When I was first getting into the local hardcore scene everyone I knew from an older generation said you need to listen to the YOUNG LIONS. This phenomenon wasn’t a few select people, it was everyone. They were talking about how good this band was. The YOUNG LIONS were a hardcore band from Toronto that ushered in the new hardcore scene and embodied elements of the CLASH and STIFF LITTLE FINGERS in their sound, fusing it with the speed and capturing the energy of hardcore. They were a bridge between punk and hardcore. The band was known for their anti-racist work, in particular their support for Rock Against Racism. In a Roots Rock Rebel army fashion the YOUNG LIONS would loan out the “garage” which was their makeshift living quarters as a rehearsal space to the 20th CENTURY REBELS, who were a local ska / reggae band at the time. This was around 1980 and the band would go on to release a couple of full length cassettes and an album titled “Welcome to the Freak Show”. They were known for their cassette releases, some of which have come out as an LP on Schizophrenic Records titled “1982-’84: From the Vaults.” This interview was a phone conversation with the bass player Chris Genest back in 2007.
Hi Chris. You were the bass player in the YOUNG LIONS is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay who else was in the band?
We had Mike McCurdy on guitar and vocals and Steve Kuzell was the drummer. We had some secondary guitar players who went through the band.
Through different periods.
Yeah a couple of different periods here and there.
How did the YOUNG LIONS form? Can you tell me who was first in the band and how you grew?
Mike and I met at Humberside Collegiate High School in Toronto.
Is Humberside in Etobicoke?
No. It is in Toronto in the High Park area.
Okay. West side though.
He had just moved with his mother into an apartment down by High Park and Bloor so he transferred over to Humberside. So we were both in high school. Neither one of us was a jock type or anything like that so we didn’t fit into a clique so by default we just found each other like misfits.
Were you both into punk at the time? Did you turn each other on to some stuff.
I was.
You were the trouble maker.
Yeah, even when I was a kid I remember if I got an allowance the first thing I did was …. Over by where we lived at Jane and Bloor there was this small …. I think it was a Sam the Record Man, but it was a tiny store. It wasn’t like the one down on Yonge Street. I wasn’t allowed to go down to Yonge Street by myself. With my allowance I would go buy a 7” record or something like that so I was always on the cusp of what was going on musically and somehow I heard or had gotten a hold of either the RAMONES or the SEX PISTOLS or a CLASH song. Those guys were the big three that started the thing. If you think about it oddly enough all those bands were on major labels which is kind of an odd thing now that we look back at the history of punk.
But at the time it wasn’t that odd and it was probably the only way you could find this stuff really.
That’s true. That’s great that it was because it was underground like a lot of things were. You didn’t have the distribution and you didn’t have the promotion. It might have just died as an obscurity.
Yeah for sure.
So by chance I just came across it. Mike and I just met each other and connected and just started hanging out at his place and we would play records. He would play the YARDBIRDS and his dad’s HOWLIN WOLF records and I would say ‘Hey man check this out’ and pull out a RAMONES record or a DEAD BOYS record and so we just started a love for music, both of us and I think the punk thing just kind of taught both of us that we didn’t have to be virtuosos. We could just play from pure gut emotion. So we started writing songs and I can still remember one of the first songs Mike wrote. I think it was an homage to an old girlfriend or something like that. It was called “Green Army Eyes”. Great lyrics and it was a great song but I kind of said ‘Hey man why don’t we twist this a little bit and put a bit of a social commentary on it.’ He agreed with me or was open to it and so we re-wrote the lyrics. That song was a spring board into all the other songs we wrote together.
So the song was called “Green Army Eyes”?
That was the start of it. Then it changed to a song called “Things are Gonna Change”.
Okay.
Originally “Things are Gonna Change” was “Green Army Eyes”.
And that was the first song that you wrote.
That was the springboard where we went to more social political commentary.
How did you meet? Was Steve the third member?
Mike and I started writing songs. We went through a number of drummers before we met Steve. We were posting ads up in all the music stores and up on telephone poles. We would find good drummers but they were wanting to have a part in the song for their drum solo or the other end of it was when are we going to make some money?
That is part of the same kind of rock ego.
Yeah. That was still prevalent at the time. Both of us wanted to just play music. It just happened through friends of friends. There was a group of friends that I was hanging out with which is where I met Steve. Steve played drums. He didn’t want to play any drum solos, didn’t really care about the money.
And this was still in the high school days?
High school for us. Steve was a few years older than us. He’d been through high school. He was a self-employed entrepreneur would be the best way to put it.
When did the band form? What year?
I don’t recall exactly. Mike and I were in high school and once we got Steve into it we got enough songs to start playing out, but I think it was 1979.
Was there much of a local scene when you first started out? Was there bands that you would go and see? That you kind of figured out that this was what you wanted to do based on listening to these records.
Somewhat yeah. I think if I recall the drinking age in Ontario was 18 and we were under the wire it was tough to get into these bars that had these bands playing. At that time in Toronto it was still sort of the first wave of punk which was the VILETONES, the DEMICS. It was that first wave of punk.
When did you guys get good enough that you first could start playing out?
Actually it wasn’t a point of when we thought we were good enough it was at the point where we had enough songs to play a set.
Yeah. Right. Sure. You get anxious. You’ve got enough songs, let’s play out. Let’s do the next thing.
Right. Exactly. That was the idea of punk. It didn’t matter if we were good enough. It was like okay we have enough songs to play a set.
Let’s go. Who did you play with first? Who was your first gig with? I am wondering who you might have been playing with in the beginning?
I don’t recall. We just got some opening slots here and there probably from the first wave of punk to kids walking up to Screaming Sam from the VILETONES and saying ‘We have a band, can we open for you?’
Then they gave you a shot.
If I remember correctly we played some shows with some straight up rock bands of that time period.
Yeah which I don’t think would be uncommon.
Yeah and was met with some resistance.
Yeah of course. Probably people who didn’t want to see you again after that.
Exactly. They just didn’t understand the whole punk ethic.
They didn’t get it. What about some of the bands that you might have been playing with that were of the punk scene? Who might have been some of the bands that you might have played with?
The thing that came along when we started getting a few shows and started meeting people would be YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH that we shared a great friendship with and a lot of shows together. There was a lot of history with them. At that time you had to stick together. There was rockers and jocks that just didn’t get it so we had to …
Group together to protect yourselves. It was survival.
We had to make our own scene.
I remember that. I came out of that scene and I remember that rockers and jocks were not your friends and you had to watch your back and you looked for anybody who might have been into anything alternative and you just kind of stuck together. Out of survival really. There was a broad spectrum of alternative at that point. All kinds of things were coming out from industrial music to generic punk. The thing that we knew as punk. There was mods and teddy boys. Anyway I understand what you are talking about. I do get it. So YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH were one of the bands. Now I read somewhere that you wrote “Made in England”. Was that a song that you wrote?
Yeah we wrote that.
Did you ever record that song?
We did.
The only time I have heard it is on the “Re-packaged” YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH release on the demo side. So they also played that song. It was your song. And they sort of played it out of respect, like you would play your friends songs out of tribute or homage. Was that the idea?
Yeah. When they asked us if they could play it and record it was a great honour. Most definitely. They were throwing us a lot of respect. That was great.
The idea behind the song was sort of basically a pot shot at the English scene or saying that England is not the only thing. There is hardcore and punk scenes everywhere. Was that the idea?
That was more about Mike getting frustrated because we had been working trying to build a punk rock scene and we weren’t getting the people out to help promote shows.
I think one of the lines makes reference to checking out ANTI-NOWHERE LEAGUE instead of checking out your own local scene.
Right because there was people in the punk scene and even the punk scene was divided but there was people in the punk scene who thought the Toronto punk bands were garbage because they didn’t have a “Made in UK” stamp on them. That song was a rebuttal to that kind of attitude. Hey we’re here too.
And Toronto did have a great punk scene just unrecognized really because we weren’t from London or New York or San Francisco or wherever the beaten path was at the time.
Yeah. Toronto punk rock was almost second or third class.
I want to ask you about that Sam the Record Man store out in High Park, did that have actual punk records in it?
No, I just remember that from when I was a kid.
Because the stores that we used to go to were mostly on Yonge Street, like Record on Wheels and the Peddler on Queen Street East. Those were probably the only places you could get punk material. Sam’s had some stuff and A&As, but I had never heard of a store outside of the Yonge Street strip that really carried punk
I was remembering my early childhood, but when I got a little older into my teens and saved up my money from summer jobs I would go downtown. That is one of the things I miss when going into record stores is you could go into the new release rack and find the PRETENDERS, the RAMONES, DEAD BOYS, ELVIS COSTELLO, SEX PISTOLS, CLASH, BUZZCOCKS, the DAMNED all on one rack.
And you would be racking your brain trying to figure out what you could afford.
Right because I had enough for one record.
But you wanted all of them.
Exactly.
At least you wanted to hear them because they peaked your interest.
Eventually you got there.
Tell me about the name the YOUNG LIONS. I understand the name came from a film that Dean Martin, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando were in and it had sort of an anti war theme. Was that the idea?
That was the idea. That film came from a book. I believe the author was Irwin Shaw. He wrote a book called “The Young Lions”.
Were these characters the people who stood up to the establishment or what was the idea. I have never seen the film. I am trying to get the idea of what the name came to mean.
Anti-war film.
Was that a big part of the YOUNG LIONS?
Most definitely.
At the time I remember we were all thinking that World War III was around the corner. There was a nuclear arms race going on. The Cold War was at its height. We thought people were going to push the button at any time. It pretty much pre-dominated our thoughts.
Yeah, they have just re-packaged it as terrorism.
Today. Yeah.
Still the fear factor and a whole lot of waste of time and energy on that garbage.
You were also very involved in the Rock Against Racism scene. I think two of you were involved in the decision making of that organization. Tell us about the involvement of the YOUNG LIONS in R.A.R. You played a lot of their shows.
Yeah we were one of their resounding bands. We had met a couple of guys who had been in contact with the Rock Against Racism group in London and they asked for permission to open a Toronto chapter. One guy’s name was Terry and the other was Nick. I don’t recall their last names.
That scene largely started out in England … that movement that political organization.
So those guys were at one of our shows and they approached us and told us what they were doing and we said “Heck yeah, we are behind you 110%.”
Some of your early material had reggae and dub influences in it. It reminded me a lot of STIFF LITTLE FINGERS and the RUTS and that kind of stuff. I thought the YOUNG LIONS were our version of the RUTS or that rock rebel army anti-racist agitation kind of stuff. Is that an accurate assessment?
I would say so. That was the influence at the time. The YOUNG LIONS, the one thing about us was we took our influences from everything. But at the time that we were doing a lot of recording and gigging we were heavily into that.
Like the CLASH were big into that. I was watching “Westway to the World” and I was listening to them re-tell that era you know with the large West Indian population and their influences through reggae music it kind of reminded me of the YOUNG LIONS when I was watching that movie.
Most definitely. At that time there was a large contingency of Jamaicans who lived in Toronto and I’m sure there still is who live in Toronto. Along with everybody immigrating from Jamaica came reggae music and some of our best friends were a group called the 20th CENTURY REBELS.
Now did they jam with you at your space the garage?
Yeah well we opened that space to anybody that needed it.
A friend of mine played in the 20th CENTURY REBELS. A friend of mine, his brother was in the band. His name was Locksley and he played sax.
Yeah. I remember Locksley. Good man. Those guys were all great people. I had a great time with those guys.
There were super awesome. They recorded a 12” called “Rebel Vibe” and it was self-released so you could tell that they had the punk ethic and when I went down to see them the first time they weren’t adverse to this white punk kid hanging out with them. I didn’t know the connection with the YOUNG LIONS before then. It is starting to make sense to me now. There was other bands like TRUTH AND RIGHTS and MOJAH in the early punk era I think may have appeared on “The Last Pogo”. Is that starting to make sense?
Yeah. I remember their names but I think the reason we connected with the REBELS was because they were open to the rebellion of the punk ideal. I mean they were doing the same thing just in a different musical genre.
Rebels within the reggae scene.
Right.
And that just spoke to BOB MARLEY’s “Punky Reggae Party” and that similar connection and the parallels between the two scenes that big reggae artists and the punk scene were pointing out and people were trying to forge with people like DON LETTS who were trying to make that connection. Rebels of the same kind.
Right and a lot of musicians in the Toronto scene were learning from the English Rock Against Racism scene. All that we all cared about was some individual rights and freedom and peace. It didn’t matter whether we played reggae or punk rock or whether we were black, white, yellow purple, blue, or green. We’d all try to work together and unfortunately sometimes the audiences missed the idea.
But what was cool was some of the stuff …you embraced dub and reggae into some of your material and brought it to a punk scene at least a local punk scene and created some kind of common ground for the two scenes to co-exist.
Yeah. It was also a big influence at the time.
Well let me ask you about other influences. What were some of the punk influences at that time? After the CLASH and the RAMONES took hold, would it be fair to say that you were into the RUTS and the CLASH and that kind of stuff or ….
Yeah. The CLASH, STIFF LITTLE FINGERS, the RUTS. It was sort of a mix where you take all that English, Irish punk rock scene and mix it with some of the New York RAMONES, DEAD BOYS, which sounded almost like older punk rock by then and then we started networking and finding out about the American hardcore scene. Hardcore as they called it. It was still punk rock. When we discovered that … when we first played a RAMONES record it was like ‘Wow, listen to how fast that is.’ A year later that was slow. Listen to these guys. The CIRCLE JERKS, DEAD KENNEDYS….
Yeah, people just outdoing each other or upping the ante a bit.
A little more coffee and play those chords a little faster.
I wanted to ask you about the garage. Was that your rehearsal space?
That was an everything space.
Tell us about it. What was it?
We got into that through a friend of mine who had rented the space from a gentleman who lived in the house just in front of it. What it was was a two story garage that we found out many years ago used to be a worm processing plant.
Like fish bait?
Yeah I guess. There was a conveyor belt in the place and everything.
Really?
Yeah, so it was a two story garage where you could drive in a car and my friend who found it was originally trying to refurbish and old GTO. He kind of wanted to give up the space so we took it over and since none of us really had any kind of employment that was cheap and the price was right. There was times where we had to ask bands if they wanted to rehearse there just so we could pay the rent. There was some tough times.
Whereabouts was the space? I was asking Pete this the other night and he was thinking it was maybe around the Dufferin and Queen area.
Dufferin north of Queen street probably closer to Dundas.
Which was partially an industrial part of town.
No. It was mostly residential. It was on a residential street. Even though they used it as a worm factory previously it just looked like a big wooden two story structure
I imagine sound insulation wasn’t really in there so you must have got some hassles from the neighbours if it was mostly residential.
Oddly enough the room we used to rehearse in was there cold storage room so it did have some insulation. We lucked out on that. We put up a few mattresses around to dampen the sound even more. Yeah the neighbours complained but after a while they kind of got used to us. I think some of them were afraid of us.
Did any shows go on at the garage or was it just mostly a practice space?
A couple of shows.
More parties.
Yeah more parties. People just doing some punk rock jams. There was too much damage from those parties so we kind of ended that because we also had to live there.
Pete said that at one point the floor was mostly made out of beer caps.
I don’t know if it got that far. I just remember the floor being plywood.
I’m sure anything would stick into it.
It was mostly plywood. There was no heating, no hot water, no shower, no stove. Just a refridgerator.
A place to keep equipment. Who was practicing out of the space?
We were, YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH were for a while, 20th CENTURY REBELS used it for a while. A couple of other bands. And then it was also the kind of place where touring band would crash when they needed a place to stay.
When did the garage exist around?
’80 to ’83. A couple of years. Unfortunately we had a small fire, large enough that the fire department had to be called and when they found out that people lived there that pretty much ended the existence of the garage so we just kind of disbursed and went our separate ways. Unfortunately that was the beginning of the end for the YOUNG LIONS because our home base got destroyed.
You didn’t really have anywhere else to go.
Right. Those were tough times. We were all pretty poor.
And I doubt that there was many places to rehearse at that point. Since then rehearsal studios are popping up but back then I’m not sure where people were practicing. Mostly garages or basements or things like that.
Or if you found a place in an industrial area. The thing was you had to go search it out by yourself. There wasn’t these rehearsal complexes like they have now.
Yeah sure. I don’t remember that at all. The first time I remember seeing a rehearsal type space was like in the late 1980’s. That was after your period. Tell us about your demos. How many demos did you put out because I was thinking there might have been three but your brother was telling me that possibly you recorded other stuff. He thought officially there was two demos. Was there two demos or three demos or?
There was two demos. The first one …
When I am talking about demos, back then tape releases were considered official releases. These are what I am talking about. Demos that you could get at local stores with covers and things like that. Cassette releases essentially. That was the cheapest way to get something out.
Yeah exactly. Pressing vinyl was beyond our means. Most of the bands at the time in the scene the quickest way to release a record to do it on cassette and we thought the BAD BRAINS first release was on cassette so if it is good enough for the BAD BRAINS it is good enough for all of us. So that’s what we did. It was a quick fast medium, it was easy to throw together. You could DIY it pretty much all yourself. So the first recording … actually we recorded in the garage with a guy who lived across the street. His name was Rick. He was also a musician. Older guy but he had an 8-track so we actually used the garage to record that first demo and then after that through playing shows we scraped together enough cash to go into a studio and do some recording. Not sure if it was going to be released or not. We scraped up enough cash to get some tapes dubbed and get some covers photocopied and whatnot and maybe get the second one out. I think maybe you are right. About two official releases if you want to use that terminology. There is one recording that we did at a place called Trinity Studios.
Was that near OCA?
Off of Queen Street?
There used to be a video place there and I think it was part of Trinity studios. When I was talking to Rob Mallion he said that YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH actually did some recording through Brian the drummer. He had some kind of connection there and he had recorded some stuff.
I believe that is right. I believe it was Brian, the drummer from YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH who got us in there and actually that is the one recording that I do not have the master tapes to. I don’t know who has the master tapes so anybody listening who has those the YOUNG LIONS recordings at Trinity Studios if you could drop them off at Hits and Misses at 860 Bloor Street West because it would be nice to have those. That was a five or six song recording. There are some things that have never been released from that. There are some good songs on there too.
I want to go back and talk to you about the first demo, the one that was recorded at the garage. Do you know roughly what time that was recorded? Was it 1980, ’81, ’82?
I think ’80 sounds about right.
Do you know how many songs were on the demo?
I think it was about ten or twelve.
Do you recall what songs were on it? Do you know what the titles were?
Oh….
What was the name of the demo? Self-titled or … because I have some other titles here. “Freedom?” I think that might have been the second one.
The “Freedom” demo is the second one and that’s the one with the picture of the bass that I played at the time on the cover. The other one is a drawing that Mike did with the guitar player jumping.
That was the second one?
That was the cover for the first one.
I have a picture of you guys playing live with the YOUNG LIONS in a stencil thing underneath.
That is the one that has slipped through the cracks in my archives.
Is that the one that was recorded at the Trinity Studios?
Is it is then I have never actually gotten a copy of that.
I don’t actually have these but I have seen pictures of them sent to me so I am just looking at some stuff that I have seen, but never actually held.
I’m sort of in the same boat.
So the second demo, when was that recorded?
That would have been about a year later.
1981. And what studio did you go to?
We went to a number of studios.
Was Brian Taylor doing a lot of recording at the time?
Brain Taylor of YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH had hooked up with Reciprocal Sound.
Was that part of that? Did he record you guys at all?
What we recorded in there was the material that went on to “T.O Hardcore ‘83” comp.
So that was a different recording.
That was a different session right.
Was there other songs that you recorded at that time that didn’t go on the “T.O Hardcore” comp?
I believe because of time and money that we recorded just enough for the comp.
So everything went to that.
We wanted to but … the owner of the studio and Brain put up the cash and let us know when we were done.
What about the BYO comp? Was that around that time too or was that later?
Roughly about the same time.
Was that a different studio recording?
That was a different studio recording.
It wasn’t the Trinity studio?
No.
What came next, was it the BYO comp or the other unreleased demo?
Chronologically I don’t recall, but that whole BYO comp, getting onto that was through Jill Heath, who was a great supporter of the local scene and became a promoter in her own right. She put on a lot of shows. She did a lot of work. I can’t say enough about how much energy and support she put into the scene at that time. I think Jill held it up for a number of years.
Yeah. A lot of memorable shows were shows that were JillJill Productions shows. I remember her doing lots of photos at the time. Some of the photos were appearing in scene reports in Maximumrocknroll and stuff. So that is how I was founding out about my local scene through a fanzine from San Francisco but thanks to Jill’s work. She credits the YOUNG LIONS for getting her into punk rock at least the local scene. I don’t know if you know that.
Yeah, I kind of know that.
She told me this story … I mean I asked her how she got into punk rock and she saw some stiff on CBC and then she started going to downtown Toronto and the first thing that she saw was a Rock Against Racism flyer that the YOUNG LIONS were playing and then she went to some of the organizing meetings and met you guys and that is how she got into the local scene. You guys are responsible for getting her into this thing which is great.
That was sort of our credo. The only reason we did it, when Mike and I started … it wasn’t anything about money ….
You were scene building pretty much.
I don’t know if we were scene building or if we were just trying to help people open their eyes to things going on around them in the world politically … socially. Trying to make a better scene … a better world. Our credo was if we play a show and we can get one person to change their thought process or at least consider these other options our job was done. We just stuck to that.
There is endless amounts of people when I was first getting into the local scene kept on telling me to listen to the YOUNG LIONS. That is the one thing that I could say was that people always referred to the YOUNG LIONS. The YOUNG LIONS had a reputation that was respectable and sort of the cornerstone of the Toronto hardcore scene. There was a lot of other bands involved in that scene but the respect of the YOUNG LIONS was one thing that seems to be a constant for the people that I knew getting me into the local scene. Unfortunately I couldn’t find your demos anywhere. I wasn’t tapped in enough about finding out about places at that time so I only found out about it later after you were not playing which sucked for me but anyway that’s life. It’s shit sometimes.
Life is shit, but that is nice to hear.
One of the first comps that I remember picking up that had Canadian hardcore on it was this BYO comp called “Something to Believe In” and the YOUNG LIONS were part of that. YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH were part of it. ZEROPTION. So a number of Toronto bands and a number of other bands from out West like STRETCH MARKS and the UNWANTED from Winnipeg. Anyway there was …and I heard this from a couple of people …. Can you tell me the story about the comp and how the songs got butchered on this comp? I heard something about an engineer that BYO was working with that had to mix everything and he took everybody’s mixes and destroyed them, but particularly with the YOUNG LIONS there was a bigger scenario about the timing and stuff wasn’t there? Pete was telling me that the timing of your song is a couple of seconds off so things don’t sync up and it just sounds off.
Yeah I don’t know. Maybe that was the curse of the YOUNG LIONS. I mean we were just asked to be on it. We were honoured that we were asked. We went and did the recording and shipped off the master tape and it was done and forgotten. I don’t know.
There wasn’t much else in there. They didn’t ask for input or anything.
Whatever. What can you do? Whatever happens happens. We felt honoured to be asked to be on it and it was great that we got on it.
Yeah. I mean it was a pretty awesome comp nonetheless. But the curse of the YOUNG LIONS….so what is the curse of the YOUNG LIONS? Tell me about the curse of the YOUNG LIONS.
Oh I don’t know. Just making something up there.
No. I actually think there was a curse for the YOUNG LIONS. The LP that came out “Welcome to the Freak Show” it was more influenced by a REPLACEMENTS sound, like that Minneapolis rock sound. Sort of HUSKER DU-ish. I was expecting something different when I first saw that record come out and that became what people knew you for but the demos represented a different era and a different recording style. I don’t think you got known for what you initially started to be.
Well that may be true but that was the beauty of the three of us at least the core of the three of us working together. We never sat back on our laurels musically, we kept venturing out there and seeing how far we could take it. To us, writing was like ‘Okay lets see where this can go?’ One minute we could be playing some punk rock song and then just switch over and do a Johnny Cash song and then switch over and do a reggae song. For us punk meant that there was no musical boundaries whatsoever. Everything was wide open. I mean you and I can talk about this … if I could have recorded some of our rehearsals you would get a better idea. I mean we were just all over the map. At least for us that’s what punk was. Just keep venturing out there. The other part of punk was more of the social political critique I guess you could say.
Hand in hand. It was part of it. It was the more important part because it was the thing that disassociated bands from the rock scene. Of course the music was a lot faster, a lot more aggressive and angry sounding and all that other stuff but you know the message was as much a part of the medium.
Yeah. Most definitely. That was a big part of it for us.
Okay. I heard rumours that these demos were going to be released. Can you tell us about the idea behind that project? I know its speculation and we don’t want to jinx anything but what’s the idea anyway?
After many years of not … I somehow got back in touch with Brian Taylor of YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH and through e-mails he was suggesting that he would like to put out a YOUNG LIONS CD. I was living in Seattle at the time. I still have some of the YOUNG LIONS master tapes so what I did is I went into a studio that was compatible with that analogue tape and mixed it down and got some CD masters. I sent them off to Brain but it’s been a while. I know he wants to release a YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH CD….
Which is probably the thing he wants to put out first.
Right and that would be great. I am waiting for that too.
We all are. It sounds like there is a lot of material that he is sifting through in terms of the YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH stuff and it is probably tough because he is so close to that band, you know being the singer and stuff its hard to make decisions I’m sure. So the YOUNG LIONS CD is it going to be the two demos?
I sent over to him everything that I had.
So the two demos?
Yes.
And other material?
A little bit. But he has got CD masters of all the analogue tape masters that I have.
Now I heard that he has some other recordings too.
Right I heard that also.
Do you know what he has?
I asked him to send me some of those and he still hasn’t.
Oh so you don’t know what else he’s got.
I still don’t know where we are at with those.
Pete was on the show last week and he was telling me that there is a possibility that there might be a live YOUNG LIONS / YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH to come out as a follow up project after these first two releases.
Okay.
Do you know about that or no?
No. You guys are all in Toronto. You guys probably hear it better than I do.
Okay so you don’t know about this.
No. that is the first I have heard of it. Okay. You didn’t hear it from me. No. Just kidding. Okay so that is in the works we hope.
Hopefully yes. I’m sure it will see the light of day. I am going to ask you about some of the titles of some of the songs.
Sure.
What was the song “Freedom Fighter” about? Was it about any particular incendiary guerilla army?
Yeah I think it was kind of based on some … on my goodness. How can I put this? You are taking me way back.
Because at the time the ANC were big. The IRA. There were a number of guerrilla armies active.
Yeah that’s a good call. It was influenced by both of those movements. It was just paying homage to those movements …
In a general kind of way.
Yeah. And anybody else out there that was struggling for rights and freedoms.
The song “National Security”. It seems like a song that could be written today about the “War on Terror”.
Yeah.
I was reading something about this thinking it was about a crackdown on people’s personal rights during the Reagan era. Was that the idea?
It wasn’t that particular. It was more of a broad sweep of the whole situation. You just kind of said it right there. Oddly enough about a month ago I saw that song on a cassette and played it and said ‘Oh my goodness, twenty years later and we’re still going through this garbage. It’s ridiculous. We are not evolving well as a species. Myself living down in the States the military industrial complex pretty much runs this government so it makes you wonder if there is such a thing as democracy anymore. We are getting so much closer and this administration is really good at the double speak. They’ve got it down to a fine art. It’s scary. It really is. We were talking earlier about being on the brink of the Cold War and World War III and I think these times that we are living in right now are even scarier.
Then they were before?
Then they were before because how well governments have gotten at manipulating the media, controlling it and controlling peoples ideas about what is really going on.
Governments getting their spin out there and being able to have access to this kind of information even these days because that seems to be clamped down a lot more than anything. With the corporatization of media and the lack of individual voices, and the ability to be able to even access this information there is less out there then we knew before.
Yeah and supposedly in the greatest democracy in history or on the planet at this time it is actually not a democracy. It’s funny living down here in the States. I talk to a lot of people and go to a lot of peace and justice meetings and everybody says we get the republicans out of there and get the democrats in there and I am just sitting there on the outer edge saying you know folks what you need is a couple of more political parties to be watchdogs. It doesn’t matter what they are down here. It’s the same thing.
Red or blue its still the same.
Yeah they are in the pocket. It’s scary. Unfortunate but it is also very scary that “National Security” is still as poignant today as it was when we wrote it.
Tell me about the song “Young Amerika”. Spelled with a K.
That was a stab at Reagan, Republican youth.
Yeah right. The New right was just starting up around then.
Yeah. And again it has come around full circle. It is back again and now they call themselves neo-conservatives and I think they are closer to neo-nazis more than anything. Their social ideas are rather eskew. What supposedly this country of America stands for is justice and freedom.
Yeah. “Guns and Children”?
Just that. I mean the title pretty much sums that song up.
There was a lot of wars going on in Africa at the time and a lot of kids were being used for child soldiers. Is that what it is about?
I think, if I am remembering correctly, Mike was of Irish decent so he really stayed abreast of what was happening with the Irish Republican Army and what was happening in Belfast and the conflict with the UK at that time. The basic idea of that song is how guns obliterate the innocence of childhood within the matter of a second, of pulling a trigger, holding a gun, seeing violence on television. Your childhood innocence is gone.
So basically war robbing you of childhood.
Exactly.
So essentially an anti-war theme. “Royal Killers”, is that about the Royal Canadian Air Force?
Nope. I wrote the lyrics to that one. That was a song about the hierarchy of … I think I had the King and Queen of England in mind and just how they facilitate the violence without really even …. I guess the song is basically about primarily they are the ones responsible.
The blood is on their hands.
Exactly. And they are trying to keep it clean with their little white ….
Buckingham Palace.
Everything’s clean. Everything’s pristine. We’re squeaky clean but if you really look at it you’ve got blood on your hands. That’s no excuse.
Your not pulling the trigger but you are by making decisions to go to war. I wanted to ask you some other things about some general questions. I wanted to ask you what might have been your most memorable show with the YOUNG LIONS? Who might have been on the bill and give me an idea about the show.
There was so many.
Did you guys play much out of town?
We did.
Whereabouts did you play?
We played London, Ontario. I think we played the Embassy Hotel. We played with DOA there.
Yeah. That’s still around.
Good. A lot of the times these places that we all played, even DOA were front runners of this, we were playing old man dive bars. Like the Horseshoe. It used to be an old man country and western bar. Stompin’ Tom Connors played there.
It’s still a well known punk bar. Still to this day.
Beautiful. The first time we played the Horseshoe I was in awe. I was honoured because I was standing on the same stage that Stompin’ Tom Connors played. Some people can never say that. It was great to play with DOA. The SUBHUMANS I remember us opening for. There was a show with YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH, the YOUNG LIONS, and the DEAD KENNEDYS at the Concert Hall.
No way. What was that like?
That was a great show.
I remember seeing this interview on New Music kind of ridiculed the show with this girl who came out of the show in awe saying “Jello kicked me in the head”. I was like “What? That’s it. That’s all you can tell me about the show.” Tell us a bit more about that show because I heard it was an amazing show.
We were on first so we went up and played. We were trying to delay our set because Brain the singer from YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH was caught up with something and still wasn’t at the venue so we were kind of delaying trying to buy him some time to get there. We couldn’t do it much anymore so we finished our set and Brain still wasn’t there. YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH were scheduled to play and Mike McCurdy offered to go up there and sing for YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH and did a great job.
Wow. And he knew all the lyrics?
Yeah. Well as close as you can get. Sometimes a good scream will fill a lot of words in. he did a great job and they played a great set. The only unfortunate thing about it was the DEAD KENNEDYS … I don’t know if it was the manager or what but he tried to re-neg on paying us and YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH. That was a little bit of a depressing situation. I didn’t realize that the whole punk thing was about money, but I guess for some of these groups it was. That was an eye opener.
Especially for a band like the DEAD KENNEDYS.
That happened to us again when we played a couple of shows with T.S.O.L. and they tried to shaft us for our pay. We thought what is the deal here. Are all California bands into this punk rock thing for the money?
Yeah. You’d get that impression.
Then of course there was YOUTH BRIGADE….
…which were kind of the opposite.
Yeah it was totally the opposite. They re-instated our faith in punk rock.
For sure, especially tauting the charge of the Positive Youth Organization.
Most definitely. Lets see what else. There was a club down in Windsor, which was another old man bar. The only person that was ever there was this old lady that looked like she was about 800 years old. White hair wearing the grandmother nightgown. She used to keep this heavy iron chain link and she would …. I remember this because I went up and asked if we could get some water on stage and I got the chain instead. Smack across this metal bar. ‘I don’t serve water here. Labatt’s Blue or nothing.’ That was funny. There was great things about everything. It was just a great experience all the way around.
Did you ever play the Turning Point, the Upper Lip, Larry’s Hideaway?
Oh yeah. We did all of those.
Did you get to open up for some other bands, like the DEAD KENNEDYS is pretty big. I would think that would be one of the biggest bands you could open for. Were there other bands like that. T.S.O.L. you said. Did you ever play with ARTICLES OF FAITH.
Yeah. We played with ARTICLES OF FAITH. SUBHUMANS from Vancouver, DOA. Those were two big ones to come out of Vancouver. Just a whole sleuth of other bands. Any and every time was just a blast. The Turning Point was home for us for a while. I still remember that was another …. I found that bar somehow.
You found it.
It was myself or somebody else. I can’t remember.
So you guys basically turned it into a punk place.
Yeah. I still remember going to the two folks that ran it. It was this older couple Joe and Anne. They must have been in their sixties or seventies. They were great people.
I remember seeing them. The first show I ever went to see was at the Turning Point.
They were great people and I said ‘there is no one in here. I can get about twenty or thirty people in here if you let us play.’
And they were into it.
Yeah. All they wanted to do was get some people in there and sell some beer.
I remember people just going into the fridge and grabbing beer. It was one of those really old fridges from the fifties. That was basically their beer fridge.
Right. I remember that.
Back in the era of stubbies.
They were staunch supporters whether they knew it or not. They really helped us keep the scene going for a while because at that time it was hard to find clubs to play in.
Yeah. There wasn’t many.
If you were labeled punk.
The ones that had started up had crashed and burned.
Yeah. They were short lived. There was one guy. Another fellow who was a booker. I can’t remember his last name but his first name was Ian. He was on par with Jill for really supporting the scene. Trying to find clubs where he could get consistent booking in. It was very transient. A club would be up for a month or two and then there would be an incident or the owner found out it was punk rock and then it was down and we would have to move somewhere else.
So people were used to going to new places all the time.
Right.
Start Dancing took place in these church basements and I remember seeing BLACK FLAG play the Party Centre on Church Street and that was probably the only time I went there. Then there was the Turning Point and Upper Lip. Nuts & Bolts did a show or two. It was just kind of all over the place.
A lot of time it was just taking over old man bars. Old man blue collar bars. They would at least give us one shot. Whether they sold a lot of beer or not was usually the deciding factor of whether we were going to be asked back again. With that in mind, going back to Jill and Ian, kudos to them. As transient as it was those people really logged a lot of hours trying to secure venues and make it work.
Back to the most memorable show, do you have any thoughts? Would that be the DEAD KENNEDYS show?
That was a good one. The Windsor shows were …. because we played there a couple of times. One of those Windsor shows was the most memorable because driving home on the 401 in a heavy blizzard and the fan belt went out on us.
Oh fuck.
Yeah we were stuck for a few hours.
In the cold. Brutal. In the middle of nowhere.
Actually we didn’t even get out of Windsor. The reason I remember this is because a few of our friends wanted to get out of town so they came with us because we always used to tour in Steve’s van. So it was all the equipment and the three of us and this time there was three more people. So we played this show in Windsor and we are heading home. It was two or three in the morning and it wasn’t the fan belt, it was the alternator going out. So we got stuck …. We were getting gas and the gas attendant said you can’t stay in the parking lot so the five of us were pushing the van at three o’clock in the morning in Windsor out of this gas station. Sure enough the police come along ‘What are you guys doing? You gotta stay in the van. You can’t stay here.’ I had a cousin who lived in Detroit across the river. Waited until seven o’clock in the morning. We just stayed up and we all had to group together under blankets because we were freezing. Being that it was in the States on a Sunday, I think it might have even been Super Bowl Sunday. He saved us. He found us an auto parts store, drove across the bridge, found us, helped us put in the alternator and we got home. That experience alone not just the gig but everything that happened after it.
It’s pretty crazy. It’s ironic that you were stuck in the heart of an auto industrial belt.
Yeah but on a Sunday morning. Back then a lot of stores weren’t open on Sunday.
Was there many bands in Windsor at the time? Who were you playing with? Did you play with local bands like the DRY HEAVES or were you playing with bands from Detroit?
It was mostly local bands in Windsor. I don’t recall any bands coming across the river from Detroit.
Was there any bands known from the scene in Windsor or London or any of these places?
There was some bands coming up but again it was pretty much the pioneer days when you are trying to forge a path through there. Most of the times we were lucky enough to get money for something to eat and gas money to get back home.
Can you tell me about the album. The album seems like its from a different era from the demoes. It seems a bit like a departure.
That was done sort of on purpose. For us the whole punk thing meant that there was no musical boundaries. We just wanted to stretch it. The recording studio I think was called Wexford.
It’s on the back of the album. Tracks 1 through 5 were at Wexford. Tracks were mixed at Enormous and Soundpath. Produced by the Mod Squad.
So we started the recording and got most of them done at Wexford. Again it was a monetary thing. We just ran out of money so we had stopped recording. Mike being an amazing guitar player and going into a 24 track studio it was kind of like working with a punk rock Jimmy Hendrix. Mike was like ‘Come on. Let me lay some more guitar tracks.’ I’m like ‘Go for it.’ We were flipping the tape over while he does backwards guitar work. Once again why restrict your creativity?
And probably the only chance you’ll get.
Yeah.
How often is this going to happen where you are going to be in this studio with all these toys?
Yeah. So we did that and then this was about the time that the YOUNG LIONS were drifting apart and again that all happened back to us losing our central base at the Garage. Those were the last days of the YOUNG LIONS.
Did you guys break up after this?
Yeah. Just shortly after things just kind of … we didn’t really sit down and break up. Things just fell apart. My family … my brother and my mom and step dad were living in Portland, Oregon and I had kind of been excommunicated from them for about five or six years and was kind of keeping in touch with my brother Pete through mail and I was sending him punk rock cassettes and he was turning me onto bands like ANGEL CITY out of Australia and other things I had never heard of and I would send him all these punk rock compilation tapes. I got a call from the family saying ‘What ya doin?’ Do you want to kind of reconcile and be part of the family again?’ I was missing my brother and family so … that whole week was … I didn’t have a job, YOUNG LIONS sort of fell apart, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time all within this one week span and six years out of the blue my mom calls and so I thought okay things happen for a reason so maybe this is a time for a change of venue.
Was Yodel Gems you guys?
No. That was just a group of guys that … I am not trying to blow my own horn here or anything, but those are just some guys that thought we were some kind of punk rock gods and they said ‘Sign this contract and we will pay for everything.’
Who was it?
Three or four guys in their teens that had some money and just wanted to see us put out a record. So that’s what we did. So getting back to ….I moved out to Portland, Oregon and then got a call about the record and finishing it so I headed back to Toronto and we finished up the recording for a week and there you have “Welcome to the Freak Show”.
I wanted to ask you about something involving Second City. I understand you are the creative force behind the song “Queen Haters” the song that is a punk parody that involved John Candy who was looking like one of the guys from the EXPLOITED and they did this song on a skit called “Queen Haters”. I understand that the YOUNG LIONS were the people who actually wrote the song.
That was interesting.
How did that come about?
That came about through a fellow I mentioned earlier called Ian, the booker. He had connections to all the entertainment scene in Toronto. Film, television, whatnot. He heard from someone that they were going to do this sketch and they needed some music. He had a brother who had a musician’s union card. His brother’s band couldn’t do it so he borrowed his brother’s union card and took us in the studio because they wanted an authentic punk rock sound. Then we just kind of worked with the producer. He said ‘Just give me some three chord punk.’ So we set up and burned through a couple of different ideas and just found the groove for the track that they used and recorded it.
They did the parody over top of that.
Yeah, I think Martin Short sang it and did it over the top. It was funny because when we used to live in Seattle I ran into Steve Turner from MUDHONEY and they did a cover of it on a compilation record.
Did he know that you wrote it?
Well he used to come into my brother’s record store in Seattle all the time. I worked there for a little while helping Pete out. That’s how it came up because Pete had a used copy of this compilation and I think it was off of the Nardwuar label out of Vancouver. I guess it was rare and hard to find and Steve noticed it on the wall and I didn’t even know that they did a cover of it and I said ‘We were the ones who wrote the music for that.’ He was an interesting guy. I don’t know if he was too impressed with some guy from the YOUNG LIONS.
