Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Gowan: Toronto Mike'd #1089

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

In this 1089th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Lawrence "Larry" Gowan about his solo success with A Criminal Mind and (You're A) Strange Animal, the (You're A) Strange Animal resurgence with the release of Jordan Peele's NOPE, Moonlight Desires and its use in Degrassi's School's Out, how he came to join Styx and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1089 of Toronto Mic'd Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

Dewar. The world's most comfortable pants and shorts. Save 15% with the promo code Toronto Mike. Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. And Canna Cabana, the lowest prices on cannabis guaranteed. Over 100 stores across the country. Learn more at cannacabana.com. Today, making his Toronto Mic'd podcast debut is Lawrence Gowan.

When I announced on Twitter that Gowan was finally making his Toronto Mike debut, I was inundated with questions and comments and two key ones right off the top. Before we go any further, we have to address this. These belong to a couple of other Mikes. Recycle Mikey says, is he back to Larry or should we keep calling him Lawrence? And Mike Grogoski writes, can you ask him if he prefers to be referred to as Larry, Lawrence, or Gowan? What's the answer? It is all of the above, honestly,

because I get all of the above every single day. It's funny because I break my life into segments of, you know, I was first Lawrence Gowan up until I was eight years old. And in the hockey, you know, when I was playing hockey, minor hockey, the dressing room, the coach went around the room and said, okay, what's your name? First kid's saying, Joe, what's your name? Jimmy. Okay. Yeah. What'd you, Bob? He goes, yeah, Tom. Yeah. You, Lawrence. I went, he goes, and you go, hold on. Lawrence isn't a hockey player's name. Your name's Larry.

So I was given the Larry name, and it stuck with all the hockey people that I played with all the way growing up. However, my family always referred to me as Lawrence. In the 80s, I dropped all first names because you were only required to have one name in the 1980s, I think by law. So it was just Gowan. So it was that for at least the next 10 years. Then I put out an album called Lawrence Gowan, but you can call me Larry.

And then I joined Styx in 1999. They absolutely insisted on calling me Lawrence Gowan. I remember Tommy Shaw's wife said, I heard somebody call you Larry. You're not a Larry. You're truly just not a Larry. I'm like, okay, okay. And so it was Lawrence Gowan all the way through sticks. So truly all of the above.

And that's the longest answer I've ever given to that. I love it. Listen, this is where we go in depth. So we need that kind of thoughtful answer. So can I call you larry of course i like that larry i think it's cool okay now you mentioned hockey uh i co-host a show with mark hebbs here and hebsey wants me to ask you what's your favorite who was your favorite hockey player as a kid yeah unfortunately that's a terribly moving target i think the first hockey player i was

very cognizant of loving was frank bahavlich like i just was enamored with as of like a when i was five years old in fact i remember being so um possessive that frank bahavlich was my favorite player that I remember one of my dad's friends asked me, who's your favorite player? And I said, Frank Mahalich. He said, and I'm five years old. And he goes, really? He's mine too. And I thought, Oh no, no, no sharing. He's mine. You, you pick another guy. Shortly after that, it went to like, I really love Dick Duff. You know, it's all,

it's all Leafs, of course. You know, I can go, I can go through the list. I wound up being able to play some of those games with those guys as adults. And it was very weird for me because I, you know, I just venerated so much their, their whole existence in the, in the 1960s, you know, so meeting, you know, meeting Bob Nevin and Dave Keon and, you know, Mike Walton and these players were just amazing to me. Yeah. Amazing people. And I think the biggest of all was Jim Pappin because Jim Pappin he he scored the last goal that was the winning goal for the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup he came to a show a couple of years ago in California I guess he lives there

now came to a show and I had made a big deal of the fact that he was coming to the show because of the Chicago connection that That's with Sticks. And he brought me a Leaf sweater. You know, there's this old number on there. He even signed and everything in one of his hockey cards. And that, again, was an amazing moment that I had Jim Papin backstage after a show. So there's a litany of my favorite leafs of all time who are probably my favorite hockey players well listen i hate to be the bearer of bad news uh shout out to ridley funeral home but uh we lost jim like six weeks ago he passed away not know that i'm so sorry man i know i i

yeah go ahead when you're on tour especially you can sometimes miss that kind of news and you know if i was home i would have heard that for sure. I'm really sorry to hear that. Yeah, it was a couple of years ago. He loved the show. It was great to have him there and such a lovely guy. Amazing you gave him some great memories there in his final years, for sure. Very good to hear that.

Speaking of... Sorry? Thanks for telling me, but I'm very sad to hear that yeah my yeah my condolences now now you you know you had some good memories of playing hockey there and uh bruce barker so i should preface this by saying so mark hebbshire is an fotm bruce barker's an fotm i'm about to uh tell his great story here you larry gowan are now an FOTM. That's Friend of Toronto, Mike. Welcome to this exclusive club. Fantastic. I've always

pronounced it Fottum. Ask him what it was like playing hockey on the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens with me doing the play-by-play. Bruce Parker. Bruce Parker. We called it the Scarborough Donut Hockey League that's right we had we had the Scarborough Donut Hockey League we were the donuts with fantastic uh sweater that I think my brother Pat came up with it's it's it's a donut

with all the glazing melting and a hockey stick jammed through the hole and we played a number of tournaments around southern Ontario. And, you know, myself, my two brothers were on the team, we had some ringers there. And we won a few of them as well. And mostly, mostly in the 90s is when we did that. But that's when we got a chance to play Maple Leaf Gardens and Bruce Barker did the play by play. It was all historically recorded on wonderful VHS tape that's beautifully torn and falling to pieces today. But I think we've had it digitized. A few things surprised me about Maple Leaf Gardens. First of all, the ice was,

how can I say it? It was not great. It was nothing like the arenas that around Toronto you know that have really nice hard ice it was fairly soft and I couldn't get over how warm it was in the building you know and it gave me a yet another level of appreciation realizing these guys have to imagine if the stands were full the stands were not full when we played there by the way there were maybe about three or four people there was being do remember though, thinking, man, to play in this kind of heat with your full gear on and the arena full. Yeah. My, my appreciation went up a few more notches that day. That's why Dougie Gilmore couldn't keep his 140 pounds on that frame, like eating the pasta between periods,

I think so. Probably. Okay. So you're chatting with me now from beautiful Scarborough, Ontario. And Scarborough, though, not its own city, but a great borough in the city of Toronto here. I'm calling from Etobicoke here, but you were born in Scotland and Craig M wants me to know, could you chat briefly about your Scottish roots and how often do you get back to Scotland? Yeah. So, you know, I've always been kind of, I love the fact that I'm the only kid in our family that was born a foreigner. I was born in Glasgow. I'm an immigrant to Canada at a very young age. I came here, I like to say against my will, but I had no will at the time. And, but I'm very much, you know,

it's funny about where you're born. I don't know if you, we probably just project this type of thing, but whenever I go back to Scotland, I do have this feeling of, this feeling of the earth being what I'm connected to in kind of unusual ways. And I can't quite verbalize exactly or articulate it any further than that. It's just, it's a feeling.

However, my dad is Irish from Northern Ireland. And so I have that side of my family as well. Irish from Northern Ireland. And so I have that side of my family as well. And I think part of us moving to Canada was due to the troubles, as they called them, in, I just watched the movie Belfast, and that really beautifully, succinctly puts the whole story into perspective. I think my mom was concerned that because my dad was from Northern Ireland, that we would probably wind up moving there, if anywhere. So I think the compromise country was Canada. And Canada at that point in the late 50s was very, very much British influenced. And my dad was in the Royal Navy, even though he was Irish.

And he was in the Royal Navy for 11 years. He was a sailor in the Second World War. I think he felt an immediate affinity and kind of a connection to his home coming to Toronto because it had such a strong British background. Funny enough, the Protestant-Catholic balance was about the same as it was in Northern Ireland and he was always very comfortable being around.

Most of his friends were Protestant, even though he was a Catholic. And so I think there was a balance there. And where I grew up in Scarborough, which is about five miles away from where I live now, from where we're speaking, it was most, almost all of the families had either an english irish or scottish accent the parents you know and uh so it was really it's amazing we were just talking before coming on air when i ride my bike through that neighborhood now and i did so i got back into that in the covid day times um in the lockdown period it's amazing now where I used to ride my bike through that neighborhood and it was nothing but the smell of roast beef and mashed potatoes. And now I ride my bike through that neighborhood and I'm smelling all these exotic curries and spices and all kinds

of things that we never, sorry, that we never went near. And so it's, again, another great experience about riding a bike is that you really are a participant in the whole adventure that you're on. And by the way, you're also 12 years old again if you ride through your old neighborhood. Right. And so that's where I grew up. And bringing music into this conversation for a second, it was a fantastic crossroads for music, for musical, being exposed to everything great in American music, everything great in Britain, you know. That cross current in the early 60s was amazing to be around

and to live through that. And then to start to hear canadian bands and know that oh canada's has a whole uh you know part in this as well in this in this wonderful musical game that's going on around the world that makes life so uh so fantastic wow okay i hear this from comedians too like fellow scarberian uh mike myers that like that that American comedic influence combined with the British influence that was so prevalent, really did create that unique Canadian sense of humor. I'm glad you bring that up, because Mike Myers, I know I never met him. I've only ever met Paul, his brother, but he was maybe only a couple of miles at most, maybe a mile and a half from where we grew up. And it's funny when I would see, even back in his early days of SNL,

but particularly Wayne's World, it was all that Scarborough humor. He just, he kind of distilled it all down into one guy. Even the names that he chose were like, yeah, I knew a Wayne. I knew a Campbell. I knew, you you know like everything about it was entirely scarborough driven and of course he brought up the gas works which was kind of a a second home was kind of that was my college years oh don't worry i have a blair packham question about the gas works for you in just a moment here uh yeah it's funny um paul myers of

course from the gravel berries let's not bury that lead there and get it back to music. Also an FOTM like yourself. But Glenn Gabriel, so he wanted to know what instruments did you play at Neal McNeil High School? You were in the Neal McNeil High School band, he says. He heard I don't know if he went there, but he says he heard

that in grade 9 you were playing the clarinet, but can you give us for the record what were you playing there? In truth, I was holding a clarinet. I wouldn't actually qualify it as playing it. There was a sound coming out of the other end that was clarinet-esque, let's call it that. Honestly, we had a great music teacher at Neil McNeil, a man named Ross Stashu, and he was particularly adept at teaching music to people who had no musical aptitude whatsoever, and having them be

fairly proficient by the time they left high school, and it was one of the things that attracted me to that high school, is I knew they had a great music program. In truth, in in truth that whenever the the the there would be a concert band playing i would either play guitar or piano in because we started to have rock arrangements of various concert band um musical bits uh for the rest of it i would i guess i could hack my way through the clarinet as um not not terribly. And then later on, we took strings and I took cello. And that actually led to one of my first really uncomfortable moments on stage. I was in grade 12, so it was my last year.

And, you know, strings are a whole different bag. And I remember when we started this in front of, in the auditorium, which is also the gymnasium, it sounded like the, the, the quintessential orchestra of cats that rocking chairs are going over their tails and they are screeching and howling in agony. That's what it sounded like. And I broke into convulsive, uncontrollable laughter. And to the point where, you know, the cello, you're sitting there playing like this, and I wound up having to actually put my head down, my full forehead, right on the top of the thing because my shoulders were like,

I just could not stop laughing. And I was severely reprimanded for that, for my poor stage. Decorum. Is that decorum? Decorum on stage was not what it should have been on that night. And they were right. So, you know, every detention I earned. Wow. Now, okay, I promised David Schultz he wants to know,

what was Eric Duhacek like in high school? Do you remember Eric in high school at Neil McNeil? Eric Duhacek. A sports writer now. Really? Yeah, and David Schultz, a retired sports writer with the Globe and Mail himself. I see. Okay.

I wonder if Eric and I were actually in the same year. I might have known him just as Eric. So I don't have specific memories of him. No specific memories. When you said Eric, I thought you were going to say Eric Farquharson. Oh, no. Who was a good clarinet player, by the way. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I knew a Farquharson in my high school, but a Marianne Farquharson. But I wonder if they're related. Okay, let's get you to – I realize now I have six hours of questions. I'm going to do some editing here. But Johnny the Hare – actually, Johnny the Hare's question ties nicely with Blair Packham's question.

And many people wanted to ask you about Rheingold. Okay, so tell me, what the heck is Rheingold? What was your involvement about Rheingold. Okay. So tell me what the heck is Rheingold? What was your involvement with Rheingold? And Blair Packett would love some gas work story if you have any. And he shall have them. So Rheingold, first of all, the name is derived from, is taken, stolen entirely from a Wagnerian opera. Richard Wagner has an opera called The Ring Cycle, and the first of which is called Das Rheingold. And that was a German accent, if people are keeping score.

Pretty good, by the way. I worked for a German software company for several years, and you nailed it. You nailed it. Oh, that's good. So Rheingold was named that because after high school, I went to the conservatory you know on bluer there of course i'm sure you know the avenue road and uh bluer around there correct correct that absolutely stunning building that's still there and uh standing strong and i actually did a i did an evening there of songwriters circle that Blair Packham put together and that was about five or

six years ago anyway I wanted something that had a lot of classical weight to it because classical music had informed so much of the progressive rock of the early 70s and it's really what you know seeing Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson and Elton John and Freddie Mercury, knowing that these guys all studied classical music, made me throw myself really into the conservatory heavily for a couple of years where I did nothing but play the piano. And I wound up getting an ARCT in classical piano performance. And the songs that I wrote in that era were the first songs I was writing were very classically influenced. You know, that was the progressive part of the rock that was in them. And that's the band that wound up playing. I think we played in total 14 weeks at the Gasworks over a five year career.

You know, so we would play there at least two or three times a year for an entire week. at least two or three times a year for an entire week. And the Gasworks is probably the most legendary Toronto club as far as rock goes. You could argue the Colonial or even the Piccadilly Tube was very strong for rock as well. But the Gasworks in particular, in the 70s, 80s, that was the pinnacle of clubs you could play because your next stop from there was perhaps Massey Hall or Maple Leaf Gardens or a

used car lot it was one of those threes one of those three choices were going to eventually come up in your life so the gas station was a fairly small club. It would only help maybe 350 people, but they were the most devoted rock audience you could ever play to. They kind of knew all the bands that came through and played on Yonge Street of that era. I recently did um for the triumph documentary i remember speaking about that that on one night on any given night between sets i could

leave the gas works walk one block up and see triumph playing say at the forge i could walk through three blocks down and see max webster playing at the Piccadilly tube. You'd come back and go up to the chimney and see rough trade and be back down and, you know, see one song of each band and then be back for our next set. All of that while dressed entirely in leotards and, you know, pretty, pretty extensive makeup on my face that allowed me entree to either bathroom, male or female back then. Right. How convenient. Yeah. Wow. Okay. my face that allowed me entree to either bathroom male or female back then right how convenient

yeah wow okay so uh when people submit a question for you larry yeah you're right even i'm lawrence larry gowan i'm gonna you don't mind so i'm gonna call you a mix it up whatever you want gowan absolutely you know when you first broke which we're about to get to here but like i guess around 85 or whatever whenever a criminal mind showed up on Toronto rocks or whatever. And I'm like, what the hell is this magic? This is wonderful. We're about to talk about it,

but I have cousins. So my mom's happy birthday to my mom. It was her birthday yesterday, but my mom's sister married a Gowan. So this, these cousins were Gowans and, and we had great fun in my family that there was a Gowan now and they were Gowans. And that was,

so that was an amusing story to only a few people in my close interest. Same spelling? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, he's actually passed away, but Bruce Gowan, uh, big Bruce, we called him. So Bruce Gowan, um, from Cremor, I guess is, where is he from Cremor? But, but yeah, if you, if you know any Gowans from C from cream or that would be the gal, the cream or gallons, but anyway, the cream or gallons,

they were some of the finest gallons I've ever not met. Ask one who's known me. Okay. So, uh, because people send in these questions, I have to read them regardless. So you can give yes or no's to these ones. Cause I got to get you to a criminal mind here, but, uh, Drew wants to know, does he, does Gowan remember my first concert in the 80s where the spoons opened for him at niagara falls arena do you remember this show for drew i i absolutely do yes that was that was 1987 that was the great dirty world tour where we did across canada and the spoons were the

opening band every single night and i do remember ni Niagara falls in it. It was a, what does he have any specific? No, he just wants to know if you remember it. I think some people, when you, you know, when you're their first show, like I noticed this, when I talked to like the guys from chalk circle, it's like, okay, when you're like, you kind of want to know, do you remember playing for me when I was a young person? And that was the first concert I ever attended. I've asked the same question of Burton Cummings because my first concert was the guess who

and uh and yes I do remember it I remember playing that Niagara Falls Arena uh twice well I remember playing it with Honeymoon Suite in uh I think 86 and then the following year in 87 yeah playing it with with the spoons on and here's a you'll get this i know but what do the spoons and honeymoon suite have in common like we have many things go what is one specific person that they have i know that rob rob bruce was the keyboard player for both that's it that's what i'm looking for and the other thing in common that i have uh with well honeymoon suite is currently peter nunn is the keyboard player for Honeymoon Suite. He was the keyboard player with me

in the 80s, between 85 and 90, I believe. So there's another connection there. Write this down. Multiverse Andy wants to know do you remember playing upstairs at the Riverside in Oakville in the 80s? A short DJ friend is asking.

So I don't know if Andy is the short DJ who's asking. Multi-verse Andy is how he referred to himself on Twitter. But you remember this show? I remember a specific thing about that week. That's with Rheingold, by the way. That's not Gowen, right? I do believe.

Okay, you would know best. Yes, okay. I do believe that. So I think it was probably around 1980 or maybe early 81. What I remember, this is more of a gas work story, but it was at the Riverside in Oakville. It was a club that was kind of on the second floor and a staircase led down the street. A guy in our third set of the night, I think it was, the crowd was digging it. But this guy got into the habit of taking ice out of his drink and tossing it at the stage.

He hit me a couple of times too many. And I wound up running off the stage, running at his table, mid-song, by the way. And, you know, I'm not that scary but when i'm mad the gloves come off and you got the big hair so you're sort of like a lion it could have been that so i was coming at him he got up from his table and ran and i remember him he got down those stairs and onto that street so incredibly quickly and then the bouncers got pissed off at me because they said, that's our job. Okay. Then do it.

Do your job. One last thing on this. So Mike Lynch says, I met him when I was working at the Muskoka sands in. Okay. He said, it's now called taboo, but this was the late eighties.

And he just wants to know, ask him if he enjoyed playing at the key to Bala. Yeah, very much. So Yeah, very much so. Very, very much so. And in fact, one of the great things that happened just recently is that my son, Dylan, who plays drums with me, with my solo band, and he also plays in a band called Birds of Bellwoods.

They played there just about a month ago or so. And the poster, the gallon poster from the 1980s is still on the wall at the key to ballot. And I'm very, very proud of that. I mean, and that's, to me,

that's almost as impressive as becoming an FOTM. Like that's awesome. Okay. Why did, why did Ryan gold break up? I just need to know. So by 1980, early 1981,

we had five years of really, we had a great following. We knew that we had something unique and strong enough. But timing is everything in showbiz. And we emerged as a progressive rock band. We emerged right as disco was on the ascent. And then as we kind of plateaued and record companies would come out and debate whether they should sign Reinhold or not, punk hit. And we were not a punk band at all. Very much a pretentious prog rock group.

And they wanted punk stuff. And even at one point, I tried to dress differently just to kind of see if it was just the outfit they were impressed with in the punk world uh it turned out it wasn't um i was a few clothes pins or uh safety pins short and uh the band really life moved on we we'd slogged it out for five years we did have a couple of record deals offered but they were very uh low tier let's call it that they weren't really you didn't feel any great uh commitment you know from from a major label so a couple of guys on the same day came to me and just said i think i've had enough i think i want to i think i want to get married i want to move on with my life and uh i've loved this etc and within a few short months, that was the end

of the band. The last gig we played was in Guelph in a club called The Chooch. And a few months after that, I basically went back down my parents' basement, because I had no money. I was in pretty deep debt for the truck lights and PA of Rheingold, and just started writing songs, you know, on my own and demoing them on my own. And within months I had two, two major record deals offered with A&M and with Columbia, who I eventually signed with in 1981. And my first album came out in 1982.

And now that, that album features the aforementioned Kim Mitchell of Max Webster on guitar, right? A really great lineup on that album. It's Kim Mitchell on guitar, Steve Hogg, who had played with Ian Thomas for a number of years and was on his record and was in the last incarnation of Brian Gould. And he played bass on the album, did some vocals, and a friend of his named Martin Corddry played drums. So it was just the four of, and a friend of his named Marty Corddry played drums. So it was just the four of us and a New York producer named Rob Freeman who had just done the first album of the Go-Go's that was a huge hit.

And there were very, very high expectations for that first Gowan album. But commercially, it didn't do well. The timing was off on it. It was very much. It's I think it still had a little too much feeling of the classic rock of the seventies was still in there just enough that again, the timing of that record wasn't quite with what was going on in the, in the eighties. It's funny when I play those songs now live, we still play and keep up the fight or hear them.

They actually fit really well with uh a lot of the stuff that i do with sticks because they really have that 70s classic rock mentality behind them and people that discover that album it often ends up being their favorite gallon record of all well okay so we're gonna get to the the next gallon because there's a couple of cuts on that album that people are still listening to uh on the daily but does any audio of reingold exist in the universe like could i ever find any reingold audio yes you probably could find because people did make cassettes of the band people came out and made cassette tapes of the band we do have some board tapes i've never released them

um but they they do exist i probably will someday i actually took a rheingold song and did it in 2020 uh dylan and i did um uh did a rendition of it a live uh you know zoom concert that we did from uh uh bella the uh empire theater in belleville and that was fun to play it again so i think i think somewhere down the line some of it will emerge um people people will probably make their cassettes put them online etc and eventually some of it will come up i saw a film of it unfortunately silent um uh that is really quite spectacular it looks looks like, it's quite amazing. It looked like an old Charlie Chaplin film,

although it was in color, being silent. And it wasn't even sped up, but the speed and movement of that band on stage was something to behold. Wow. I can tell you. All right, so I'm going to actually do a five for one here. So I'm going to read these

and then you're going to talk about this song. But Lawrence Nichols who's by the way with Lowest of the Low. We love Lowest of the Low on this show. He writes Is he really so bad? Okay, so hold your replies here, Larry. But then Indigo Mirage writes, Can you ask one who's knowing him if he's really

so bad? I suspect he is. Scott M wants to know, What was the inspiration for writing A Criminal Mind? I love how evil that song is. And then Sean William Clark, who's a great musician in his own right, writes back, yes, this question. I always thought it would make a great stripped

down Johnny Cash style outlaw country song. And then Don Landry was also on FOTM, writes, ask, what is it that they poured all over him in the Criminal Mind video? And then I'll close with Kevin Glu, who says he's very excited about this Gowan interview. He's always wondered why Criminal Mind,

which was one of the defining songs of the last 40 years here in Canada, was not a massive hit in the USA. He's seen you play it during a Styx concert, and he's seen it on YouTube, and American audiences are riveted byx concert and he's seen it on YouTube and American audiences are riveted by it and he wants to know how can that song not be a huge hit in the US so I'm gonna shut up now Larry and you're gonna bury us in criminal mind information You've seen my face before

Soon you can take your last look And they'll close the door I stand accused before you I have no tears to cry and you will never break me till the day I die

a criminal mind is all I all I've ever known. They tried to reform me, but I'm made of cold stone. My criminal mind is all I, all I've ever had. I ask one reason only, if I'm really so bad, I am. I've spent my life behind these steel bars. I've paid my debt in time.

But being brought to justice That was my only crime I don't regret a single action I'd do the same again These prison walls Secure me And I'm not Too vain A criminal mind Is all I

All I've ever known They tried to look for me But I'm made of cold stone My criminal mind is all I All I've ever had Ask one who's known me If I'm really so bad I am Thank you. Before you hand me over

Before you read my sentence I'd like to say a few words here in my own defense Some people struggle daily They struggle with their

conscience till the end I have no guilt to haunt me I feel no wrong intent The spirit of mine Is all I All I've ever known Don't try to reform me

Cause I'm made of cold stone My criminal mind is all I All I've ever had Ask one who's known me I, all I ever had Asked wonders among me If I'm really so bad All I am All I am

All I am Oh, I have Oh, I have I made of cold stone Made of cold stone I'm just like these boys in the morning sun I'm just seeing these words in my eyes I'm in a fight I'm in a fight 🎵🎵🎵 I'm waiting for the sun I got you in my life Oh, baby

I'm waiting for the sun I got you in my life Oh, baby That's great, because there's all kinds of ways of looking at those questions. First of all, I think part of the charm of the song is when you ask the question, are you really so bad? Well, we all are, right? That's the truth of it. That's probably the underlying truth that's in that song

is that we all decide to mitigate or decide how much of the tap of our dark side, let's call it that, we decide to turn on and how much we leave off. Because we are all capable, you know, humans are pretty terrible. They're pretty terrible people at times. They do have some incredibly redeeming qualities as well.

And so it's the balance between those two things that really I think the song plays with. Also, the admission of guilt in the song is really, that was the pivotal moment, even when I was writing it, to ask one who's known me if I'm really so bad, I kind of was going to leave it at that. And then I thought, what if he's just honest and says, I am. I'm as dark and as evil and as capable of the worst things as you think I am. Whether I do them or not, that's the difference as to whether I live my life looking through a window or through bars. So the inspiration for the song, I had the melody already and kind of an outline of the chorus, a vague outline of it, but the main melody of the verse. I had that on the piano already and realized, okay, this is not, lyrically, this is not a love song. I don't really know what it should be about, but it should be about something really interesting.

And shortly after that, maybe a week or two, I was at the Canadian National Exhibition. And in the automotive building back then, they had all these various displays of Canadian institutions of various description. And one of them was they had transported a cell from Kingston Penitentiary. And this is why a lot of people have been under the impression that I spent time in the Kingston Pen. In a sense, I did, because it was at the exhibition. Right. So anyway, I hate to dispel some of these myths, but we're at a time now where I can tell the truth about a couple of things.

The guy that was running that exhibit he was no one was looking at this thing no one was interested they take a passing glance and go you know oh i'm not because you could go into the cell and he had a one of the beds there they actually had a bed dummy that someone had made up made a paper mache and various clothing, et cetera, because that's how they would get a decoy from when you wanted to escape from prison. Oh, dear. I gave a terrible secret away. So I was speaking to him. He was retired, recently retired.

And I asked him about the people that he'd known over the years. He'd worked in Kingston Penn for over 25 years. the people that he'd known over the years. He'd worked in Kingston Penn for over 25 years. And that alone was a very interesting conversation about the fact that so many of the inmates were actually his friends. And some of the people that had done the worst things were the best people that he knew because he said, some of them have got it completely out of their system, whatever it was.

Some of them will never, most of them would never get it out of their system, whatever it was. Some of them will never, most of them would never get it out of their system and were really spending most of their time incarcerated, thinking about what they did wrong that got them caught, not what they did wrong that caused them to be there. So the word recidivist came into my vocabulary on that day. And he said, then I started talking to him about the cell. And he said, you know, it's one thing to look at the bars on the outside, but go in there. So I went in, he slammed

the door shut, and locked it. And I realized, yeah, this whole feeling of you can't get out means you have to confront all kinds of things within you. It's inevitable. And I went and sat over on the bed by the bed dummy. And I was just sitting. I don't know how long I sat there, maybe half an hour. But the lyrics of the song began to kind of poke me in the head, you know, that melody that you have.

And I went home, and the next morning, because after a day of the head, you know, that melody that you have. And I went home and the next morning, because after a day of the action, pretty exhausted. The next morning I woke up and literally they, they, they pretty well fell onto the page within 15 minutes. Wow. The whole thing, bang, bang, bang. My brother came home from school in the afternoon. He was still going to school then. And he heard it and made a couple of really cool comments um and i realized this is a this is an unusual song and

i hope i get to record it wow i mean the song wonderful song but uh combined with the video like i was i don't know nine or ten years old or something and that video just just like i said i think i saw it on toronto rocks when when i watched a lot of toronto rocks back then and it was like just imprinted in like and i never forgot that that was such a wild video a great song it just all kind of came together it's funny yeah the the video what was great about you know columbia records at that time the team that they had there the anr guy jeff burns who are still in at that time, the team that they had there, the A&R guy, Jeff Burns, who we're still in touch with, and the whole team that they had there were, the president, Bernie DiMatteo, they knew that this was an unusual song that they had a chance to do something very creative with,

and they wound up delaying the release of the record based upon the fact that they emphatically said, you've got to make a great video for this that sells it. It can't be too dark because much music won't play it in CBC. And we were coming right into the Tipper Gore kind of stickers on the records kind of era, et cetera. And so I worked on the storyline quite a lot and then met upon meeting Rob Courtley, you know, we really worked it out. He had a great art department and I asked one of the things that's really

going to help this is if I can turn into a cartoon character. So something like in the Batman series that I loved in the 1960s with Adam West, the award, you know, like in the Batman series that I loved in the 1960s with Adam West and Ward, you know, if the show was getting violent in any way, although that was totally campy, the fact that an animated cartoon would come in immediately kind of absolved them of anything being taken overly seriously, even though it was.

Much the same as when I became such a huge fan of South Park. The fact that it's an animated cartoon and it's kids, that opens the door to some very heavy stuff being taken in in a different part of your brain, I think, that allows it and is not so resistant to it. So with all of that and getting the team that did the snap, crackle and pop commercials from Rice Krispies, they wound up, you know, it became a pivotal thing that when I grab from the teacher or the,

you know, I'm supposed to be in a reform school, when he's about to kind of crack me with that baton, which turns out to be a flashlight, he's about to crack me with that baton and I grab it from him and do this. I have to turn into a cartoon because what's going to happen next is, you know, I'm going to go,

I'm going to become a thief. We don't know how violent I am. We don't really know, but it keeps it in that kind of gray area. The video, of course, by the 1990s and early 2000s, it looked very campy. And now when I look at it, it looks like it's very much succinctly of its era and stands up quite well. And in fact, I wound up doing a comic book of it. I should have a copy with me that I can hold up. There's a comic book that

we sell and we sell them at stick shows as well. And they always disappear. That basically walks through the video almost frame by frame and tells you that story just through the lyrics of the song. And in the middle of you have a fold out, it's the actual piano music to it. And so that's, that's that.

I hope I answered all those. Oh, no. One, one final lingering question there to answer is uh why was this and you know i i'm born and raised in toronto so i'm always surprised when i find out like a song i would see on much music you know on high rotation wasn't a big hit i'm like oh what do you mean that wasn't a hit just like in you know so why was it not a massive

hit in usa i'm going to try to encapsulate this really quickly. There were four major labels in the world back then, back in the 1980s. It was completely nothing like today, where you and I right now, we have a worldwide release of this conversation we're having. Anyone in the world can watch this. Back then, the music industry, the reason that those four labels were so powerful was they were the gatekeepers of all music around the world. They controlled the market. So you wouldn't want to overflood the market with too much. And you decide very, quite often based upon a person's personal career, whether what got released in foreign countries.

So Canada is still a foreign country to the United States, although I was signed to a U.S. label, and the U.S. label were supportive. They were very careful, and usually they wanted something to trade off with any foreign country that came in. So, for example, being at Columbia, I know through the promotion department, they would say, you know, for example, being at Columbia, I know through the promotion department, they would say, you know, for example, in Britain, they wanted Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA to break really big, like really, really big. And Britain wanted Wham! with George Michael to break big in America. So there was a reciprocal kind of tradeoff there.

And within the company, I saw that, I saw that happen and guys would explain it to me. They'd had to have a priority list. So because I was managed by Ray Daniels, who managed Rush, there were some instances where he could kind of still, he wanted to kind of force the hand of the U.S. label. So one of the things was that we flooded certain cities with import records of Strange Animal, Cleveland being one of them, WMMS was a critical station, Pittsburgh was another, of course, Buffalo had our Toronto Airplay. And it got into the top 20 there, and he got me on the, got us onto the Tears for Fears tour, and their record was number one in America

with the songs from the big chair and we wound up opening for them and we went over great you know and it just seemed imminent that they would buckle and finally release the record on a proper national release not just put a thousand copies in Buffalo um where they disappeared thankfully uh yeah But it never fell right into that category. So other bands from Canada that were, you know, equally deserving never got that shot in America. Today it's completely different because, you know, as I said, I can write a song, put it on my phone, and it's all over the place.

So that's the reason behind that. On the other hand, the beauty of it is, even from the one time that I know of, that MTV played the A Criminal Mind video, back then, when I was in America, you would get people that would recognize you because the power of television was so ubiquitous that people still, it's amazing, even if it was 3 a.m., there were enough people that would see it and it would register and connect with them. So the great thing is that to this day, the song is still such a big part of my life. When I joined Styx, the first song they asked me to play i prepared crystal ball and fooling yourself and come sail away before i even started Tommy Schell said this is 1999 he says no no no no don't play a Styx song play a criminal mind and the moment i played it he said okay so we'll make that a Styx song now and i thought well this is how it'll get its second

life and so we we still play it occasionally and probably play it in the next couple of weeks, actually. Okay, well, since you mentioned a second life here, have you, Larry, have you seen Jordan Peele's Nope? I went and saw it last week because Jordan Peele, because he tweeted a faux introduction to a 1980s or early 90s, whichever, wherever it is, around the Family Ties era, what's called that, show. And he needed a theme song for that show.

And that show is called Gordy's Home, and he used Strange Animal. So I saw that immediately because he'd tagged Gowan in it, and I saw that on my, what did I see on Twitter? And I showed it, we were on the tour bus and I showed it to Tommy Shaw and to J.Y. and to Todd. And I said, look at this. Jordan Peele's new movie is using strange animal. And about 24 hours later, I looked at it again and it said 2.3 million views.

And I went, oh, that's, that's interesting. I like where this is going. And I suddenly start getting these messages like crazy of people. I saw no N.O.P.U., not of planet Earth. And Strange Animal is in the movie. And it's in a really critical scene where there's dialogue over it. But he's playing the theme song of the show that he's describing as a child actor, this character in the movie. And I'm not going to give anything away, but it's a pretty terrifying and horrific thing that happens on that show. Not giving anything away from the movie. on that show, not giving anything away from the movie.

But yes, I actually got a message this morning from someone who said they were shushed in the movie theater because the moment it came on, they yelled out, strange, strange animal. Well, they say I should approach you with caution But not to let you be aware of my fear Never know what you'll find. Don't understand your kind. Round here. Watching your moves, they look so radical.

Hearing your words, They sound fanatical Something inside Reveals you're magical Oh, oh How can I get enough? You're a strange animal That's what I know But you're a strange animal

I've got to follow Oh, oh But you're a strange animal I've got to follow They've been trying to stick a line in your system Analyzing the defenses you hold Trying to open wide Hoping to step inside your soul But everything here is unfamiliar Nothing they've seen remotely similar How can it be you're so peculiar?

Oh, how can I get enough? You're a strange animal, that's what I know But you're a stranger I got to follow I got to follow I got to follow Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh

Oh, oh, oh, oh How can I get enough? You're a strange animal That's what I know But you're a strange animal I've got to follow Oh, I'm in the speedy to speed. Oh, you're a strange animal. That's what I know.

You're a strange animal. I've got to follow. Oh, you're a strange animal And that's what I know But you're a strange animal I got to follow Oh, I're a strange animal That's what I know

But you're a strange animal I've got to follow Well, that's okay. So Jim Slotek, he's a great writer himself, he wondered how you felt about them using strange animal, but can I just read between the lines

that you must be pretty happy that you might, I mean, not the same level, obviously, but like we just came off a big Kate Bush renaissance. It might be still ongoing because, you know, this is how, so I've got a 20-year-old, I have an 18-year-old, and they discover old music,

not because dad says you should listen to this or you're going to love this song. It's because it's in movies like Nope that they're all into. So there's going to be, whether you like it or not, Mr. Gowan, there's going to be a You Are a Strange Animal bump from this. This is going to be something kids are going to be, whether you like it or not, Mr. Gowan, there's going to be a You Are a Strange Animal bump from this. This is going to be something kids are going to be into now. Well, how could I not like that? How would it be possible?

That was completely not so bad, but actually insane. No, I'm thrilled with it. First of all, you just discovered something that I witnessed about 12 years ago to where I could no longer deny it. About 12 years ago, we'll call it roughly 2010, I began to notice that at stick shows, the audience was not skewing older, but skewing younger. And to the point where I'm noticing, wow, about, you know, 20% of the one out of every five people at the show tonight was not even born when the biggest sticks albums came out and they're singing all the words and they're not there with an older brother or sister.

They're actually in clumps. And then a few months later, I played at Fallsview here, a gallon show, the first gallon show I'd done in 11 years and we did three nights at Fallsview and each night right up front there would be a clump of four or five younger people who were definitely not alive when Strange Animal came out and would be standing up and singing cosmetics and Gor et cetera. And I was like, Hmm, classic rock is now establishing itself. It's now firmly established as the great musical statement of the last half of the 20th century, equally as, as,

as vital and as authentic as jazz was to the first half of the 20th century. It's the musical movement that had an effect all over the planet. So the songs that we thought were pop songs and were very disposable, as it turns out, they weren't that disposable. They actually were typifying or exemplifying the musical movement of the entire planet. And this is me going back to my conservatory music history learning and realizing that the music was actually extremely legitimate, okay?

And those Queen albums, those Led Zeppelin albums, obviously the Beatle albums, look at what happened with Get Back. Now we're at a point where on any given night, half the audience, 50% of the audience weren't even born when these records came out, but somehow they see themselves in the narrative of these songs. They can take them and personalize them in a way that's concurrent with their own lives. number one the power of melody you know i i'm i'm like a i'm like an evangelist for this stuff hard on it the power of melody once the melody gets into your head it's not going to if you if you connect to it uh it's never going to actually leave you then the second layer of that is if the lyric of it somehow relates to your life in some manner, it's going to stay with you no matter how hard you try to push it out of your brain.

It's going to become that earworm, as they call it, that's going to stay with you. So it doesn't matter if you weren't born when Beethoven came out with da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, there's something about that you suddenly go, that's powerful. That has something that is resonating with me, even though Beethoven's been dust for an awful long time now, right? So I'm just very fortunate that I live in an era where I've been lucky enough to stay alive this long and actually see this happen. And when younger people, for example, on the Internet, when they put up fan art and things of that nature,

it was actually a fan artist, Aylea St. Onge, who I first noticed and asked her to do the comic book for A Criminal Mind. She's only like early 20s, you know, so she was she's a millennial. She's, you know, born in this century, practically yeah generation zed i think we call that and yet they they connect to it so well as she connects to the music of russian she connects to all these uh you know things of that era uh that are still vital and still work and then when they see it live, I'm going to add this one extra layer to it. When you see something live and if it's done really well, now that is so cemented in you. And I actually bring this up sometimes in shows.

The last show I saw before the pandemic was Elton John. And I was at the Goodbye Elbrick Road Tour in 73, I think it was. And here I'm at the Farewell Elbrick Road Tour. And these songs still mean so much to me and have enriched my life to such a degree that I feel a profound connection with this guy. I just do.

Not just because he's married to someone from Scarborough. Great taste. Right. That's true. It is a very good, very good choice. But because those songs have lived so long and I still can feel myself in there. And behind me were a bunch of screaming teenage people,

you know, of all description as into the songs as when I was a teenager, watching him play those songs. So what does that say about the longevity of that music? Strange Animals showing up in various, there's all kinds of public, you know, cultural references to it over the years. There have been several. But Nope is possibly the biggest.

The fact that it was the number one box office on the first weekend that it opened and suddenly I'm flooded with messages about Strange Animal. He's the hottest director right now, I think. Especially amongst that. This is a big deal. I can see why. He's got great musical taste.

Obviously. Without a doubt, Strange Animal. You get the big Strange Animal, nope, that's happening now. But for me, now I'm going to get very meta here, but I mean, I did an episode with Cam Gordon, 2.5 hours where we just dove deep into the Degrassi high finale that was Schools Out. So Larry, let's just remind everyone

that you hear Moonlight Desires in a prominent scene during Degrassi's School's Out 1992 TV movie. Yeah. So how did that come to be? Did they just said, hey, we dig, you know, Gowan's great. We love this song. We're going to put it on. Or, you know, how did that come to be? I think basically that was the first kind of cultural

reference show let's put it that way that began to use the music and for example degrassi was very popular in australia yeah any messages i get from australia are because they discovered my songs or whatever through degrassi because all the lovers in the world is on there as well all the lovers in the world i think burning tor well. All the lovers in the world. I think burning torches of hope is in there. That was not a single, but it was on the strange animal record. And I, I did hear that in a scene.

It's actually a couple of others. I think there's probably about five, five songs in total. They used you and, uh, is it, uh, hear him scare him.

Yeah. A lot of that. Amazing. Yeah. So i guess the era that they're trying to depict and that they were in in that in that tv series and the emotions that were being kicked around in the uh in the stories the songs must have connected to those you know in in a way that they thought was appropriate. You've got ways to take hold of my thoughts Overriding my senses

Love your sights dead in line with my heart Share your powers You stir my soul and whet my hunger And feed that spell that pulls me underground These moonlight desires haunt me They want me, they want me, they want me These moonlight desires haunt me, you're sending, you're sending Secret fires burning inside me alone

Raging on, never mentioned unknown raging on never mentioned only you can uncover the flames break their silence and make them dance

for us to see them and break their chains and give them freedom Oh, these moonlight desires on me They want me They want me These moonlight

desires on me You're sending You're sending, you're sending away I fall to the blind You see Trust me Stir my soul and wreck my hunger And be that spell that pulls me under

These moonlight desires haunt me They want me, they want me These moonlight desires haunt me You're sending, you're sending away Time for me And you want me, want me One life is ours You're sending, you're sending away Time for me

And you want me, want me, they want me They want me, they want me It's like desire is haunting You're sending, you're sending away And it's the same with the Jordan Peele movies. The song connects kind of profoundly with the scene that he's, with this television show that was, I mean, the star of the show is a chimpanzee

and he's, you know, the mere fact that the first lyric in the song is, well, they say I should approach you with caution. Right. It's kind of, it kind of fits the scenario. not going to give anything else away yeah no spoilers uh i gotta see this i can't wait in fact and i'm gonna be the guy who goes strange animates by fotm larry gowan you'd be that guy you definitely be that guy and when it comes

to getting tossed out of the theater and they've got your hands behind your back, just go, ask one who's known me if I'm really so bad. I am. And people will know that guy. That's Toronto Mike. Oh, man. He's so cool. You're not in the same wavelength. So now I'm cooking with gas, okay?

I'm talking twice as fast. I'm cherry picking. I realize I'm running out of time and there's so much left here. So cooking with gas, but I know I, even I have a, an 11 o'clock recording. I can't bail on either.

So we're going to rock and roll here. So, uh, we talked about moonlight desires here, you know, with regards to, uh, Degrassi and rock golf wants to,

uh, ask how did John Anderson of yes, get involved, not only with your debut album, but of course he's singing, uh, harmony on moonlight desires. I don't know if people know that fun fact, but how did John Yes get involved? Not only with your debut album, but of course he's singing Harmony on Moonlight Desires. I don't know if people know that fun fact,

but how did John Anderson get involved? John, okay, monster Yes fan right here. John was recording for Tangerine Dreams on the soundtrack of the movie Legend in 1986 when we were in Los Angeles making

Great Dirty World. The producer of Great Dirty World, Dave Tickle, who also produced Strange Animal, he was called in to mix, I think, a piece on Legend, the piece that John sings on. And when he went into the studio, he was playing Strange Animal through the speakers, and John heard it and said, I like this, and who is this? And et cetera. And he said, I'm making a record with this guy.

And John came into the studio and listened to a couple of the tracks that we were working on and he really liked Moonlight Desires. And we were going to put a guitar solo in that section where he does that. section where he does that and instead he was kind of singing he was riffing all kinds of ways over top of the melody of the song and it just dawned on us why don't we why don't we have that in the song instead of a guitar solo and john was extremely magnanimous and lovely guy. And just said, yeah, I'll be happy to do it. And then, I mean, phenomenal day in the studio watching him put that bit together that's in the song. Then he and I went to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium. And then after that, the song came out.

And when the song was about to come out as a single, they said, we need you to make a video for this one. And I wanted to do it on the Mayan pyramids in Mexico. So I called John. He was in England. And I said, John, I'm going to go make the video for Moonlight Desires. It'll be like around Mexico City on the Mayan pyramids. Would you like to come? And at the time, he said to me over the phone, he said, I was just speaking to my channeler i don't know what that is but anyway and she said someone is

going to call you and invite you to a warm climate and you should go and whenever i get a chance infrequently but over the years whenever i get to see john he says that was a very important week in his life that whole experience of being the mayan god on top of the the pyramid of the sun and us making that video together was a an awakening for him in some in some manner that um that he feels very connected to and we were i just felt it was great to be such a kindred spirit with one of my idols. Amazing. I love it. And speaking of idols, I'm a big fan of David Marsden in CFNY.

And my question for you is, do you still have your Casby Award that you won for best, for most promising male artist? I should have put them all on top of the piano before this interview. Yes, I have my casby award uh it's yes it's still it's you still have it and funny enough i got a message from david marston just a few weeks back um he wanted to hear a copy of the new sticks album so uh yeah send him that so i still hear from some people that are lifers like myself you would love episode so this right now we're recording is episode 1089 of toronto mic but you would love episode 1021 1021 of toronto mic which

has david marsden and you know may potts and scott turner and alan cross but a whole bunch of people just on there talking about the history of uh cfny from its launch to present day and i think you might dig that so funny every one of those people you mentioned had something to do with with helping me in my career so yeah i've been very interested in 1021 how about iver hamilton's on this i'm trying to think who else i can shout out from this cf y days but here so cf y also came up we did this thing during the pandemic called pandemic fridays stew stone and cam gordon came over once a week, or sometimes via Zoom because it wasn't safe, but we would connect

once a week and kick out thematic jams. And this is important. So, CASB Awards, of course, was a CFNY award, Canadian Artist Selected by You. So, they changed their formats like late 80s, they changed their formats and by the early 90s, when Humble and Fred are there, they're sort of like, I call it

alt-rock. You know, grunge was breaking. So after, very important here, Larry, but after 1991, does CFNY ever play another Larry, another Gowan song? Like, so the Gowan exposure on CFNY was strictly like mid to late 80s. What would you say about that you're probably right you're you're probably right I I don't know for sure but whenever I'm

I'm in Toronto if I'm poking around on the radio obviously boom is the station that plays gallon right uh like to the extent that all stations should play gallon uh and and q107 as well uh but two of my biggest stations in the in the 80s were cfmy and chum fm and they know they they have formats that have moved over the years and um i don't know maybe one day they will start to play those things again i think in the 90s because the sound that i the records that i think in the 90s, because the sound that I, the records that I did in the 90s were much more acoustic guitar driven, most of them. And those songs were far more singer songwriter related, or yeah, related than, than what I did in the 80s. I think they probably, I probably was not grunge, and I was not new, and I was not. So I don't know, I probably was not grunge and I was not new and I was not.

So I don't know. I don't know how they come up with these with exactly what the paradigm has to be, but I would encourage CFNY to get back into it, dudes and ladies. I hope they're listening. I think they're listening. No, we're going to jump to sticks real quick. And then if we have time at the end, I'll come back for some of these questions. I'm skipping here,

but, uh, like, I mean, Sammy Cone, who's, he's a drummer for the Watchmen, another great,

uh, Canadian band out of Winnipeg. Love those guys. But Sammy Cone says, I'd love to hear about the sticks audition process for Gowan and what the first few gigs were like. Oh, and if he remembers the Watchmen opening for him in,

uh, Thorold, is that how you say it? Thorold, Ontario in 1991. When Ken Greer, I should know this, when Ken Greer was his guitarist. So much respect for Gowan.

So a lot of people, I want to credit Dark Duck, who wants to know what it was like playing of Styx, and Keith, who wants to know how did the association with Styx. So please, time to tell me how the heck do you end up singing for Styx? Okay. So great questions, by the way, and end up singing for Styx? Okay. So great, great questions, by the way. And thanks very much for mentioning Kenny Greer, one of the greatest musicians ever in Canada. Most people know him for playing with Red Ryder, but he did play on one, two, three different gallon albums and just phenomenal steel guitar player, phenomenal anyway um in 1997 they opened the new montreal forum we're

back to hockey uh in in montreal and i was on a morning television show uh in montreal promoting an album i had called gallon oh quebec the year prior sorry about that the The year prior, I had recorded a live album, just solo piano live album of the hits in Quebec. And we decided to put it out as an album. Terry Brown produced it, the producer from Rush and Klaatu. And I was on TV promoting it one morning in early June and also promoting a show that I had later that month in Montreal that Donald K.

Donald, the legendary promoter was putting on. When I got back to the hotel, Donald called and said, I don't want you to do that show. I want you to open for sticks. And at the time I hadn't opened for anyone in Canada for 14 years. He said, look, it's the new Montreal Forum you headlined the old Montreal Forum this is a chance to play the new place you should do it and I said I have no band with me right now I'm touring totally solo this year and he said that's

exactly what I want you to do what you did on TV this morning so he called Styx manager and said okay I'm going to have this guy, Gowan, open the show at the, and our manager said, Charlie said, how big is his band? We've, you know, we're touring with Pat Benatar right now. We've got it all worked out. He said, it's just him on piano. Charlie goes,

in a full stadium, you're going to have one guy on the piano. So Charlie flew up from Atlanta. He wanted to see the show to see basically if this guy was going to fall on his face and make Donald look bad so as it turned out it was a Hollywood night in Montreal because there was everything just went great and the audience was spectacular as much as all audiences can be and in the encore section um the guys and sticks wound up being standing side stage and watching this and hearing the audience sing all these songs uh that they were maybe loosely familiar with from touring in

canada and after the show tommy shaw came up to me shook my and said, we got to do more of that. That was it. That's 1997. And so when they called in early 1999, my assumption on the call was that they wanted to know what I opened shows for them in the United States. That's what I wanted to do is go and tour there. And then when he said, no, we, it's not for opening. We actually want to know if you'd be interested in joining the band, and they said, we remember that night in Montreal. He had spoken to a lady named Kim Ouellette in Montreal who ran his website and put my name forward and said he would be a great addition to the band,

and then Todd Zuckerman, our drummer, had seen me just the previous year, so the intervening year, 98, at the opening of Princess Diana's memorial in Althorp. I did an original piece called Healing Waters with the London Symphony or BBC Orchestra at that show. And he said, I just saw that guy again in England. And that went really great. And he said, i think he'd be the right guy if he if he would if he would do it so a couple of days later i'm i'm there and i've prepared a couple of stick songs and he said no play a criminal mind and immediately i just thought i like these guys and we seem to be just simpatico in in every. And by the time we'd done our third show, they just said,

would you mind staying with the band permanently? And I said, yeah, I'm enjoying it. Unfortunately, it meant putting aside my solo world for the next 11 years. I didn't do anything at all until 2010 when I did Fallsview. And so it wasn't just a snap decision or an easy thing. You have to give something away in life in order to gain something. And sometimes the thing that you have to let slide is something that's very valuable to you. So now that I have a balance between the two, I'm in a great spot at the moment and I'm knocking on all pieces of wood

and looking at the gods of rock looking up or looking down, wherever they happen to be, keep smiling upon me and maybe I'll get on the Toronto Mike show again someday. Well, listen, if you play your cards right, you could play the TMLXX event. This is the 10th Toronto Mic Listener Experience, which is September 1st from 6

to 9 p.m. at Great Lakes Brewery in the southern Etobicoke. Keep doing what you're doing there, Larry. Now, a few quick questions about sticks here. Kevin in Alberta says, ask about the reluctance to play Mr. Roboto live and if he's had a change of heart now. Scott Carson then comes in and says, what was it like to perform Mr. Roboto live and if he's had a change of heart now.

But Scott Carson then comes in and says, what was it like to perform Mr. Roboto with Styx? So what's the story with Mr. Roboto? I can wrap that up real quick. In my Styx history class, the things that happened long before I was involved in the band, I've only been in the band 23 years now. In the 80s, the album, Kilroy Was Here, it wound up being a tense experience. The guys in the band, the guys who are still in the band, they don't look upon that era all that favorably. However, they've never said anything negative about the music of that era.

And I was a proponent of saying, look, you know, Mr. Obato, I used to think of it just as a kind of a kitschy song that you guys did. It's stood the test of time. It's a really prescient song. And I think we should do it in some form or another. Four years ago, we were going on tour. We had Joan Jett opening the shows and uh one morning on the on the tour bus where most best decisions are made Tommy said we should do something different on this tour because it's going to be a different audience with Joan and why don't we take a crack at Mr. Roboto and so we did and we've played it every night since it's the first you know it's in the encore and I get to sing it quite honestly part of what I love about singing it is the character in the song is someone hiding a secret that they're dying to reveal.

Well, that feels emotionally very similar to another song, A Criminal Mind. And that's why I really relish the moment of singing Mr. Roboto on stage now. Love it. Now, Vince Incorporated says, Gowan brought a lot of energy to live solo performances. moment of uh of singing mr romano on stage now love it now vince incorporated says the gallon brought a lot of energy to live solo performances did you have to dial it down with sticks so so you have to go see a stick show when i first joined the band uh the very first rehearsal we had i had the big keyboard set up and then they walk on stage. Hey, wait a second, where's the spinning thing? Because I have a spinning keyboard, right? Because that's what I used since 1990. I said, well, luckily I brought it with me. We took all the big keys off stage.

I put the spinning keyboard up there and showed them all my little monkey tricks. And they said, that has to be part of this. You have to do that. So a stick show is not a bunch of old guys. Well, it's a bunch of old guys on stage, but they certainly don't act like it. And I've still, you know, on a regular basis, I name myself on my spinning keyboard stand and I bring all of that,

whatever energies I can still put on stage are there every single night. Okay, I love it. So this is actually working out great, Larry. So in this last five minutes, I don't want to leave anything on the cutting room floor that was submitted by a listener. So Sweet and Spicy says,

I'd like to know if sitting beside us at a Leafs game in 1992 is one of his fondest memories ever. LOL, he was with John McDermott who sang the anthems and both he and Larry were very friendly. Autographs have been hanging on our bulletin board ever since. Really nice to hear.

John McDermott and I, here's the connection that goes there. We lived in Glasgow, Scotland. I think he's a year older than me. We lived on the same block, and our moms knew each other. Wow. Okay? We would pass each other in the prams which is you know the carriages as babies and we immigrated to canada before the mcdermott family did and i think

they immigrated here in like 64 they had like 11 or 12 kids maybe 13 i don't know but john was the baby i do understand my mom saw it in the toronto star and said, oh, the McDermott family from Glasgow. That's the McDermotts that lived on our street in Glasgow. And that was it. We never saw them or anything. And there's a show in Saskatchewan they do every year. In the 1990s, I was that show and on the on the plane over i met john and we said you know our moms know each other right from glasgow and that

began our friendship that's been ongoing ever since uh and that's why you know we had the mutual love of hockey and music and you know and the fact that we've we actually met as babies. Honestly, that's a mind blow. I love it. So it's interesting because, Larry, you're with Styx now. We talked about Spoons earlier. Gord Depp is in Flock of Seagulls. Yeah.

Yes, he is. Yeah, he is. And then Vince Incorporated wanted to know which Canadian keyboardist had the better 80s new wave hair, you or Rob Proust? Who, by the way, I talked to yesterday. He's actually making the trip up to Canada just to attend TMLXX on September 1st. So if there's any scenario where you and Rob

are doing some keyboard jam together, let me know. But this is, is yeah this is happening rob pruse at tmlxx that's very cool well yeah rob is um i'm look i'm not going to make the claim okay but i do know that a few years back maybe it's the same now i haven't googled it in a while but if you google uh greatest mullets of the 1980s i was number seven on the top 10 just behind john stamos wow and i i don't like to brag but i think i think it was better than stamos maybe not as good as rob's but i think mine was mine was kind of bulletproof yeah no i'm a big fan of your mullet, man, honestly. No one can touch you as far as I'm concerned. Okay, so here,

rapid fire fight, we're going to get this in. Rockgolf, Rockgolf said he loved your, speaking of spoons, it's all about spoons now, he loved your cover of Areas and Symphonies. How did that come to be? Gord Depp asked if I'd contributed

a song to their tribute album. They have artists from around the world that do their favorite Spoon song. I bought Arias and Symphonies actually right when Rheingold was breaking up, so I'm pulling that back together. I really, really like that record, particularly like that song. And it's got a very – it's an unusual lyric. That's what I really like about it uh an unusual um allegory or whatever you call it a comparison to uh to an aria and a symphony right and boys

and girls and the male female difference of how they're raised that's the way i interpret the lyric anyway and uh so i was happy to do it it was was during our lockdown times and I was always happy to do some interesting little project. I did one for Bon Jovi. Living on a Prayer. There's several out there actually but I think my favorite of them all was R.R. Isden symphonies.

Love it. By the way, so Sandy Horn, Gord Depp and Rob Pruess, all FOTMs like yourself. So there you go. What did you think of, speaking of FOTMs, what did you think of Maestro Fresh Wes's? He did like a criminal mind back in 05. He did. I loved it. First of all, there's another Scarborough guy, Wes. Yep. Wes in this very room here. He actually, yeah, there you go.

Yeah. I'm pulling up my 12 inches, everybody who's listening to the podcast here. Man, he made my backbone slide. I'm just going to tell you. That's all that happened. Wes came over when he was thinking about doing this. He came over and actually asked me in person, do you mind if I use? And in this very room here.

Wow. It was one of the coolest days of my life because Dylan was like 11 years old and 12 years old then. And he came home from school at lunch and I had like the coolest rapper in Canadian history, the originator of that whole thing, sitting right here, going through, talking over a criminal mind and um you know doing the whole rap and then and then we actually we did the video together i'm in the video of of wes's uh he called it criminal minded right and uh so i'm actually a much darker

version than than the 80s that way that way. I finally donned the orange jumpsuit I've been dreaming of all my life. Right. You know, Wes is living in New Brunswick now. Is he really? The last time I spoke to him, he was in Vancouver, so he's jumping around. Yeah, I guess during the pandemic, he and his son moved to New Brunswick,

I guess. I have other friends that have moved there as well. I love New Brunswick. Absolutely. Okay, Jake the snake uh saw you not me we saw you gowan uh when he visited when you visited ancaster high as a rock express promo saw you at gauge park and lulus will you ever tour solo in canada again well i do tour solo in canada just a few weeks ago i played calgary uh regina winnipeg and then we did an outdoor show in peterborough i have about 10 shows coming up at the end of this year all in southern ontario so you'll have plenty of opportunity in november december to see that yes i do still tour solo um ancaster high yes they won the contest with Rock Express magazine, now known as Music Express.

And that was the most essential magazine to get in, in, in Canada in the 1980s. I actually got to be on the cover once, um, which was great. And I'm still in touch with, uh, people in that magazine. Anyway, um, the, the con, there were all kinds of contests back then to have people come to your high school. Uh, and, uh, I wound up going to Ancaster. And I remember the student that brought me there, her name was Jody Lewis. And to this day, I'm still in touch with her. So it's amazing how, how long the, the,

the connections go and how far back, but I do remember that day in Ancaster High School. It was lots of fun. I even remember one of the questions that I got from one of the students was kind of being sarcastic, but asked, how much hairspray do I have to take on the road with me? And I remember having to answer that in a mock serious manner so that I didn't, you know, upset the kid. I didn't quite know how to take it at the time. But the answer was quite a lot. Kind of like a, you know, if you take a case of 2-4 beer, you know, Molson, you know, 24 beers. No, we only drink Great Lakes Brewery.

Well, that's great because we're all microbrewery now. Back then it was Molson's or the Max. That's all. And so I figured like imagine a case of beer. Imagine that full of hairspray. And that's how you got through the 1980s until the grunge people came in and you were cool enough to be on CFNY. Well, then you just didn't shower at all. Yeah, you're no longer on CFNY.

They're not showering. That's the look. Larry, I love this so much, man. Thanks so much for this great conversation. I loved it. Tons of fun. Thanks, Eric Alper, for getting me in touch with you. I love doing stuff at home like this. I don't normally do it because I'm doing most of the Styx stuff on the road. By the way, the latest Styx album, Crash of the the ground is back on the top it was number 21 uh on billboard's rock album chart just when we uh last week so we continue on our tour summer tour uh in a few days starting off in uh virginia beach and um

so things are still alive and rocking and Gowan is still touring and Styx are still touring and come out and see a show and go see Nova and that brings us to the end of our 1089th show you can follow me on Twitter

I'm at Toronto Mike Gowan is at Official Gowan. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Dewar are at Dewar

Performance. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH and Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. See you all tomorrow when my special guest is Michelle Mackey returning to kick out the jams. Cause my UI check has just come in

Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold but the snow wants me to dance And your smile is fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away. Cause everything is rosy and green. Well, you've been under my skin for more than eight years. It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears.

And I don't know what the future can hold or do For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true because Everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow

Wants me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosie and Gray Well, I've been told That there's a sucker born

Every day But I wonder who Well, I've been told that there's a sucker born every day But I wonder who, yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize there's a thousand shades of gray Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah, I know it's true, yes I do I know it's true yeah, I know it's true how about you? I'm picking up trash and then putting down

roads and they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes and I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am

But who gives a damn Because everything is coming up Rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow warms me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine The wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms me today. And your smile is fine, it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Cause everything is rosy and gray.

Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain. And I've kissed you in places I better not name And I've seen the sun go down on Chaclacour But I like it much better going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up Rosy and green. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away.

Because everything is rosy now. Everything is rosy, yeah. Everything is rosy now. Everything is rosy and everything is rosy and great. you