the war racket.”

Song: "Protest Song"
Artist: Broken Social Scene

“Just take it,
Just take it like you're strong.
You're just the latest in the long list of lost loves (loves),
Just leave it.
We all left where we are from,
We're just the latest in the longest rank and file that's ever to exist,
In the history of the protest song.”

Song: "I Give You Power"
Artist: Arcade Fire feat. Mavis Staples

“Who gives you power? (Power)
Where do you think it all comes from?
I give you power,
I can take it all away.”

Song: "Soldier"
Artist: IsKwé

“The rocking horse,
The gleaming sand,
The thirsty bird,
Who only drinks the colour black.
The harvests here,
We fight the land,
Will you see her again,
With that money in your hand,
Soldier.”

Song: "Future Politics"
Artist: Austra

“I don't want to hear,
That it's all my fault.
The system won't help you when,
Your money runs out.

Realities beating,
A grave has been dug.
I'm looking for something
To rise up above.”

Song: "Scream"
Artist: Weaves feat. Tanya Tagaq

“I am sick to my stomach almost every day.
I'm singing to the choir 'cause my body can procreate.
We're obsessed with prosperity yet we don't have no homes.
I'm a child of commercials and body language and floating drones.

“I am excited yet I am scared by the prospect of damaging change.
I look to my elders,
I look to women and others,
Who feel our common pain,
Our common strain.

“Scream your name,
So get up on the table and scream your name.”

Song: "Blowhard Nation"
Artist: Stephen Fearing

“I don’t want to live in a blowhard nation,
With the king in a tinsely crown,
When the whole thing wobbles,
And the wheels come off,
Well you know what’s gonna go down.

“It’s the same sad story,
‘Bout the power and the glory,
And the big shots living uptown.
It’s the old rat race,
So get ready for the chase,
‘Cause the fat cats are gaining ground.”

Song: "I’m Afraid of Men"
Artist: Vivek Shraya

“In my house,
Don’t even turn the lights on,
'Cause I shine so bright.

“But when I open the door,
My glow starts to fade,
'Cause I'm afraid.

“My neck hurts from checking my shoulder,
My feet hurt from walking faster.
Are you hitting on me?
Are you hitting on me?
Or are you going to hit me?”

Song: "Still Here"
Artist: JB the First Lady

"Stolen locations, abuse of relations
150 celebrations
comment section hatin'
debatin' truth and reconcilliation
faded, divided and shaded
but we still here
we still here."

Song: "Mr. Evans"
Artist: Maestro Fresh Wes

“They start wars and then call us the savages.
Risk, manipulate our basic needs just to manage us.
Sell weapons to both sides, taking advantage.
And justify when we die as collateral damage.”

Song: "Freeze, Melt, Boil"
Artist: Quantum Tangle

“Take my bones out of this soil,
Break my back from all this toil.
Mix that water in with oil,
Stand and fight and make blood boil.”

Song: "Mama"
Artist: Nefe

“Gotta get up girl, put on your shoes.
Get up girl, I’ll see you through.
This world ain’t gonna stop,
So why should you?
Get up, get on with you.”

Song: "Gatekeeper"
Artist: Jessie Reyez

“Oh I'm the gatekeeper,
Spread your legs,
Open up,
You could be famous.
If you come up anywhere else, I'll erase you.
Drink up, bitch, we got champagne by the cases.
Don't you know? Don't you know?
We are the gatekeepers.”

The first-ever oral history of Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album

This story was originally published in December 2014 on CBC Music.

When I put the call out for weird Christmas songs a few weeks ago, several people pointed me toward a gem of a record chock full of yuletide oddities: 1980’s Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album.

On the surface, it’s a novelty record ripe for ridicule, for which it’s been on the receiving end plenty over the years. But it also boasts an undeniable pedigree and is full of enough curious and notable moments that it’s impossible to dismiss. After all, Christmas in the Stars marks John Bongiovi’s first professional recording, four years before he became Jon Bon Jovi. Maury Yeston penned many of the original tunes and went on to become a Tony Award-winning Broadway composer. C-3PO sings throughout and George Lucas gave it the thumbs up. And, most unbelievably, "What Can You Get A Wookiee For Christmas (When He Already Has a Comb)" is a real song.

So many questions, but it all comes back to one main head-scratcher: how did this get made?

I went in search of answers and spoke at length with Star Wars’ Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), co-producer/engineer Tony Bongiovi and composer Maury Yeston. Each man told me the same thing: I was the first person to interview them about this record in 34 years. From the mad disco money that made it all possible to George Lucas almost pulling the plug, CBC Music proudly presents the first-ever oral history of Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album.

Christmas in the Stars

All good stories begin with disco

Tony Bongiovi, record producer for the Ramones, Talking Heads and recording engineer/co-founder of the Power Station studio in New York City.

Bongiovi: It all started with the Star Wars [and Other Galactic Funk] record. Meco Monardo and I, we’re producing partners, and we produced Gloria Gaynor together, and this came after the Ramones and the Talking Heads and things like that. We decided to make a club version of Star Wars and we thought it would probably sell, oh, maybe 50,000. [It] became the largest-selling instrumental [single] of all time, sold two-and-a-half million singles and almost two million albums, so that’s pretty impressive.

When I was building Power Station Studios in New York City, I was financing it with all my own money and at that time I had royalties coming in from the Ramones and things like that, but I didn’t have enough money to finish the studio. Well, in May of 1977 — I started building the studio in 1976 — Star Wars hit number one and if it wasn’t for that record, if it wasn’t for Star Wars becoming a big hit, there would be no Power Station.

After that [Star Wars disco] success, we got the attention of George Lucas, and we decided that we wanted to make a Christmas album. That was something I’d always wanted to do but never had the opportunity to do for all the years I’ve been producing records.

We wanted to make a Christmas album and we wanted to use the same model that we used for the Star Wars hit record that we produced. We started by soliciting original songs.

Enter Maury Yeston, a struggling composer who had been writing songs since he was six and studying music his whole life. In 1980, he was in his early 30s teaching at Yale when he got word about a possible gig.

Bongiovi: Maury at the time was not a Broadway composer like he is now. We met him through a mutual friend and he wrote some songs for us. At the time that he wrote those, he was kind of a struggling composer, he really didn’t have anything working for him, and we recognized his talent very early on and that’s how we got Maury to write those songs. I’m still pretty good friends with him now. He’s had huge success on Broadway and you call him and he’s still a nice guy.

Yeston: I was working on musical theatre and I was writing Nine by that time, and a friend of mine who had written some pop tunes during the 1960s said, "Look, I mentioned your name to this guy. They’re having an unbelievable amount of trouble and I’m thinking maybe you can be helpful for them and maybe this can be some kind of gig for you." I said, "Well, what is it?" "It’s Meco Monardo, a great trombone player, and he’s working with Tony Bongiovi and some other people, and they’re wanting to do a Star Wars Christmas album. They got permission from George Lucas." Why? Because it was the disco era. You could take "I’m a Little Tea Cup" and if you put it over a disco beat, that would be a hit. So Meco and Tony had gotten permission from Lucasfilm to do a disco album using the John Williams music from Star Wars. That sold like a zillion records. They made so much money, they built the Power Station on East 53rd and it’s still there. They put so much money into that recording studio that they put a garage for their sports cars on the second floor that brought the car up from the street to the garage, so they didn’t have to worry about having a parking spot. That’s how much money there was.

So [my friend explained], "Well, they’re going around to every major writer they can find and they’re saying, could you contribute a song? They can’t get enough material and they can’t figure out how to hold it all together." So I met with Meco and I said, "Look, this may sound ridiculous to you, but if you want to do a Star Wars Christmas album you have to have a story. You have to have some spine, even the lightest spine, to hang it on. I’ve learned that because I’m writing musicals and that’s what you need for a musical, you can’t just put a bunch of songs up on the stage. You need a story, you need a title, you need a concept. Maybe I can help you out, because that’s one of the things that I do."

He said, "How would we do a Star Wars Christmas album?" I go, "Well you can’t just randomly go talk to a bunch of different people and say, 'Can you give us a song that has something to do with Star Wars and Christmas without unifying it in some way, without there being a concept?'.... This is obviously Christmas in the world of Star Wars, which means this is in a galaxy far, far away, thousands of years ago. It’s not now. So call it Christmas in the Stars."

He said, "Wow, that’s a great title." "OK, it’s now Christmas in the Stars, what’s going on?" "What’s going on is that R2-D2 and C-3PO and all the characters are celebrating Christmas in a galaxy far, far away, in a time long, long ago. They probably don’t even have Santa Claus, it would be a different, like, S. Claus or Sunny Claus, his cousin."

That’s how we were spit-balling this. And, I said, "Obviously C-3PO and R2-D2 and all the little droids would be making the Christmas presents for Santa instead of the elves." So we’re having a good time. Why am I having a good time? Because I’m thinking only of my seven-year-old son who is completely obsessed with Star Wars.... For me, the audience was doing something fun, silly, entertaining, literally on the level of Sesame Street, which was what my son was watching every day and I was watching it right along with him, that would be funny and hip and cool especially for kids. Not to mention the fact that I had never had any note of my music ever recorded commercially. This was a chance and an opportunity to get a job to do that, so I was motivated in so many different ways.

Getting down to work

The turnaround was fast. Yeston began writing in the fall of 1980. The album was slated to come out in November via RSO Records and be available for the Christmas season. Monardo and Bongiovi were already in the studio recording while Yeston was still fleshing out the narrative structure, writing songs and essentially sketching out a musical theatre map for the record.

Yeston: They were up against the wall and they didn’t have much material at all. So I came back and said, OK, this is what we do, here are some things I wrote. It’s gotta open with an opening number, which says here’s the story and here’s what’s going on here.... So the opening number is 'Christmas in the Stars' and there they all are, making toys for the kids. "I’ve got mistletoe and holly/ I’ve got 20 different kinds of lollipops/ with 20 different kinds of chocolate bars/ everyone will be excited, even I am quite delighted/ and ready for Christmas in the stars."

When you’re writing like that, it’s just like being out of town with a musical in trouble. You don’t have time to screw around, you just gotta go. You’re writing at a million miles an hour. I thought, if we can get the rights to "Sleigh Ride," why don’t we have a thing where R2 is hearing people singing "Silent Night" off in the distance, and he says to C-3PO, "What’s that?" and C-3PO says, "Oh, that’s singing, don’t you know what that is?" And R2 says, "Can you teach me how to do it?" and C-3PO says, "What, me teach you how to sing? Don’t be ridiculous." But every once in a while you get a lyric.

Now I know that there are a massive number of people who crap all over this album, and I understand it. It’s not rocket science, it’s not Sweeney Todd, and I get it. But, "there’s a kind of sound that you won’t find in my memory core/ When you add it to a note that sound is just before/ and another one after that and another three and four/ and suddenly you’re singing notes galore/ if you will only give it a try and sing it clearly through/ your voice will float like a feather and we’ll sing together, R2." I’m not embarrassed by that lyric. Nor am I embarrassed by "Your every friend is bettin’ there’s a great duet inside you." It was great fun to do.

I wrote "Christmas in the Stars" and I wrote "Merry, Merry Christmas" and I thought it might be fun, and I think my son and all of his contemporaries would love the idea of receiving Star Wars-y, science fiction presents: "a baseball that throws itself/ if you’ve been good this year/ it may appear on your toy shelf." The other one was a robot that’s counting sheep and then he falls asleep.

But finally I said, I have to get serious about this. Whatever element there is in me as a writer that thinks the whole concept of the character of Yoda is fascinating, I really want to write something genuine here. At some point, the way to end this, is for somebody to say, "What is this Christmas anyways? What does Christmas mean? Why are we here?" Who else could tell you that but Yoda? So I wrote a song called "The Meaning of Christmas" for Yoda.

So now everything is written and we’re in production and we’re moving at a million miles an hour. We’re now going to go to the second stage, which is writing, producing, arranging, etc. So the first thing that has to happen is demos. I did the demo for "Merry, Merry Christmas" and in order to do it, I made my voice go very high and imitated a droid. I overdubbed my voice about 30 times and then we put it through some various electronic things that we had and that was the demo. Then I finished "The Meaning of Christmas" for Yoda and I did the demo in Yoda’s voice, and then we did get Anthony Daniels and did the arrangements and Anthony arrived from London and I met him, talked to him and we did some scratch vocals.

Anthony Daniels is the actor and voice of C-3PO. He’s played the character in all Star Wars films, numerous Star Wars-related projects, and will appear in the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens film in 2015.

Bongiovi: Naturally when Star Wars [the album] hit, we were in good favour with George Lucas, because there’s royalties that get paid to John Williams and George Lucas and all those other people. Anthony Daniels flew in from England and he did the voices. We got him via Lucasfilm. Everything that we did was sanctioned by George Lucas’s company because we used a lot of stuff that was proprietary and they gave us permission to do that, including Daniels. We wanted to get as many original things as we could to put on there and Chewbacca didn’t work out too well, he wasn’t very musical, so that didn’t work, but he [Daniels] did. He did a good job on the record.

[Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher] don’t sing, so there wasn’t too much we could do with them. Although, I could have had access to both of them. But at the time, what were we going to do? He’s an actor, she’s an actress ... if they could sing, it would be different. Mark Hamill, we could have gotten all of them, but they’re not singers, so they don’t fit on a record album.

Daniels: I was actually rehearsing for a play in London, rehearsing every day of the week, and then [RSO Records] needed — as a lot of things are in show business — it now. They’d been planning it for years [laughs] and it comes down to, "You’ve got to be here on Saturday." They wanted me for that week and I said, "I can only come on Saturday and Sunday." I finished work on Friday and got to Heathrow, got on the Concord, and so few people actually flew it in the end, which is sad, because it was gorgeous, and flew it to JFK I suppose, and went straight to the studio. I have an idea that the producer met me in the limo with a bottle of champagne, it was nine o’clock [Saturday morning] or something ... I think he managed to break the stem off because roads in New York are whatever, and so we were bumping along in the back of this limo trying to be cool, but it didn’t really work [laughs]. There were splashes of champagne everywhere. Anyways, it was a nice idea. We go to the studio and it was just me; sadly there was no orchestra there. It was all just click tracks and all that kind of thing and very little rehearsal time, very little preparation, so we just went straight into it.

Yeston: [Daniels] wasn’t a singer, so he sort of had to Rex Harrison the whole thing. I taught him how to do that.

Daniels: It’s quite odd. I think I did have quite a big orchestral track, and it is kind of interesting hearing a great orchestra through your headset and they are hearing you quite naked, really, coming in and out of the track. But it does give you a great feeling of power working with an orchestra and the sprechgesang. The Germans invented it, it means people who can’t sing and warble along on the beat as it were. Rex Harrison was famous for doing that. It’s speak-singing. It wasn’t until I did Star Wars in Concert that I was backed up onstage by a symphony orchestra, and the power of that sound is pretty good. Otherwise it was just hard work and many, many retakes.

At six o’clock that night, which of course was 11 o’clock my time, I was actually gaga, because we’d worked all day and it wasn’t to do with the champagne. I was tired. The next morning I dragged everybody back into the studio at seven o’clock in the morning because by that time it was 12 o’clock my time. They were all a bit weary, but you know, showbiz people get on with it, especially studio crews, and we worked until I left at three and got the afternoon Concord back again to Heathrow. Then I was back rehearsing in central London on the Monday. In London, there was no limo or champagne, I was on the bus heading to the rehearsal room. But that’s been the fun part of my career, if you could call it that: one minute, Concords wherever, and the next minute, basically on your bike.

The wookiee song

Yeston: I wanted to integrate all of the characters I loved, Princess Leia and Han Solo and of course the Wookiee who was basically a teddy bear. Especially to an eight-year-old. So, I thought, of course since the plot is that the droids are making toys for everybody, I wrote the intro: a scarf for Skywalker, something else for Princess Leia, but what do we get the wookiee? So I wrote "What Can You Get a Wookiee For Christmas (If He Already Owns a Comb)" and I knew in my heart it was, on a molecular level, I’m reaching into the roots of my childhood and hearing all these crazy, silly songs. This is a classic novelty song. What do you get a wookiee when he already owns a comb? The answer, of course, is a brush.

Bongiovi: By the time we made that record, Empire Strikes Back had come out with the wookiees and we wanted to push as much of Star Wars in the record as would work. It was kind of a neat idea at the time, it was a nice melody it had, so that’s how that made it in there.

Daniels: "What Can You Get a Wookiee For Christmas": people love that. I wasn’t actually involved in that, but you’re making me remember now, actually. Sadly, I don’t have a vinyl player anymore, so I just sort of gaze sadly at the album cover.... It’s ready for a re-release! And I’m sure in Episode VII of Star Wars, somebody will be playing it in the background there. Probably part of the Evil Empire or something like that [laughs].

Star Wars and Jon Bon Jovi

Bongiovi’s second cousin was an aspiring singer named John. Christmas in the Stars is famous for being the future Bon Jovi’s first professional recording ("R2 D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas"), but the album also boasts, according to Yeston, Bon Jovi's first writing credit.

Bongiovi: When I started working with my cousin, John, I started working with CBS Records at the time and I couldn’t get him a deal. I tried to do everything I could to get him out here. I knew that that record [Christmas in the Stars] was going to come out and I knew that it was going to sell, so he sang on it. If you have a hit, then you can turn around and say, "Hey, this album is a hit, let’s turn around and sign him." But nobody wanted to sign John, it was a big uphill battle. I put him on that, a Budweiser commercial, anything I could do. But that’s how he ended up on that track: "If this album hits big and you’re the lead singer, then I can do the record with you." ... It took me a long time. I couldn’t get him signed! [A few years later] a radio station held a band contest and I said, "OK, let’s try that," and the rest is history.

Yeston: I think the history of this is somewhat inaccurate, so this is to the best of my recollection: Tony Bongiovi, who was one of the co-producers of the disco album and was one of the co-owners of the Power Station, had a young cousin in New Jersey named John Bongiovi, and he really, really wanted to be a part of this album. And John wrote "The Odds Against Christmas." Now, "R2 D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas," [which John Bongiovi sang lead on] was Meco’s. But John wrote, and I remember hearing his demo, [sings] "the odds against Christmas are amazing/ it’s 365 to one" and I’ve always thought, I am not the only one who could be blackmailed by this album. [Laughs] Fair is fair. What was he, 16 or 17 years old? Then finally Meco had the idea that he’d have this simple song — he’s a great marketer and a very smart business man, and a lot of fun — and Meco said he’s got this little tune called "R2 D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas," and he said, "Let us record all of the children of every executive on both coasts who were involved in Star Wars," and we did.

All the kids, who ranged in age from maybe five to 11, were singing "R2 D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and my son was among them. It was a very large room, Studio A, and we split it into four areas, four corners, and there was a microphone hanging down from each corner, so you had fairly separate tracks. There was a percentage of the kids who couldn’t sing, so we put all of those kids under one of the four microphones and we kept that microphone off [laughs].

The Yoda hiccup and the Force bows out

Bongiovi: We had a high school choir to sing, 50 kids from my high school in New Jersey and we said, "If you want, you can learn this and we set it up at the Power Station and we brought them in on a bus and we fed them sandwiches and then we had Darth Vader come over to entertain them.

George Lucas liked what we did. At the time, we had to get his approval for just about everything that we did. He didn’t really object to the material or the songs or production, but he wanted to make sure we were showing the Star Wars characters in a good way and George did scrutinize everything that we did. It was a pretty easy-going [working relationship]; Meco did most of the talking with him and sending the tracks and having phone conversations, which I would be involved with: "How do you like that?" "This is what we’re going to do here." He’d say, "OK." He’s not a music producer so he depended on us to make that record, and as I said, we were so successful with the original Star Wars record, he gave us a lot of latitude in the production and he gave us whatever we needed to make it sound more like the Star Wars characters and give it more of a Star Wars feel.

Yeston remembers it differently.

Yeston: Everything was going smoothly, then we got terrible news. Frank Oz, who was going to sing "The Meaning of Christmas," could not come and sing. Frank Oz was at the time in London, filming and recording The Muppet Movie, in which he played Miss Piggy. And Frank, according to what we were told, could not be Yoda during the time his persona was Miss Piggy. [Laughs] It was like Marlon Brando.

We didn’t quite know what to do, but we figured that we’ll figure that out. But before we even had to confront that problem, RSO sent a message to Meco and everybody in the Power Station, we were three-quarters of the way done the album, saying the album is down. The album is cancelled. And Meco was distraught.

Nothing in this entire process was, "Hey, let’s capitalize on Star Wars and make a lot of money." It was that we love the movies so much, isn’t that a lark, what fun. Just to be close to this phenomenon. So now the album’s done, it’s over. Why? George has serious concerns about any mixture of the metaphor of the Force with Christianity. I said, so, the problem is my song, "The Meaning of Christmas."

It’s very pretty music and the lyric was, and it was very like Yoda, "I will tell you about many, many years ago/ on a planet far from here/ there appeared a new star shining for a single year/ men were far more different then/ much they did not understand." It was real! It was one of those real songs, and the message was love each other, be kind to each other, be good to each other. And people were like crying hearing this song. But George did not want to intermingle the message of the Force with Christianity. And that was it, the album was over, case closed.

It was like Mickey and Judy in the barn [in Babes in Arms]. I said, "Hey, wait a minute, that’s not what we do when we have a problem with the show!" Let’s rewrite the lyric. Who do I speak to? So I called the vice president of Lucas Films, Sid Ganis, and I said, "Hi, you don’t know me, I’m completely unknown, an insignificant songwriter who’s involved in this album and we’ve just heard it’s cancelled because of this." I said, "Mr. Ganis, first of all, are you sitting in a jacuzzi out there?" He said, "No." I said, "Mr. Ganis, on Broadway, when we do these shows, if the song is not working for any reason, we don’t close the show and lose all the production money, we repair it. 'The Meaning of Christmas' was an attempt to have us sing about the religious connotations and the message of Christmas, but Christmas isn’t just Jesus Christ, it’s also Santa Claus, wreaths on every door, decorating your Christmas tree, it’s a yule log and families coming together to give gifts. Let me rewrite the lyric." He said, "OK."

So I rewrote the lyric to what it is, which is obviously a shallow, treacley, insignificant, clichéd list of Christmassy kinds of things. I did it because we had done an album, we had all worked very hard, a lot of people were relying on it. It was an opportunity to get some fun things recorded. It started my career, I guess, as a commercial songwriter, and I felt I need to do this, for everybody and for myself: what’s wrong with a treacly Christmas message? We hear it all the time. It’s a light-hearted entertainment ... and the album’s back on!

The final touches

After trying and failing to record versions better than Yeston’s demos for three of the songs, Monardo asked Yeston to step up and record the tracks for the album.

Yeston: I said, well, we need a name and I’m not going to put my own name on it because I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to get fired from Yale and I’m fine writing this but I don’t want to sound like a recording artist who sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks, so I said we’ll just call the recording artist of those songs the Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir and Chorale, so I am the Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir and Chorale and my son loved it. "The Meaning of Christmas" is me, too. I’m S. Claus. That’s me at the end. So this was the start of my writing career, my recording career, my commercial career. And now they’re going to release the album, right? We’re on board. And they got the artwork from Star Wars and I gotta tell you, I raised an eyebrow, because I thought we’d get something that looked like the Star Wars logo. I was really surprised when we didn’t get that, and I don’t know why, but I think they just had a feeling, like, "Maybe we should distance ourselves slightly from this?" [Laughs]

A final blow

Yeston: Two days after the album is released, I went to the corporate offices of RSO Records because I thought I’d like to ask them about the music publishing or something and the front door was locked. They had gone out of business. They went out of business two days after the album was released, never to be heard from again. Recently I found out it was because of some lawsuit that was being threatened and they just decided to close the doors. So, there was no record company behind it. They had an initial pressing of about 150,000 and that was it. No promotion, no anything. OK, so fine. But all I thought was, OK, now there are only two things that would be nice: 1. If some of this, if it had any quality at all could be heard, and 2. If I don’t lose my job at Yale. So the record’s released and "What Can You Get a Wookiee" as a Christmas novelty song shoots to number 69 on the Billboard top 100, which was just mind-blowing to me.

The lost songs

Bongiovi: I don’t have the album in front of me, I don’t have it anymore unfortunately, but I think we probably cut 18 things and then eliminated some [nine] of them. Whatever’s on the album is what made the record ... I don’t have [the masters or originals], they would be with the record company, RSO, I don’t know who picked up his catalogue so I don’t know where they might be, but there’s some more original stuff out there. There are lost Star Wars sound recordings out there somewhere.

Daniels: It’s one of my proudest moments: it didn’t win an Emmy or a Tony Award or any of that and it didn’t become a long-running musical, but I think there’s scope for it and I think there’s time for a re-release, possibly a remix, I don’t know ... I think basically we ought to bring out a special edition, a special three-box set director’s cut.... There is a quest for fans everywhere to dig up beaches, golf courses, find where these things are buried. It will never happen again. I hope [Bongiovi] was proud of it. It was one of those giggle things.

Yeston: I actually heard them and it’s really good they can’t be found. [Laughs]

Christmas in the Stars: the legacy

Daniels: The record came out and I think some of my friends who heard it were — you know, I have proper actor friends who were a bit askance at some of the things I get up to. It’s a fairly esoteric piece of art. Some people would be afraid of owning up to listening to it. Possibly they did under the dead covers of night with a torch or whatever, but it’s a fairly wacky thing. And it’s a sort of charming Christmas — you can get away with it at Christmas, you know. We have a history of fun stuff, Christmas songs, don’t we? It’s got its place in the annals.

More than half my life, on and off, has been spent doing things that have to do with 3PO, that I’m incredibly lucky. People talk about typecasting or whatever, but the sensible reply is, "Yes, aren’t I lucky?" [Laughs] You know, I’m sure, that I refused to meet George Lucas [originally]. I wasn’t interested in being in this silly film, but then I went to meet him. Can you imagine now if I hadn’t done that? It’s very curious. I think it was my destiny, just as it was Anakin’s destiny to go to the dark side, it was my destiny to be C-3PO and to be on this funny LP. It’s given me huge fun around the world and so many people who are kind of amazed to meet me in the end, because I’ve been a voice or an image for them for so many years. It becomes part of a tradition. I think a lot of families have the same Christmas decorations they get out of the box every year and put them up, and it’s kind of nostalgic. They sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog — not that I would ever drink eggnog, it’s truly one of the most disgusting things ever. You might paint walls with it. Dry white wine myself. But it is part of the family tradition for many people, getting out the tinsels and baubles, and the Christmas sounds [in C-3PO’s voice]: Christmas in the Stars is part of that tradition, and I’m very happy to see the people sitting around the log fire and singing along and laughing and going, "God, that!" [Laughs]

Yeston: It kind of disappeared and then it was famous as this really awful thing, like Carrie the Musical or whatever. I think it’s interesting. You called me and so I thought why don’t I take a look at Amazon and see what people are saying about it. So I looked at the 13 five-star reviews, which I never do, and here are all these people saying, "Oh, our family for 25 years, every year we’ve pulled this thing out and it’s so silly and we sing and have a good time and it’s fun." And then of course, the one-star reviews are, "Is there anything on the great chain of being lower than this?" [Laughs] I’m OK with that.

Daniels: Every few weeks or months, some new [Star Wars] project comes up: Star Wars Rebels, The Clone Wars, now there’s Lego Star Wars: the Yoda Chronicles. I’ve just been writing for this new book, which is secret but coming out next Christmas, so it was very odd going back to Episode VII on the set because for me, I’d been doing this last week, voiceovers for the animation series but with a different style, I will tell you. The Yoda Chronicles are very funny, much of Star Wars Episode VII is not very funny, it’s really quite serious, so I had to slightly rethink. But it was totally normal to me — that’s really weird to say, isn’t it? But it’s normal to me to be C-3PO in these scenes. It’s totally normal to see Harrison Ford being Han Solo and Carrie Fisher being Princess Leia. It was not a shock to me. And for the people looking after me, my dressers and so on, they were ecstatic, because they had been fans early on and now they’ve joined the film industry as prop makers and model makers, and there they were working with the real C-3PO. It has become a bit of a family and having J.J. Abrams get so many of the original people back, it did feel like a family.... It’s not over yet, Episode VII will come out this time next year and we can do a re-record of Christmas in the Stars and find those other tracks.

Yeston: No, no, no. I’m still living with the guilt of it! [Laughs]

Aakuluk Music: Nunavut's first record label is ready to rock the Arctic

This article originally appeared on CBC Music on Nov. 2, 2016.

Iqaluit-based band the Jerry Cans release their newest album, Inuusiq / Life, on Friday, Nov. 4 (it’s streaming now via CBC Music), and with it comes a major breakthrough for their musically rich community: the launch of Nunavut’s first record label, Aakuluk Music.

“Aakuluk is a term of endearment,” explains the Jerry Cans’ Nancy Mike, who co-founded the label alongside bandmates Steve Rigby and Andrew Morrison. “It's not necessarily ‘I love you,’ but it's something that you say to your children, your parents, your friends. Anybody, really, that you want to show affection.”

Pronounced "a-coo-look," the term is also a crucial value of the label and those involved. 

“We want to work with lots of young people and sort of share things we can celebrate in Nunavut,” Morrison, a former CBC Radio producer who is also Mike’s husband, explains, joining his wife on the call from their home in Iqaluit. “There's lots of times, as people see in the media, that there's lots of more challenging things that happen in our lives up here, so we wanted to have that always as one of the sort of grounding philosophies of the label.”

As the sole born-and-raised Inuk member of the band, Mike says that there are many misconceptions of what life is really like for the people who actually live, work and create in northern communities. This record label is one opportunity to regain agency over their own stories.

“One of our passions is to really inform others about what it's like here and what our language and culture means,” Mike says. “Being segregated from the rest of Canada — we live a very different lifestyle and not a lot of people know what it really is like up here.”

Not that there isn’t a cost associated with consistently being in an educator position.

“Some people have stereotypical ideas of Inuit [culture] or what it's like up here,” Mike says. “And it can get frustrating and it can really get tiring to always have to educate non-stop when when we're travelling, for example. But I’m very much passionate about my culture and who I am and where I come from, so I have that passion to just teach all the time, no matter what the circumstances are.”

Morrison, who has lived in Nunavut since he was two years old, says that the major misconceptions surround the state of language and culture in the North. He and Mike hope that Aakuluk Music will help change that by giving Nunavut musicians a sense of autonomy, but also a sense of place that the Jerry Cans couldn’t find as a northern band trying to crack the southern Canadian music market.

“When we wanted to distribute our music, we contacted record labels in the south and we sent them like, our music, and they would reply back, ‘Oh, we really do like your sound, but we can't understand what you're singing about so, no, we can't take you,’” Mike recalls. “We always have to take the extra effort to make something happen and that one example is a big statement for what Aakuluk Music is gonna be, and what I hope it will be in the future. Our goal is to give young people or whoever, any artist, that opportunity to bring their music in their own language and be able to express what it's like for them to be living in the Arctic, or be Indigenous.”

Morrison points to the relatively recent success of Indigenous artists like A Tribe Called Red and Tanya Tagaq as people who are starting to challenge the gatekeepers of Canadian music. Aakuluk has three other acts on its roster in addition to the Jerry Cans: throat singer and poet Ivaluarjuk, singer-songwriter Riit and roots-rock musician Agaaqtoq.

“English is the dominant language in the music industry down south, and we really pride ourselves on singing in Inuktitut,” Morrison says. “And we really pride ourselves that when young kids, in communities across Nunavut, are screaming the lyrics of our songs in Inuktitut, we think that's really important. We want songs in their heads to be in Inuktitut because I think the power of English is so strong these days and it's getting stronger with the internet and these different levels of globalization. When we kept talking to people in the south and they kept saying that ‘I love it, but,’ the message was constantly being sent to us that if you sang in English it would be a completely different story. What message does that send to young people in Nunavut if they want to start a career in music? We wanted to really challenge that, and create a space and create an organization where young people who are very proud to sing in Inuktitut, they can, and they can have support, and they can have support in the industry.”

Reaffirming cultural pride and practice in young people is also an important component of decolonization.

“One of our passions is to de-colonize and plant a seed in young people that they are strong human beings,” Mike says. “[That they can be] Indigenous or Inuk and that they can speak their own language and not have to always be speaking in English or expressing their feelings in English. When I was a kid in junior high, it was more cool to be ‘white.’ Going to school, smelling like seal meat for example, you were made fun of, and it wasn't cool to eat that, so one of the songs that we have is about really enjoying seal meat as part of your diet. Little things like that that send messages to the younger generation; we want to really encourage them to be proud of who they are.”

“I’m non-Inuk, I’m a non-Indigenous white guy, and part of what we try to talk about in Nunavut is that non-Indigenous people have a role in decolonization,” Morrison says. “It is not just the responsibility of Indigenous people. All of our communities that have to go through this process of understanding the history, understanding how we relate to that history, and understanding how all that shapes the way we do things now. What I try to talk about as a non-Indigenous person is to encourage other non-Indigenous people to really become aware of that stuff and become an ally, and to take steps to understanding that and to try and really make, create a community where English doesn't dominate, and where a certain way of life doesn't dominate over traditional way of life.”

Morrison and Mike both say that there’s a massively diverse music scene at home, but there’s barely any media coverage or awareness beyond the North. The result: a tightly knit music scene that had no choice but to support its own, both musicians and fans alike.

“It was very kind of challenging and really difficult to hear ‘no’ all the time,” Morrison says, recalling all of the rejection he and his peers have accumulated over the years. “But there's this silver lining to it because again we're forced to do it ourselves and kind of figure out how to do it. We're building the Nunavut music scene in that sense, because we're making lots of contacts and really trying to build up the resources in Nunavut.”

Mike also points out that the colonization of Nunavut happened much later than the rest of Canada. What’s happened to her home in her and her father’s lifetimes is to live and bear witness to monumental change. The founding of Aakuluk Music is to be part of that change.

“To see Nunavut become what it is now, it has changed tremendously over 50 to 60 years,” Mike says. “Nunavut's first record label — you know, from living on the land to this digital age that we live in now, it's fascinating to me. I think there's a lot of good things that are gonna happen in Nunavut over the next decades.”

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

Leonard Cohen, the women he loved, and the women who loved him

This article originally appeared on CBC Music on Nov. 11, 2016

Interviewer: Do you ever feel that you have exploited relationships by writing about them?

Leonard Cohen: That's the very least way in which I have exploited relationships. If that was the only way I'd exploited a relationship then I'm going straight to heaven. Are you kidding me?

Q magazine, 1991

This is from an interview that 57-year-old Leonard Cohen did with Q in 1991. It’s easy to imagine a small chuckle bouncing off the page, him shaking his head a little, a slight smile on his lips.

Cohen was in his early 30s when he stepped into the spotlight, guitar in hand, a poet’s worth of evocations pouring from his mouth. Wise and articulate, tender and alive, Cohen the songwriter was somehow even more compelling in this naked state, his vulnerabilities heightened, his confidence tilted by slight outsider/imposter feelings about claiming a space occupied by the likes of Judy Collins and Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Phil Ochs.  

His reservations, though, were tempered by his age, and the relative vastness of a grownup life already lived and abandoned by the time he hit New York. He was already a master of words by the age of 33 thanks to early successes: a published poet at age 15; the author of two critically acclaimed novels by 32. He was at least 10 years older than most of his disciples and fans, the women and men who worshipped at his feet, eager to manifest their connection to the man’s works with the man himself.

He was a gentleman, prone to a self-deprecation that has come off as self-confidence since his youth. His pursuit of beauty, appreciation of beauty, the ways in which he exulted and coveted and captured beauty in his words — what man couldn’t understand that? What woman wouldn’t be flattered to be the focus of such a fiercely artistic, intellectual, romantic man? In 1967, Cohen told the Village Voice, “I really am for the matriarchy.”

Cohen’s charisma was part prophecy (he claimed to be a direct descendant of Aaron), inheritance (his father died at the age of nine, leaving him the de facto “man of the house”), and learned behaviour. His charm was old-world and European, but it was not pure instinct or birthright. It was also observed and chosen, as if he realized early on the power of a man who could occupy the shape of a doomed romantic, who would be able to control and master, even subconsciously, gendered social conventions that would earn him favour with women and men, that would make him something of a legend or a hero on his artist’s journey.

He was always good at approximating the angles and bent neck of a man who listened with understanding and appreciated women with his whole body. But he also projected the spirit of a wanderer, a rogue, a man who was restless and eventually reckless. Someone who would always see himself as the one who was left behind even as he was taking to the sea, putting cities and countries and oceans between himself and the goddesses who could no longer inspire brilliance, who were best preserved in memory rather than contend with their gradual transformation from muse to mere woman.

Since the beginning, he was painted as equal parts long-suffering, lonely boy and lanky lothario, and to a certain extent, Cohen fed into both of those personas. In this Newsday article from 1992, he apparently found it amusing that he was “an object of lust” in the 1960s.

"It's so curious, because I couldn't get a date," he said. "I couldn't find anybody to have dinner with. By the time that first record came out, which rescued me, I was already in such a shattered situation that I found myself living at the Henry Hudson Hotel on West 57th Street, going to the Morningstar Cafe on Eighth Avenue, trying to find some way to approach the waitress and ask her out. I would get letters of longing from around the world, and I would find myself walking the streets of New York at three in the morning, trying to strike up conversations with the women selling cigarettes in hotels. I think it's always like that. It's never delivered to you."

Reading Cohen’s own words and thoughts about sex, marriage, women and dating, is both intoxicating and exhausting. His intellect was deep and precise — even his conversational musings were an intricate choreography of language — so much so that every sentence was a complex seduction. But in an effort to better understand a man like Leonard Cohen, we have to know a bit more about the women he loved and the women who loved him in return.

Judy Collins

Collins discovered Leonard Cohen, sort of. She told CBC Music about the event in a 2013 interview.

“When I met Leonard, in 1966, he came to my house and was sent to me by one of our mutual friends who said, ‘This guy has just written some songs and he wants you to tell him whether you think they’re songs and whether there’s any point in sending them around to various singers, and he’d like to start with you.’ When he came to see me, he sang a few songs to me and of course I started recording him right away, and actually launched his career.”

She also wrote about their close relationship in her book, Judy Blue Eyes — My Life in Music: “I remember being in bed with a man I did not know who was coming down from an acid  trip and wanted me to ‘comfort him,’ no sex involved. Leonard sat in the room with us, singing ‘The Stranger Song’ softly  to himself, not paying any attention at all to what was happening on the bed. The Chelsea Hotel indeed! I trusted Leonard completely in very intimate situations and although we never had an intimate exchange of that kind ourselves, he was a constant ally I could take into battle with no fear of betrayal.”

Joni Mitchell

The longtime friends and one-time lovers go back ages. These photos of them are lovely and allegedly represent the first time they met, backstage at a Judy Collins workshop at the Newport Folk Fest in 1967.

According to Cohencentric, Cohen, who was nine years older than Mitchell, spent a month living at her Laurel Canyon home when Hollywood wanted him to score a movie based on his song “Suzanne.” The movie never happened.

Mitchell also told Malka Maron in the book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, that Mitchell wrote “Rainy Night House” for Cohen as a farewell when their relationship ended.

“I went one time to his home and I fell asleep in his old room and he sat up and watched me sleep. He sat up all the night and he watched me to see who in the world I could be.”

“A Case of You” may also be about Cohen, but there’s an equal chance it’s about James Taylor.

And after years of her constantly being told that Cohen was “obviously” an influence on her own songs (but never that Mitchell could have possibly been an influence on Cohen), Mitchell said this in a 2001 Border Crossings interview: “I met him when I was around 24, around the time of my first record. But thematically I wanted to be broader than he was. In many ways Leonard was a boudoir poet.”

Janis Joplin

“Chelsea Hotel #2”

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
You were talking so brave and so sweet.
Giving me head on the unmade bed,
While the limousines wait in the street.”

Leonard Cohen

“I named Janis Joplin in that song,” Cohen told BBC Radio 1 in 1994. “I don't know when it started, but I connected her name with the song, and I've been feeling very bad about that ever since. It's an indiscretion for which I'm very sorry. And if there is some way of apologizing to a ghost, I want to apologize now for having committed that indiscretion.”

"I was saddened by her death,” Cohen told Sounds in 1976. “Not because someone dies — that in itself isn't terrible. But I liked her work so much; she was that good that you feel the body of work she left behind is just too brief….There are certain kinds of artists that blaze in a very bright light for a very brief time: the Rimbauds, the Shelleys, Tim Buckley — people like that; and Janis was one of them.”

Marianne Ihlen

Cohen’s one-time partner, and the famed subject of his beloved song “So Long Marianne,” Marianne Ihlen died earlier this year on July 29 at the age of 81. Though she and Cohen parted ways in the ’60s, she asked her close friend, documentarian Jan Christian Mollestad, to notify Cohen of her impending death from leukemia. Cohen wrote back quickly, and the story went viral. This is an excerpt from Mollestad’s interview on CBC’s As It Happens.

Rosemary Barton: I know you don't have the letter in front of you, but can you remember part of it?

Mollestad: It said, “Well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road…” When I read the lines "stretch out your hand," she stretched out her hand. Only two days later she lost consciousness and slipped into death. I wrote a letter back to Leonard saying in her final moments I hummed "A Bird on a Wire" because that was the song she felt closest to. And then I kissed her on the head and left the room, and said "so long, Marianne."

In 2005, Ihlen agreed to be interviewed about her relationship with Cohen. When asked what he looked like then, she replied, “Oh, he was beautiful! Haven't you seen pictures of Leonard when he was young? Oh yes, you have. He was marvellous. Neither did he think that he looked like much. We both had problems. You have no idea. We often stood in front of the mirror before going out and wondered who we were today and stuff like that. Oh God, how strange we human beings are.”

She detailed the humble and sweet beginnings of their courtship in Hydra.

“I wasn't exactly pampered in being used to meeting a man who behaved the way he did. I have to say that. He in fact reminded me very much of grandma. Her energy, her enormous presence. You could really trust in him. It was like ... is it really possible to be so fond of me as he says he is? You know?! I can impossibly be all that much. He then drove me all the way home to Norway in this car. That was when I understood this was something more than friendship. But at that point I was knocked out. I was very ... that's when reactions set in. One after the other. But when he went back to Montreal it didn't take long before I received a telegram: ‘Have house, all I need is my woman and her son. Love Leonard.’ That's how it was.”

She also spoke beautifully of it in retrospect.

“This relationship was a gift to me. And a gift for Leonard, I might also add, not to underestimate myself completely. And that's what it was. However, I think it has been sort of an opener for the rest of life for us both, for better or worse.”

Nico

Cohen called her the “perfect Aryan ice queen,” and quickly became besotted with Nico, singer and Velvet Underground guest vocalist, following her all over New York. Cohen said, “Nico eventually told me, ‘Look, I like young boys. You’re just too old for me.’”

"I loved Nico,” he told Ram in 1990. “I was only peripherally involved with the Andy Warhol/Velvet Underground scene, it was really Nico I was in love with. Through her I met Lou Reed who, when he admitted he had always liked my writing, I was surprised to find he had read me. And I met John Cale."

Suzanne Verdal (or, Suzanne #1)

"The song 'Suzanne' is journalism," Cohen says in the book Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters. "It's completely accurate." Asked whether there were tea and oranges involved, Cohen laughed. "Well, the tea actually had little pieces of orange peel in it. But 'tea and oranges' sounds better, doesn't it? She lived near the water in Montreal. And she did used to 'take you down to her place near the river'. You could 'hear the boats go by' and you could 'spend the night beside her.' All those things … and I touched her perfect body with my mind. Mostly because she was married to a friend of mine and I couldn't touch her with anything else!"

Suzanne Elrod (or, Suzanne #2)

In 1969, a 35-year-old Cohen met 24-year-old Suzanne Elrod. They had two children together, Adam and Lorca, before separating in the mid-’70s.

According to Sylvie Simmons’s Cohen biography, I’m Your Man, Elrod met Cohen at a Scientology class, the same year he met Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who would become his Zen master.

But an excerpt from a People magazine profile in 1980 offers a different version of their origin story, and follows it all the way through to their breakup.

In 1968 in Manhattan, Cohen met 19-year-old Suzanne Elrod in an elevator. “He was going in, I was going out,” Suzanne remembers. He about-faced, and soon Elrod moved into his apartment in the Chelsea Hotel. For both, it was a time of change. They left the world of coffee houses behind and Cohen kicked his amphetamine habit, living for a time in Montreal with his mother. “She was his most dreamy spiritual influence,” says Suzanne. “The only thing that bothered me was that she always called me Marianne.” Then the couple moved to a cabin in the Tennessee backwoods. Says Suzanne, “We admired the wild peacocks, listened to the stream in the morning, watched the sunset in the evening. I was devoted to him. As long as someone like him was in the universe, it was OK for me to be here. I was walking on tiptoe — anything for the poet. Our relationship was like a spider web. Very complicated.”

It was an on-again/off-again arrangement as the couple moved back and forth between Montreal and Hydra. Leonard described it in a 1973 lyric, a year after their first child, Adam, now seven, was born: “I tried to leave you, I don’t deny. / I closed the book on us at least a hundred times.”

When Leonard wrote and composed, which was most of the time he was home, Suzanne was writing, too, in her journal (“describing what a bad chap I am,” says Leonard). She also started a pornographic novel. “I wrote it to make us laugh,” she remembers. In 1974 they had a daughter, Lorca, now five (named for Federico García Lorca, the martyred Spanish poet-playwright). Though Cohen had given Suzanne a filigreed Jewish wedding ring, the union had never been formalized. The relationship became strained and about the time his mother died, in 1978, they separated. Suzanne took the children to live near Avignon, France. “I believed in him,” she says. “He had moved people in the right direction, toward gentleness. But then I became very alone — the proof of the poetry just wasn’t there.” Suzanne claims he is not living up to a child-support agreement he signed when they broke up. For his part, Cohen complains about Florida-bred Suzanne’s “Miami consumer habits. My only luxuries are airplane tickets to go anywhere at any time. All I need is a table, chair and bed.”

Sharon Robinson

Robinson was a back-up dancer for actress/singer Ann-Margaret and was recruited by Jennifer Warnes as a back-up singer for Cohen in 1979. They were never romantic partners, but musical collaborators and great friends. Robinson co-wrote and produced Cohen’s hit “Everybody Knows,” among many other songs and albums. In fact, they were so close that Cohen was godfather to her son.

This is from a profile on Robinson from the Financial Times in 2013, in which she talks about working with Cohen, who told the interviewer that their collaboration prospered because of “the rare privilege of a deep friendship with a musician, singer and composer of the highest rank.”

“I go to his house, we sit in the kitchen and chat, and have something to drink or eat.” Work begins with a verse or two that Cohen presents her with, on paper. Robinson reads it, they talk about melodic possibilities. Rarely, if ever, do they talk about the meaning of the words. “We both feel that the song should be self-explanatory,” Robinson says, before correcting herself. “I can’t speak for him of course.” This desire not to cross a line, to respect Cohen as an artist, is an endearing constant during our conversation. It feels protective.

Robinson takes a poem home and studies it. “I try not to ask Leonard, ‘What does this mean? What’s this about?’ We don’t really go there.” Does she try to work out meanings for him, or for her? “Probably both, and hopefully those are the same, or somewhat the same.” It’s the multitude of meanings, we agree, that gives the songs their broad resonance.

There were other women, too, of course, though few occupied the rarified space that Robinson held: that of peer. Cohen was a man of so many appetites — erotic, romantic, spiritual — but he was also, always, steering into an escape. In 2005, he told a Norwegian radio interviewer, “I never thought that I was very good at it [love], you know. I had a great appetite for the company of women, and for the sexual expression of friendship, of communication. That seemed to be the obvious and simple and complicated version of the attraction between men and women that I came up with. I wasn’t very good at the things that a woman wanted, which I don’t know if many men are [laughter].”

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

2016 and the year of the long goodbye

This originally appeared on CBC Music on Nov. 14, 2016

In a year of living dangerously, defiantly and, all too often, regressively, 2016 declared early on to music fans that it was trying to break our hearts.

David Bowie gave us Blackstar on Jan. 8, and died two days later from liver cancer. Phife Dawg, born Malik Izaak Taylor, co-founder of A Tribe Called Quest, was just 45 years old when he passed away on March 22. Prince died of an accidental overdose on April 21. On May 24, the Tragically Hip announced on its website that lead singer-songwriter Gord Downie had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. Canada heaved and coalesced to begin the cathartic process of a — hopefully — long goodbye. And on Nov. 10, Leonard Cohen died at the age of 82, just weeks after releasing his new album, You Want it Darker, and sparking a wave of panic when he was quoted as saying he was ready to die.

Most of us have lost somebody, or are losing somebody. Maybe it was sudden and fast, causing a break so significant in your day-to-day that you’ve just grown around the hole left by their absence. Or maybe it was long and tiring, death defined by the kind of suffering that erases everybody it touches. The sadness is real even when we’re mourning people we don’t know, and when it comes to artists like Bowie, Phife, Prince and Cohen it seems impossible not to dwell on what we’ve lost, and in the case of Downie, how much we stand to lose. Making space for sadness is important — 2016 has reminded me of that. What I didn’t expect was how grateful it would make me feel to be alive.

I make sense of the world through my relationship to music. It’s essential to my quality of life. David Bowie challenged my imagination. A Tribe Called Quest turned my love of poetry and lyrics upside down and expanded my understanding about the infinite capacity of language. Prince pushed me past binary and amplified sexuality beyond its narrow confines of rockist heteronormativity. Gord Downie is still prompting me to question everything and let my curiosity inspire creativity and change. And Leonard Cohen deepened my understanding of the divine, the spiritual entwining and practical pursuit of beauty, religion, philosophy, culture and sexuality.

An engaged culture is a place of genuine opportunity, of endless possibilities, and music is a place of action and entertainment, release and provocation, rebellion and protest. It’s a resource and an artistic practice, creator and consumer, and its power has never been more evident than in 2016. With every musician’s passing this year — and it has seemed more cruelly relentless than previous years — we find ourselves not so much isolated in grief as we do situated in de facto communities with fellow mourners/strangers. A sort of collective precarity of music lovers being ushered en masse into a new future, one where our icons become echoes before we’re ready. And so we scramble, desperately grasping at wisps of genius as if it’s as easy as capturing fireflies in a jar. We lament and despair because in the vast loneliness of grief, it’s hard to look around and feel an obligation to the suffocating sameness of a place that will always be a little less shiny without a person like Prince in it.

But then I put on a record and hear the sooty static of the needle touching vinyl or I press play on a video and a voice fills my ears and I can’t help but remember that I witnessed, and am witnessing, brilliance. I sing along with friends at karaoke to “Ziggy Stardust” and “Purple Rain,” turn up the volume on “Check the Rhime,” marvel over the futurist vision of “Jazz (We’ve Got),” tear up over “Bobcaygeon” and feel the hollow misery slip from my bones with every sweeping, winking chorus of “Dance Me to the End of Love.” There are decades of albums, hundreds and hundreds of songs, and a future full of re-issues.

Phife Dawg was working on a solo album at the time of his death. Now A Tribe Called Quest has briefly reunited for one final release. Prince, of course, has a vault’s worth of material that may or may not ever see the light of day.

Bowie, a master of precision and control to the end, left us a map for our mourning with Blackstar. He knew his cancer was terminal. He kept the diagnosis private and he got to work. He made sense of his mortality in the way many artists might, a rush of creativity flooding his body, endorphins fired up by the stress and pressure and finite nature of it all. Cohen did not try to hide from his mortality either, and You Want it Darker is a different kind of map for mourning. He was, after all, 13 years older than Bowie, his body, perhaps, more battered by age. There’s a resignation throughout, a sense of weariness but also gentle gratitude that he’s made so much of his time. He’s not a man begging for more; he told us he was ready to go.

Downie is not dead, but the spectre hangs, and he, too, has gotten to work. His decision to do so publicly is a generous one. He’s using his privilege to amplify the voices of Indigenous people, to publicly obligate the prime minister to move toward a decolonized Canada, to somehow restore or atone for not only what has been taken but also the legacy of trauma wrought by the oppressors and white supremacy. In doing this, Downie models a way forward and fights for a future that he will not live to see. He’s not cowed by mortality; rather he ensures both his immortality and humility by using what time he has left to try and make the world a little better for his having been here.

There isn’t a shortcut through grief for these figures, but we also need to rejoice in their art, revel in what they gave us. This is the year that took, took, took, with both hands, but it also reminded us to appreciate what we have, be grateful for what we had, and it reaffirmed the mind-blowing power of music.

Find me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

Sexual assault at music festivals: changing the conversation

This piece appeared on CBC Music on Oct. 25, 2016.

In the summer of 2015, Kate Lloyd wrote a piece for Vice’s Broadly vertical entitled "There’s a rape problem at music festivals and nobody seems to care." Based on what we’ve seen transpire throughout 2016, Lloyd was probably right. Particularly during peak music festival season, every day seemed to bring new reports of sexual assaults from all over the world.

Twelve sexual assaults and five rapes were reported at Sweden’s Bravalla Festival, and another 35 sexual assaults were reported at Putte I Parken festival, also in Sweden. At Denmark’s Roskilde festival, there were five reports of rape or sexual assault. In Ontario, a 20-year-old Oakville man was charged after an alleged sexual assault at the WayHome Music and Arts festival. A young woman by the name of Melanie Doucet posted publicly about being roofied at Montreal’s Osheaga festival and asked that organizers take more safety and preventative measures going forward.

These reports are devastating, but not shocking — at least not to women. In Canada, more than 80 per cent of sex crime victims are women, and just six of every 100 sexual assaults are reported to the police. In America, women account for 90 per cent of all adult rapes. Sexual assault has been normalized and gendered to the extent that girls grow up being taught how to avoid it, as if the presence of an additional X chromosome is almost complicit in the inevitability of experiencing sexual violence. Add to these stats the increased risk of experiencing sexual violence in mass gatherings, as well as the prevalence of alcohol and drugs, and it’s easy to understand why music festivals have a rape problem — but it certainly doesn’t make it easier to accept.

Project SoundCheck, an Ottawa-based organization, is hoping to prevent sexual assault at mass gatherings with its unique program that focuses on bystander intervention and training. The project is a partnership between the Sexual Assault Network of Ottawa and the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women, and was started in response to a 2013 study done at the Ottawa hospital emergency room that found one in four new cases of sexual violence happened at or around a mass gathering. Project SoundCheck lead Kira-Lynn Ferderber says that since the program began in 2015, she’s delivered training to “a few thousand people” at a variety of festivals, including the Ottawa Blues Festival, and at least 5,000 people have received the group’s abbreviated bystander intervention checklist card. The handout includes six steps to help check in and prevent sexual violence, beginning with the basics — "Watch what's going on: is everyone having fun?" — to the more specific: "Seems like things #JustGotWeird? Yes? Time to check in!" and "Stick around: say hi, ask what's up, ask the person who may be at risk, 'Do you need help?'"

Ferderber says that bystander intervention is important because women are constantly told to watch their drinks, be careful, remain on guard (writer Scaachi Koul called it surveillance culture in her powerful BuzzFeed essay).

“Women are trying to be careful and so that’s why I do bystander intervention,” Ferderber says. “Because it engages everybody else. No matter how vigilant you are, you're one person. Someone could slip something in your drink. Bystander intervention is really pragmatic. Convincing every single person not to commit sexual violence, like, I'd need everyone to be onboard with 'no means no' for sexual violence to end…. And I’m not against those safety messages, but it's not a guarantee, and it puts the onus on women and we’re already doing it.”

“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” is bystander intervention, Ferderber explains.

“If a person is hosting a party and someone's drunk and they're going to get in their car and drive, you [the host] are actually totally safe from them and you're not gonna get arrested and you're not gonna get hit, you're not gonna be a perpetrator or a victim. You're on the sidelines, but you intervene.”

It seems simple, but the basic act of talking about it and giving people instructions for how to do it themselves empowers people to intervene.

“The phenomena of bystander apathy is very real,” Ferderber says. “We feel safe in a big crowd. But it's that weird thing where if you fall and break your leg you're better off having two people walk by than 100 people. At the same time [there’s] diffusion of responsibility, ‘someone else will take care of it.’” But, she continues, “People do want to prevent sexual violence, they just don't know how to talk about it and they don't know what to say. It's weird. They just need the training and then a lot of times once they have it they're able to use it, but it is a bit of an intimidating topic.”

It’s also an increasingly important one.

If 2015 introduced the phrase "rape culture" into the mainstream, 2016 affirmed it’s not just the buzzword of feminists and the “politically correct.” Rather it’s a phrase that’s infuriatingly, heartbreakingly relevant, and naming it and framing it is critically important to dismantling it.

"'Friends don’t let friends drive drunk' is bystander intervention."

Kira-Lynn Ferderber

Stacey Forrester, the founder of Good Night Out Vancouver, says that the increased media attention around sexual assaults at music festivals doesn’t mean it’s happening more or that it’s a new issue, but rather it’s reflective of the fact that people are speaking up against it and demanding that festivals do more to ensure the safety of its attendees, and that complaints are taken seriously.

“Rape culture has historically been buttressed by a pressure to stay silent about these issues,” Forrester says, “so the more people [are] talking about it in a way that calls for more accountability and less victim blaming is a positive thing.”

Good Night Out works with clubs, pubs, venues and festivals to identify issues around safety and sexual assault, work with owners and promoters to resolve them, and engage with bystanders about spotting and acting on harmful behaviours.

The instant community feeling of a festival might contribute to lowered barriers or provide the perfect hunting ground for predatory sexual violence, but bystander intervention acts on that community impulse and amplifies it.

“It’s the perfect opportunity to create a culture that looks out for one another,” Forrester says. “Let’s all carry some of that 'vigilance' instead of it weighing on a select few people — women — and all bear some of the responsibility for our community. Let’s learn how to recognize and intervene on behaviors that are harmful, let’s look out for lost strangers, and get people water, and not leave people ‘to sleep it off' and know when and where to get help.”

Munroe Craig is the owner of Karmik, a Vancouver-based harm-reduction program that services festivals and nightlife events throughout B.C. Karmik began incorporating a workshop by the Consent Crew, co-founded by Kim Dohms, into its regular training sessions, and agrees with Forrester about the potential for an empowered and engaged community.

“Let’s create a culture where we do not externalize or transfer responsibilities to others unless we are otherwise unable to do it ourselves,” Craig says. “Then we are truly creating an evolved and less primal society that is better skilled and able to handle itself in the future.”

“This insta-community feeling [of a mass gathering] also gives us a really good opportunity to share ‘norms’ and create a culture that’s different from one that’s driven by rape culture narratives," says Dohms, who lists a number of ways to communicate these “norms”: greeters at gates, ambassadors engaging people in conversations throughout the festival, posters, signage and social media among them.

Dohms is already seeing the potential long-term benefits of bystander intervention.

“If people understand the culture that they’re coming into,” says Dohms, “they’re more likely to engage in the community in respectful ways that keep safety and fun working together for the best experience possible. If we create a space that promotes consensual interactions, that allows for calling in and education around behaviours that won’t be tolerated, we set ourselves up for more buy-in from community members — people can become participants and community members rather than just consumers of an experience. Setting up those expected behaviours from the outset and keeping messaging consistent throughout the lead up and during the festival can truly go a long way and trickle into everyday life. We’ve seen consent and harm-reduction conversations continue on well past festival season among people who saw these initiatives at work.”

Everyone should feel safe at HPX and keeping people as safe as possible means that we need to be constantly evolving.

Stephanie Purcell, board chair of the Halifax Pop Explosion

Ottawa Bluesfest has been one of the earliest proponents of Project SoundCheck and takes its bystander intervention training seriously. Anna Wood is the HR manager of volunteer services, and she estimates that she’s been through more than five training sessions.

“When I first learned about why Project SoundCheck was being created, I was shocked by the statistics,” Wood says. “After receiving more background information about what bystander intervention is, and the positive approach that is being taken with Project SoundCheck, I am so proud to be part of it.… The simplicity of bystander intervention is such a positive message to spread, and I feel like I am much more aware and confident in large gatherings because I now have all of these effortless tools to check in and help someone.” 

Stephanie Purcell is the board chair of the Halifax Pop Explosion music festival, and says that sexual assault prevention is hugely important to the festival — not just for its patrons, but also performers, staff and volunteers, which is why they have begun consulting with Project SoundCheck. 

“Everyone should feel safe at HPX and keeping people as safe as possible means that we need to be constantly evolving,” Purcell says. “We need to continually review all of our policies and work towards helping identify and prevent horrible events like sexual assaults from occurring.”

Purcell admits that HPX is “afraid” that if incidents have happened, they’ve gone unreported.

“We want to change that,” she says. “We want to make sure that everyone attending feels comfortable to report sexual violence and that's why we feel working with Project SoundCheck is so key to the process. Their bystander intervention manual is helping us understand what we can do better to prevent and support victims of sexual violence…. We are including their manual as well as their sexual assault prevention tip sheets in our volunteer and staff training and [we’re] currently looking to having a representative come to Halifax in 2017 to help further educate our staff.”

Ferderber, who is also a musician and raps under the name the Mayor of Ottawa (“Because I run this town!”), hopes that artists will also use their leverage to encourage music festivals to take safety seriously. It's exactly what Mumford & Sons did following Bravalla, issuing a statement that they wouldn’t play the festival again until they had assurances from the police and organizers that “they’re doing something to combat what appears to be a disgustingly high rate of reported sexual violence.”

“People can ask promoters, 'What do you do to keep women and other people safe at your events?' And artists can just ask that. Even if they didn't refuse to play, even if they just say, 'This matters to me,’” Ferderber says, pointing out that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are refusing to speak at campuses that don’t have a comprehensive sexual assault prevention strategy. “Imagine if it was like, 'Oh no, you can’t book Kanye West unless you care about preventing sexual violence.’”

Update: Melanie Doucet, who was mentioned earlier in this article (she posted publicly alleging she was roofied at Montreal’s Osheaga festival), reached out to CBC Music this morning to let us know that she’s petitioning the City of Montreal to require festivals incorporate sexual violence prevention and intervention.

“The experience made me realize how ill-equipped festivals are in dealing with sexual violence and the serious lack of training of security staff in properly responding to reports of such incidents,” Doucet says. “I am a seasoned festivaler and have been attending all sorts of festivals since the early 2000s. This was the first time I felt unsafe, victim-blamed and shocked at the blatant rape culture that exists — it really opened my eyes to that. As a social worker by profession and a PhD candidate at McGill, I could not just let this go because the next girl this happens to could have much more tragic results than my situation."

Doucet says that her lawyers, who are working on the case pro bono, will submit the petition on Doucet's behalf in early November.You can check out the petition here.

Resources:
Project Soundcheck
Goodnight Out
Karmik
The Consent Crew

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner