Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Who Was Steven Leckie?: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1713

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

In this 1713th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, and Kire Paputts, whose dad was in The Viletones and is credited on Colin Brunton's The Last Pogo Jumps Again, about the legacy of punk pioneer Steven Leckie. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, Yes We Are Open, Nick Ainis and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Give me just, give me just, give me a feel On June 12, 2025, at the age of 67, Stephen Leckckie the leader of the legendary Toronto punk band the Vile Tones passed away. Stephen had a long battle with cancer and faced many health challenges in recent years including multiple sclerosis. The Vile Tones burst on the scene in the late 70s and became legendary. I can't tell you how many musicians I have over who cite Steve Leckie as an influence. But really what do we have? We have the EP Look Back in Anger released in 1978. We've got The Last Pogo, the documentary from FOTM Colin Brunton that was recorded on May 1st 1978 at the Horseshoe.

We've got Saturday Night Sunday Morning, the full length album recorded live at Larry's Hideaway back in 1983. And then you have The Stories, and I have been inundated this week with the stories. Now I almost had Steve Leckie on Toronto Mic'd. Blair Packham took a couple of runs at making it happen, but it never came together. But I need to talk to somebody about Steve Leckie's place in this city's musical history.

Liz Wirth wrote, Treat Me Like Dirt, an oral history of punk in Toronto and beyond, and it's a very in-depth account of Toronto's early punk scene. Recent FOTM, Kiri Papouts, is not only the son of Chris Papouts, aka Chris Haight, who was in The Vile Tones with Steve Leckie, Chris Haight, who was in the Vial Tones with Steve Leckie. But he worked with Colin Brunton on The Last Pogo Jumps again. I called up Liz Wirth and Kiri Papouts to discuss Steve Leckie's role in all of this and who he was, warts and all. and all.

Hello. How you doing, buddy? Good. Good to see you again. You too. Hello. Hi, nice to meet you. You too. We can just get right into this thing.

I'm glad you guys made some time to chat with me today. I think I have the right people for this conversation. Yeah. Well, thanks for thinking of us. Always. So Liz, you literally wrote the book, right? You wrote the book on this early punk scene in Toronto. Your book is called Treat Me Like Dirt, an oral history of punk in Toronto and beyond. Yes, yeah. I, yeah, I read that book. I mean, it's funny to still, it's not funny to still be talking about it, but it came up 15 years ago. So it's great that people are still interested in it and that that

history continues to resonate. At the time that I was working on it and the reason that I wanted to start it was that it seemed like a lost history. There wasn't a lot of documentation around Toronto punk. There had been some media coverage when the movement first started in Toronto, but a lot of the media coverage was actually quite critical of punk

and made fun of it a lot. It wasn't so much an effort to archive what was happening or to give it any sort of cultural significance. And so it was really challenging for me to find anything about punk in southern Ontario, which is what I was really driven to find out about just for myself as a fan. And so when I started the book, it was really coming from a place that was a labor of love for me because I was so curious as to what had happened here. And when does Kyrie enter your life?

Like Kyrie, your dad was in the Vialtones. Yeah, I remember getting a phone call from Liz asking me for my dad's phone number. That was our first interaction. You're trying to get a hold of him. And then at the same just after that, you did a news article on me for the Toronto Star. Yes. Yeah. Yes, because Kyrie has an interesting story on his own and that his dad was in the vile tones. But at the time, Kirei was starting to work on a documentary with a filmmaker named

Colin Brunton that covered, yes, the last Pogo Jumps Again, that covered the same scene and era that I was looking at in my book. And I thought that Kirei would be a really interesting story. I was a freelance journalist at the time. And I thought that that that Kyrie would be a really interesting story. I was a freelance journalist at the time and I thought that's an interesting story to have this young adult who is now documenting his father's history in the punk scene. And so that was how we met and that's how we first became friends and then eventually we got married.

You know, kind of wild that you're a couple here, you know, Kirei was over here fairly recently. And the email came from you Liz, that suggesting and I don't know, like I'm not the brightest light in the chandelier. Like I'm kind of these, these pieces are all revolving around. I'm not putting them together. But Kirei's dad was a founding member of the Vile Tones with Stephen Leckie, who we're going to talk about in a moment. And I've had Colin Brunton over here. I moderated that panel in the Red Room at the Masonic Temple when Gary Taub's book came out. I know Stevie Leckie was there, but this whole happenstance that you two are together and I feel like

you're the two I need to talk to now because I'm trying to understand Steve Leckie's role in the Toronto music landscape and I'm trying to separate the man from the myth. I think this conversation will help me in in in that regard. Yeah, there's a lot I mean, there's always a lot to talk about when it comes to Steven. Well, let's talk about it. So kick no list, kick us off. So I don't even know where to begin. But I mean, I know that Steven Leckie forms the Vile Tones in like 1976. Kirei's dad is there. There's a chap named Mike Anderson. Everybody has these stage names.

I feel like Kirei's dad's name, Chris Haight, far more appropriate than the name that Stevie Leckie went by, which was what, Nazi dog? Can you just bring us back, who was Stephen Leckie? Tell me about the Vile Tones in the late 70s. Yeah, so Stephen Leckie was a singer of a band called the Vile Tones, and the Vile Tones were considered to be, let's say, one of the more notorious punk bands in Toronto, but also one of the most, I think, important and influential punk bands

to come out of the early Toronto scene. When, you know, when I was first discovering punk, that there had been a punk movement in Toronto, the Bile Tones were one of the first bands that I heard about. And whenever you mentioned Toronto punk, Stephen Leckie and the Bile Tones would be top of mind for anyone else who was familiar with that scene and that music. And so Stephen was a really important figure in the city and in Canadian music history on a whole. But you know, you're right, there are things to critique about Stephen.

You know, he did adopt the name Nazi dog. And at the time, it was common for people in the punk movement to have monikers and take on personas. And there was a significant flirtation with Nazi symbolism, which we didn't just see in Toronto. We saw it also in punk movements in the UK and in the US. And that was seen as a sort of a subversive act. But, you know, in this day and age, in 2025, I think a lot of people see it differently. And I don't, you know, I don't think that punk would happen in quite the same way if it were to happen.

Start, you know, to start fresh from this moment on. But that context is so key because I was getting my haircut yesterday and my barber is his musician, and they play this thrash metal shout out to Phantom Lung. But we're chatting about it and I mentioned he went by the name Nazi Dog and it almost was a conversation ender right there. Like, where do we go from here? But you need that context that for whatever reason, that punk movement in the late mid to late 70s, there

were like swastikas on the on on people's jackets and the word Nazi flying around like today. That's a scene ender, right? Like that's that's a non-starter. Yeah, it really is. And a lot of people who I interviewed for Treat Me Like Dirt disowned a lot of that. And they didn't all participate in that imagery. And a lot of them were uncomfortable with it as it was happening. So it's not something that was adopted across the board with everybody.

And it's not something that the rest of the Vial Tones stood behind either. They were not comfortable with it either. But Steven was the kind of person who wanted to push boundaries, whatever boundaries he perceived needed to be pushed. And he wanted to be controversial and he wanted to court a sense of danger.

You know, whether, you know, I think sometimes it was coming from a naive place, to be honest. I don't think that he was actually looking to always align himself with the type of statements that you might assume he was. I think he was very young when he when the Vial Tones started. He was still in his late teens and I just, you know, I think that he was caught up with punk almost as being a caricature. And we see that sometimes throughout that history with different, you know, different individuals as well, right?

Sid Vicious is another one who comes to mind from the UK scene who is in the sax pistols. Some people just almost take on a, it's like they have to, they feel like they have to live the idea of punk to such an extreme that they do things that feel very unrelatable. So on that note, and again, I'm much older than you, but not old enough to have seen any of this scene, like I completely missed it. I kind of lived precariously through the musicians I have over and people like you who document it. But like, my understanding is Stephen would like routinely cut himself with broken bottles and razor blades when he was on stage. Like this was, you know, we always heard this about like Iggy Pop, right? Like just cutting himself on stage. But there's a story out of New York on July 7th, 77. That was 7777 where he's cutting his arms open on at on

stage at CBGBs with shards of beer glass that were just like broken on the floor. Like just this, just imagining this, this is sort of a larger than life, wild and crazy scene. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what Stephen wanted. And that was one of the things that he was known for. And that's another example of him taking things to an extreme. And you're right, he wasn't the only one doing it. But I think there's something about Stephen, made, you know, this is speculative.

But from what I feel I know about Stephen, I think that part of him felt like he had to take it that far. Like basically go big or go home? Yeah. And I don't know if it's true that he had to, right? He could have just focused on singing and honing a skill as a singer and really focusing on developing some kind of talent as a musician. But I don't think that Steven was actually a musician.

I think he was an artist. I think in particular he was a performance artist. The Biltons have great songs, but I don't think that people are gonna hate me for this, but I don't think Steven was a really great singer. And I don't think he was a great singer, but he was a great front person. And he knew that that's what he was doing. He knew he was putting on this show. But you can only do that for so long as well,

right? You can't, you know, you can't, it's not, it's not a sustainable career path to be the person who's up on stage, you know, flirting with that level of self harm and self destruction forever. There has to be an end point to it. And I don't know if he worked out his way past what that end point would be. So Kira, I got to ask you, since your dad knew Steve Leckie back in the mid 70s there, I guess one of my questions is to get back to the music,

like Liz was talking about there. What, like when you hear a song, I just off the top of this episode, I'm playing some screaming fist. It's almost I think it might be like the more accessible of the of the violence tones catalog there. But what do you think of the music? I think songs are great.

I think there's a lot of great songs. That's the one good thing. Yeah, I mean, I guess I have a bias, but no, I think what they created together in a short time, I mean, that lab only lasted maybe like between 12 and like, maybe like 15 months, it was really quick. So what they're able to do in a short time, I think was amazing. really only had two 45s and then, yeah, that CD came out in the 90s with all like other recorded tracks at the time.

So yeah, I know, I love the music. I think it's, you know, again, Steve is not a great singer, but I don't think it really matters. I think it kind of lends itself to what they were trying to achieve. So, yeah. So we're again, I'm trying to educate those who miss this scene. And he's not exactly a household name, right? In the Vile Tones, because they're not exactly a household name. The average music fan in the city probably doesn't know a Vile Tone song or who the heck Stephen Leckie is. But was it the punk persona, the

larger-than-life charismatic front man that, you know, was killing on stage live or was it the music? Like what is it specifically that made Stephen Leckie such a icon for music lovers in this country, the city, particularly those who look back at the, you know, the mid 70s to early 80s punk movement. Ah, I think it was both I think the show it was a big thing because like people you know, you never knew what he was going to do. Right. There was always that kind of excitement around what's he even going to do tonight. I mean, you have to talk about killing himself on stage multiple times, whether I'm gonna kill myself.

So people would show up like it's tonight, Stephen's gonna kill himself on stage, right? So it was like that kind of stuff always brought people that I think as well. And just like the element of danger, there's a lot of danger and like violence around the band because Stephen had befriended a kind of group of thugs from East End called the Blake Street Boys who would come to shows and they were kind of like Stephen's like security and

if Stephen would not like someone he wanted to start you know start things up he would like sick these people on random people in the audience right if someone didn't look punk enough or cool enough or you know he'd kind of send these guys out these guys, you know, and so there was always that element of danger and violence, I think, drew some people as well. Again, just we never show, you know, not sure what was going to happen. I think no two shows were ever the same with the volatile tones, right? So well, danger is exciting. Like I get excited to hear the story. But also that's real danger, right? Like, I don't know, people who got like, like really beat up badly at their shows and you know, and like, it's, you know, they, you know, it's traumatic and they still think about it and stuff, you know, because Steven was an idiot and kind of

sick these people on on them, that kind of stuff, right? So, um, I think that was a big part of it definitely was the show and who he was. But I think the music itself, I mean, the live recordings of the band, they're not great. They're like, you know, they'd be trash sometimes. Or it's, you know, it's, I think, when you hear those studio albums, like, yeah, they were probably a little more sober and together and practicing, so they came together better. But I, you know, I think a volatile show, it could have went either could have been if they were sober, it was probably pretty good musically. it was if they weren't sober was probably Terrible, but I made up for you know, but it was just again. It's a crazy show

So it was just fun to be around right so what don't you? I'm the robot for TV, he's been made a modern me Fly off into all mankind, ain't much fun in living up my mind, no I'm a rebel, an author I'm a rebel, an author, doc Got the guts to commit suicide, no one one can just pass me by Harm your now but it's just a form Don't believe no one knows got no oh no I'm a rebel, a also I'm a rebel, a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a I'm a rebel, an author, you're a rebel, an author die! I'm a rebel, an author, I'm a rebel, an ulcer doctor

I'm the boy born for TV, history made of matter and myth But I'm free, it's what all mankind hate most, buddy, baby, let my mind go I'm a rebel, an ulcer doctor I'm a rebel, an altar You're a rebel, an altar I'm a rebel And you worked with Colin Brunton on the last Pogo Jumps again, which he mentioned earlier. Yeah. What was your experience like with Stephen Leckie at that time?

And beyond? Mine was, he was kind of reluctant to talk to us at first. I think you probably had easier time speaking to him than we did with your book. But eventually he came around. And then we did a long sit down interview with him in a park. And that was basically it, you know, and it was like a few hours long, we got everything I needed to get out of the way. I think the good thing is practice even kind of later in it, while filming. So I kind of knew exactly what I needed to get from him to make it work. Because I think if we tried to go back to him, it probably wouldn't have gone so well. But yeah, we sat in the park and, you know, he laid everything out. I think, you know, he's, he was

pretty upset with how he was portrayed in the film, unfortunately. Although I think, you know, it's just it's who he is. So that's something he's going to have to deal with. So there was a lot of hate towards me and Colin afterwards, for sure. So but to his credit, I remember like he came to the premiere of the movie and he sat through, you know, three and a half hours of people like yelling at him on stage and booing him and laughing at him. And he's, you know, he sat there the whole time and, you know, he was pretty quiet after the screening and kind of just laughed.

But yeah, I mean, you know, it's not easy to sit through three hours and a half of a room packed of people like booing you and laughing at you and stuff. Right. So, yeah. But he was not happy with how he was portrayed in the last Pogo Jumps Again. No, and I don't even think in the book. Here's the thing about Steven. Steven loved publicity.

He wanted to court the media. Yeah, in my experience, he wanted to be interviewed. He wanted to be talked about. And when I was working on my book, he would call me almost every day for about two years. And a lot of the time he would want to know who I'd interviewed that day for my book, if I'd interviewed anybody, and if they talked about him, if they mentioned him, and if they remembered him. He really, really wanted to be remembered.

But I think that he, you know, is a very sensitive person as well. And he didn't handle or didn't know how to handle those emotions. And so when he saw stories about him reflected back to him, whether they were in a print article, whether they were in the documentary, whether they were in the book. I don't know if he knew how to sit with that, if it wasn't outright praise, or if it wasn't how he perceived himself to be. And I don't actually know how he perceived himself to be because he seemed like he wanted to be known as this wild, uninhibited, unpredictable individual, but he could be very difficult as much as he wanted to have press and publicity around him. I did some stories because he was getting the

Vile Tones back together when I was working on my book, a different lineup. They had some shows coming up and I did some freelance pieces around those shows and I had mentioned when, you know, as you do, often in an interview, you know, I set it up just saying I met up with Stephen Leckie over a couple pints at a bar on Queen Street. Here's what we talked about. And he would call me up, you know, why did you say we met at a bar? Why did you say we were drinking? And it's like, Stephen, we were. It's the truth. No one cares. No one's going to judge you. You're a punk singer. No one cares if you had a couple beers. They assume you had a couple beers, but sometimes there were just certain details that he would get really spun out about,

and you wouldn't be able to figure out why that thing upset him so much. When there would be other stories about him that he didn't seem bothered by at all. And I think that when the documentary came out, he also chose to drink on camera. And I think that, you know, I think when you go on the record with the media, you have to be aware of what you're doing and what you're saying. And he seems to have trouble sometimes, I think, taking responsibility or having any kind of self-awareness around how he was putting himself out there. And it's, you know, yeah, it's a funny thing.

It was a really contradictory way for him to behave. But that's also Stephen. And Stephen was known for getting into his head with things. He was known for burning bridges with a lot of people who were his biggest supporters. And Ki-Rai and I are fans of Stephen. We still, as much as he gave us grief over things,

we never didn't like him. And it wasn't personal, right? It's your job when you're documenting something, you're trying to capture all of those angles. You're trying to tell the whole story. So part of it, too, is our job to, it's not to coddle our sources, right? It's to capture all of that information, because it's not to coddle our sources, right? We, we, it's, it's to capture all of that

information because it's all interesting. We're telling, you know, it's, it's, Stephen is an interesting story. I don't know if he always realized how interesting he was. Interesting is a great word for it. I find myself drawn to characters. Like I've been this way a long time, particularly with the Toronto Mike series, which is like 1700 episodes deep. Like I'm interested in interesting characters. And I'm now thinking back to how close I came to actually talking to Stephen on Toronto Mike. And I'm not going to name this FOTM, but he is a, uh, he's from this scene. We'll just say he's from the scene that you wrote about. Liz, I'll tell you after the recording who it was. But I was warned by him, and I'm just going to quote this unnamed FOTM, that Stephen was

quote unquote, bat shit crazy. This was the quote. And I remember thinking, oh, you know, part of the part of the problem when you're drawn to characters and want to kind of talk to characters is that sometimes they are carrying some mental health baggage and some challenges and stuff that can, you know, we talked about the word, we used the word dangerous earlier. Like sometimes it can be a little dangerous and even hearing you Liz talk about those phone calls and, and wanting to be talked about, but not liking how it is portrayed in this whole complex. It sounds like maybe

Stephen is interesting because Stephen might have been more than just a great artist and fascinating charismatic front man for the Vialtones, but he may have been dealing with some challenges beyond the physical. It's possible, you know, I can, I, I think anything like that, yeah, is speculative because if he, if he ever had those struggles, it wasn't anything that he divulged, but he was a very complicated person.

And he struggled with things. He struggled with sobriety. There were times when he had gotten sober and he went to, you know, he was going to meetings, he was getting his life together. And then, you know, there were other times when that wasn't Stephen at all. And the Stephen that we knew was not sober Stephen. And I think there were, you know, there were a lot of things that he did sit with. And I don't know, you know, all the ins and outs of his inner workings. I only know, you know, the things that I could perceive in him and the things that

he chose to share. But I think too, he had an immense amount of pressure on himself to live up to the mythos that he had started to live up to this name of being Stephen Leckie. He never really broke away from that, right? And he would go through these phases where, every several years or so, he'd wanna get the band back together and do a bunch of shows and then that would fizzle out again. And a lot of the guys he worked with over the years couldn't work with him after a while.

Because again, he was really difficult, but he wanted this, but he couldn't organize himself to get to that next level that I think a lot of people saw he could get to. And I don't think there's anybody in the scene who people wanted to see win as much as they wanted to see Stephen win. But there was just something about him where he was the ultimate

saboteur in his own plans. He just I don't know. It was yeah. He was really, again, complex, complex person, extremely charismatic. He could be really lovely. I know he could be an incredible person to sit and listen to you and so articulate. But then, yeah, he could also just be such a pain in the ass. Kyrie, I have a question regarding your father. So your father is a founding member of the Violetones going back to 1976.

Kind of. It's a bit so their first show is the Clonid Underground. It was a different bass player for one show. Guy Jackie Death. He did one show. And then whatever reason, he left them and my dad came in. So that second show until their demise after the second EP that we are.

So all the important like the original stuff, all that music is my dad was a part of right? Yeah, and that second EP I guess that's look back in anger. Yeah, so speaking of self Sabotaging my dad's a good story about they just finished recording that album They're gonna gonna release it and they were celebrating My dad is it was the keg mansion or something and then all of a sudden he said that knives were being thrown around the room at each other and like it was just gone crazy and like basically it was kind of like just finished this whole new album and the whole thing then just kind of fell apart basically right at the end of that. So again you know they were

kind of unlike definitely like an upward trajectory and like Steven, for whatever reason, you know, decided to kind of put a stop to that. I don't mean he was afraid maybe of what success looked like. Maybe I don't know. Maybe he felt like if he got too big, he couldn't handle it or wouldn't know what to do. Or maybe, you know, just, I mean, there's a there's a story. Margarita Passion tells in The Last Pogo Jumps again, the first time she had met Steven, he came over to her place because she was married to Freddie Pompeii, the guitarist. And she mentioned that Steven was so shy, he wouldn't sing in front of her. She had to go upstairs because he was too shy to sing in front of her like she like she had to go upstairs. Because he was so because he was too shy to sing in front of her. So it's like this kind of duality

of Steven where, yeah, he could be this kind of like crazy, larger than life on stage guy, but also obviously had some insecurities, at least early on, right? So yeah. Well, so the formation is 76. And this we're talking about, Look Back at Anger, that's 1978. Okay. Yeah. A whopping two years later. Yeah. So the work album, the self titled 77 and then it's like 178. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that first, so that, and that first album, is that the one with screaming fist on it? Yeah. And rebel and possibilities and these songs. Okay. Yeah. And that's the one most people really seem to gravitate towards. I mean, I think people like the second EP. It's a bit different by that point. It was

a five piece and the sound was changing a little bit. Like my dad moved, moved the guitar for that second EP and they brought screaming Sam on, on bass from the uglyly. So it was going to be kind of changing by my second EP. But that that first one, though, was the one that people really kind of identify with. Yeah. But you know, when you when you're looking at the history of this, this band, it's so two years deep. And basically the whole band, minus Stephen Leckie, leave the band and go form the secrets. Yeah. So I guess I'm wondering, is that a lucky thing? Like, hey, we, we, we can't

play with this guy because we know 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They couldn't deal with him. Yeah. Yeah. So it was just, yeah, I think, because they, you know, I think they all were upset that they, you know, they were really working hard towards building this thing and they were kind of getting, you know getting momentum and then Steven kind of throws a monkey wrench and everything right and it's kind of like well why do we need this guy? Because like Steve people like my dad have been playing like I keep saying like Steven I'm sorry my dad and Freddie Pompeii were like almost like 10 years older than Steven. Like they've been around the block like they'd done proper you know they were out of their

bands they'd kind of done this before. Stephen was kind of like, you know, a fresh-eyed young kid. And so I think, you know, they just got tired of that. And it's like, well, we don't need him. We can just do our own thing. Right. So. So the vile tones that plays the Horseshoe Tavern for The Last Pogo is this new lineup after your dad and everybody else leaves. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pogo is this new lineup after your dad and everybody else leaves. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's him. Tony torture and Sam screaming Sam from the ugly. And I forget who the guitarist was.

I don't think he lasted very long, whoever that was either. So the, by the way, the more we chat, the more fascinated I am by this extremely complicated character that was in our midst until this past week. And I just am glad that we're just talking about it because I think it would be easy to say punk legend influenced many rest in peace. Like that's sort of like the the lazy there you go. Steven Leckie was whatever he was, 67 years old or whatever. But there's so many layers here. Maybe Liz, just because you literally wrote the book on this scene, could you just remind the youngins what the heck happened at the last Pogo? I

had Colin Brunton down here, we dove in deep, but in case they missed the Brunton episode of Toronto Mike, the last Pogo, Horseshoe Tavern, May 1st, 1978, the Vial Tones played that. What happened? Yeah. I mean, the last, so the last Pogo was supposed to be the, the Horseshoe had decided that they didn't want to do punk bands anymore. Um, and, and so the last Pogo is going to be the, you know, this, yeah, the last punk show at the horseshoe. And a lot of people to this day have attachment to that venue.

And so I think there was a lot of energy already around that night and kind of thinking, this venue is turning its back on us. And sometimes within music scenes, venues start to feel like a second home. And venues also are scarce, right? Everybody's always looking for a place to play. And so when you lose a place to play, it's painful. And for a venue to decide they're not booking a certain genre anymore is even's even worse. It's almost worse than if a venue's closing. At least you can't fight the closure.

But you can argue against someone's decision not to book your band anymore. And so I think there was already a lot of tension in the room that night. But the last pogo devolved as the night went on, the music got cut, the cops arrived. It just sort of disintegrated into chaos. And of course, the horseshoe survived. And of course, now the horseshoe books all kinds of bands again.

So it was a moment in time. But I think, you know, I think looking at that, you know, the reaction to such an important Toronto venue, looking at that reaction to a punk show really speaks to what was happening at the time. Now we take it for granted that punk is a popular genre and it's been a very long running genre and punk style has become so iconic that it's just part of the mainstream now you see it on the street without realizing it. I don't know, I'm not talking about, you know, dog collar punk rock with, and spiky hair.

If you look at the style of punk in 1977 and 78, you know, it was tight jeans and striped t-shirts, right? And again, style that you see all over the place now. But the attitude towards it at the time was there's a lot of resistance to it. And that's another thing that's hard to imagine in our context today where things are so much more open here, right?

It's common to see people who have a lot of tattoos and colored hair and everything. You don't think anything of it, but at the time that kind of stuff would stop traffic. And there were generation gaps happening within the same generation around punk rock, where a lot of people really didn't understand it. And they thought it was frightening, it was confusing, it was so subversive.

And those are the important things I think that we miss when we skip over the history of Toronto because there's a lot that happened in the city. And those bands, you know, the Vial Tones included, those bands did a lot for local music there because they really had to break a lot of barriers so that more venues would be open to different genres and more venues would be open to independent bands and original music. Robert Leonard So if we open up the scene to not just Toronto, but let's say GTHA, right, like Greater Toronto, Hamilton area, we got to get the, we got to get Teenage Head in the mix there, right? So where does the

Vile Tones rank in terms of, you know, the GTHA punk scene of the late 70s, early 80s? I think they're right at the top. You know, I think, I mean, for me, the the go to bands of that time are Teenage Head, The Vile Tones, The Diodes. Forgotten Rebels? Forgotten Rebels, yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, The Demyx? The Demyx from London, Ontario. Yeah. Then you get into The B Girls and The Curse and

Simply Saucer was out there doing their thing. But yeah, I always have the Vyletones right at the top. I think, again, I think that they're one of the bands that continued to be remembered and that we're being still talked about, even if it has been on a smaller scale. That was one of the bands that was always talked about when Toronto punk came up. And so there is a lot of, you know, their memory lived on and people have kept it alive.

And I think that says something about them. Well, if anything good can come from the sad passing of Stephen Leckie, it's that maybe people will sort of catch wind that, oh, there's a scene I missed, cause that's an easy scene to miss, right? Like there's no, you could miss it if you weren't, you know, going to the live shows. So maybe people will sort of dive in, read, learn more about this scene they missed and buy your book, Liz, which is so dense. But I do want to shout out and ask you about one more thing that

happened in 1980. Because I have booked in my calendar in August Stark naked in the flesh tones are coming by to talk about Stark naked in the flesh tones and I know they played that Toronto City Hall event in 1980 the rock against radiation so Liz maybe since you wrote the book maybe talk a little bit about what happened there because I was reading Chris Houston's take on what happened with the Forgotten Rebels playing with the Vile Tones at that event. But to me this this story thrown in the mix it's almost all like wow did this really happen like sometimes I have to check and see like is this a movie I saw or did this actually happen? Okay so I'll help you out okay Okay, that's okay. Chris Houston was just remembering this when

he learned about Stephen Leckie, but apparently Leckie had a plan. He was going to steal the show by announcing he was pro-nuclear. So this is rock against radiation, right? So he had this plan. Is this ringing a bell yet or? No, it sounds believable. Oh yeah. So then, but the, but the forgotten rebels, I guess, you know, learned of this plan backstage and the rebels were going to play before the vile tones and the rebels decided to steal this plan and basically did what Steve

Leckie wanted to do and got a whole whack of like press that day of this punk band at City Hall for this rock against radiation being pro nuclear like this was the Leckie plan that was completely stolen by the Forgotten Rebels. Yeah, that's I mean, the thing the thing about Steven is there's so many great stories and you're not really sure how much of it is bullshit and how much of it is actually reality. I think that's for me what I like most about him and I'm going to miss is like, kind of like the lore is kind of ending now, like, you know, not getting any more crazy stories

of Stephen kind of coming out. Um, cause there's so many interesting stories about Stephen. Um, and, uh, yeah. So I, I think for me, I'm going to miss that kind of stuff where it's, can you believe this, you know, Stephen, this, that's to borrow a, uh, like a WWF term, like, is it a work or a shoot? Right? Like I have no idea like yeah, go ahead Good question. Um That's tough. I don't know. I don't like that

I don't really feel like I really knew Stephen lucky like that the real Stephen like If he even knew Did you like like what is he a guy? I'm just trying to carry I'm not your Like, is he a guy, I'm just trying to carry, I'm not your therapist here, but like, would you want to go for a coffee with Steven on a Saturday afternoon and catch up with Steven Leckie? Was he the kind of guy you'd want to have a coffee and a convo with? Yeah, well, I would because I again, I think I'm drawn to characters like you are. Okay.

I mean, and like that's something. And Liz would. Yeah. Yeah, because it would be interesting. Right? Again, he was so interesting. And he, you know, he could just, he talked, he did talk a lot of shit. And he could just kind of ramble on about things.

But he, he had a great, great use of language. And whatever he was talking about, he could make it sound interesting. And he did have so many stories. And he, you know, sometimes he also was talking about, he could make it sound interesting. And he did have so many stories. And sometimes he also was a story, right? And before I had ever met him, I would hear about, we would call them Stephen-Lucky sightings. You'd hear about him go to suspect video on Queen Street

and having interactions with the staff there or whatever. There'd always be these little stories about him floating around the city. So it's strange to think that he's not around anymore and even those little sightings are over now. But he could be so interesting. I think the challenge was Stephen for a lot of people was that he, you know, he was really needy in a lot of ways. And he didn't, again, always know how to sit with his feelings. And so, you know, he liked people who could offer him something, right? Like writers and journalists who could maybe, you know, talk about him or get him in the press. But then when

when they didn't do things exactly how he wanted, or when they weren't, you know, always flattering to him, he would get upset. Or he also might realize that if you have a relationship with someone like a friendship, it has to go both ways. And sometimes people might also need to talk to you, you can't just be the one talking all the time. You can't be the one getting all the attention. You have to give back as well. And I don't know if he was always great at reciprocating the type of effort that people were willing to give him because like I said earlier, people really

wanted to see Stephen win and they wanted to be friends with Stephen, but he could be really a difficult person to be friends with. But I think that we're both really grateful that we got to spend time with him and we got to know him and we got to archive some of his life, whether he liked the way we did it or not, because he was a really important person in Canada. And I think a lot of the artists from that time did something that was really significant that unfortunately Canadian culture hasn't paid enough attention to. And that's typical for Canada. We tend to praise artists

from outside of here. We don't do a really good job of looking at what's happening from within. And that's an unfortunate situation for us because then you have whole generations of people thinking that punk rock just came from England or just came from New York City. Yeah, it's Sex crystals and then it was the Ramones and then they're yada yada yada. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that it can be a really exciting thing for younger people to understand that they had their own punk movement here.

And that it was it was just as interesting as anything you'll hear about from the Sex Pistols or the Ramones or anyone else. No, well said. A lot of thoughts in my head. One is I just want to thank you both for sharing these stories. I think you're doing important work and I hope you keep it up because you sharing these stories means dummies like me have a place to go to catch up. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking us. And on and just a little more on Stevie. I feel like I could talk hours about this gentleman. Quick question. Did he ever like, did he ever say to you, Liz, I regret giving myself the moniker Nazi dog? Did he actually at some point realize this was a poor choice of handles?

I don't recall. I know that I remember other band members like Chris and Freddie Pompeii and Motor Mike were not comfortable with it. I mean, no, he never did to me. But although there's other like weird, you'll find like the odd clip online for, I remember someone talking to someone from City TV, this is like maybe like late 80s. And he's like, he did kind of regret it. Because he went through different phases, right? I mean, Stephen, you know, yeah, he did get sober for a bit. Like, you know, the damn it, like, you know,

they went rockabilly for a while, they know they weren't even punk anymore. So like, it was an interesting kind of like, journey. But I think by the time he got back to when we kind of ran him again, he asked him that he didn't have any issues. I'm just curious like, kind of get attention he thought, you know, was just another way to kind of. Yeah, I'm wondering. I'm just curious. You know, you know, it's easy. Yeah, I think it's easier back then is also in like 70s to like, get attention for things something outrageous or being outrageous. It's a bit harder now people have kind of caught on to that but At the time, you know, so to wind us down here and I've learned a lot but I feel like the more we talk

the more questions you have that really I need a I need to sit down with Stephen Leckie and that's never gonna happen sadly so what I hear is I hear almost like he was almost like a and that's never going to happen sadly. So what I hear is I hear almost like he was almost like a charismatic frontman, a superhero of sorts on stage, great stage presence, and then he had the theatrics surrounding it, the very punk theatrics with the the cutting etc, and that he was also simultaneously concurrently very very human with all the flaws that come with humanity and this is the The contrast right where you have this larger than life's Iggy Pop like punk legend and this complicated flawed human and hence all the fascinating stories that I've been inundated over this past week and I again thank you both for chatting with me about Stephen

Leckie. Yeah thank you. Thank you. Hopefully he appreciates it. Recording stopped. recording stopped Used to have a girl, but now she's gone I used to have a love, she's just a hard-on Every time, little look in the mirror It's my fate, didn't see that in clear Well, danger boy, well, danger boy Call danger boy, well, danger boy Call me Danger Boy, but Danger Boy I need a gun, I need a little gun Gonna have a lot of fun, but I need a gun Every girl that I ever knew Every time that I put her through Well now I see what I don't wanna be Cause I look at her eyes

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Got one! I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man

I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna have a girl, but now she's gone I used to have a love But she's just a hard-on And every time Did I look in the mirror It's her face That I see light and clear Well now I know What a don't wanna be I can't say

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Chris! Chris! Mike! Dog! Dog!