The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[Don] What makes the Tragically Hip
stand out from the rest?
I would have to say it's
our commitment
our unerring dedication
our inexhaustible energy supply
our get up and go,
our joie de vivre, if you will.
Paul's an example of reincarnation
gone awry.
Robbie Baker makes young girls cry.
Gord's the greatest movie director
ever to walk the face of the earth.
Johnny's a Bengal tiger
with a crucifix around his neck.
Everybody loves Johnny.
Or they better.
[Don] So where do you see
the future of the band
Let's say, ten years from now?
Uh bankrupt.
Any other questions?
[crowd cheering]
Ladies and gentlemen, Kingston's own:
The Tragically Hip!
["So Hard Done By"]
Interesting and sophisticated ♪
Refusing to be celebrated ♪
It's a monumental big screen kiss ♪
It's so deep, it's meaningless ♪
One day you'll just up and quit ♪
Then that'll be it ♪
Just then the stripper stopped ♪
In a coughing fit ♪
She said,
"Sorry I can't go on with this" ♪
[Jake] We had this success
with "Up to Here."
It came out in '89.
We worked it through 1990.
Now it's time to make another record.
[Bruce] I wanted to continue
what we had achieved with "Up to Here."
So, it was a no-brainer to me.
Memphis has this really good
musical vibe.
How 'bout we go a little further south
to New Orleans.
It just seemed like,
"Oh, we're on some kind of mission
to find the source."
That felt good.
I'm all about that.
[Jake] We had heard that Daniel Lanois
had bought this old mansion
in the French Quarter in New Orleans,
and he was letting bands go in there
and make records.
And that's what we did.
I'm so hard done by ♪
[snaps]
[interviewer]
Tell us about the studio.
The studio? It's wonderful. It's old.
[interviewer]
So, why New Orleans then to record it?
Well, it's like you got five or six weeks
and if you're gonna record somewhere,
you might as well record somewhere
where it's gonna be,
you know, different from your home.
And as I've said often, it's a good
nine-day walk back to Kingston from here,
so the distraction to leave or have
friends come down would be minimized.
And plus, you get to spend five
or six weeks in a city like this.
That's basically it.
-[Don] Good morning, Gord.
-Good morning.
[Don]
Ready to make a record today?
Ready to make a record today.
Let's record. Rock 'n' roll time.
Arriving in New Orleans
felt quite like we did
when we arrived in Memphis
for "Up to Here,"
though, very confident
in the songs that we had.
We were workin' with Don Smith again,
and we knew that he just let's us play.
Loves what we do.
Just wants to get a good take.
[cameraman]
We're rollin'.
[Johnny] On "Up to Here,"
we did work in the studio,
but this time when we went in,
we went to a big house.
I think that was a lot better for us
that, you know, we go in
and we don't see any red lights,
'cause we seem to always stiff
whenever they go on.
[Rob]
Kingsway's was a residential studio.
We could only play electrically until
about 9:30 or 10:00 at night.
So then we would have what we called
"the Flintstones set-up."
And we'd pull out the acoustic guitars.
[blows]
[Gord Sinclair] We came down
really prepared for "Road Apples,"
but we wrote "Little Bones"
while we were there.
It was an acoustic idea
that I brought to the guys.
Baby, eat this chicken slow ♪
It's full of all them little bones ♪
Baby, eat this chicken slow ♪
It's full of all them little bones ♪
It was sort of intended to be
about New Orleans,
but it came from a lot of
different things, and it's really weird,
when you think about it,
and almost irresponsible.
But I'd read Last of the Crazy People
by Timothy Findley,
Canadian author,
and there's a cat, Little Bones.
And I thought it'd be great
to write a song called "Little Bones."
This is like months before,
wrote it down,
and then, you know, in a cab
and the guy says something, you know,
"You gotta eat that chicken slow because
it's full of all those little bones."
I'm like, little bones
Baby, eat this chicken slow ♪
It's full of all them little bones ♪
Baby, eat this chicken slow ♪
It's full of all them little bones ♪
[Sinclair] Playing billiards
was one of our great pastimes
when we were on the road.
It's so humid when you're in New Orleans,
that you've gotta put chalk
between your index finger and your thumb
to get the cue to slide, otherwise
you can't get a proper stroke on the ball.
Of course, Gord bein' the poet that he is,
he wrote,
"Better butter your cue finger up."
Better butter your cue finger up ♪
It's the start of another new year ♪
Better call the newspaper up ♪
Two-fifty for a decade ♪
And a buck and a half for a year ♪
Happy hour, happy hour ♪
Happy hour is here ♪
[Jake] In the early years,
they wrote a lot of it together.
You know, Paul contributed to lyrics,
and Gord Sinclair contributed to lyrics,
and Robbie.
You know,
they always sort of wrote as a band,
but they brought in songs individually.
Gord Sinclair wrote the first two singles
on the first EP,
and for "Road Apples," Gord Downie said,
"I only want to sing my lyrics."
[indistinct chatter]
[Gord]
We had it out in Paul's basement.
It was like the first
and maybe the last sort of, like, time
the five of us sat in
the space and we said,
"You know, with an agenda, we're gonna
talk this out. We're gonna make plans."
And we sat there, and it was very solemn.
That was a difficult band meeting.
Both Paul and I kinda
got our wings clipped a little bit,
in terms of our ability to evolve
as songwriters as well.
[Rob] That was a tough pill to swallow
for Gord and Paul.
I think there was resentment
for a long time over it.
If it had developed
in a more natural way,
Gord would have ended up writing
90% of the lyrics anyways,
maybe 100% of the lyrics,
I don't know.
[Johnny]
Gord wanted to be involved in the loop,
and he felt the best way
that he could do it
and his instrument is his voice,
so the only authentic way for him to do it
was to write all the lyrics.
Phoning in to the radio show ♪
If I could just figure out
where you're doing it,
I could do exactly the same riff
on the bass.
It'd be pretty fuckin' cool.
I don't know where it is I come in,
what you're playing.
[Sinclair] If it meant that it was a
more authentic and commanding performance
for him to sing his own words,
like I totally, totally got that.
The band lived and died on the material.
So, keepin' the band together
was the most important thing.
And Gord was adamant
about the royalties being split up.
[Jake] Because generally,
a song is lyrics and music,
and that's how it's split up
in terms of revenue.
Gord just said,
"I just want to write the lyrics.
I don't need to be paid
to be the lyricist."
A song that we write
is not really a song that we write
until every guy's put his stamp on it.
Most bands have broken up
over the years because of publishing.
And I think this was one of the things
that kept them together.
Can't be driving a Rolls and this poor boy
is riding around on a ten-speed.
-So, it's a band credit.
-[interviewer] That's really nice.
Gord started taking over all the lyrics
and this was kind of the start of it,
where he became the band's diarist.
[Rob] Gord always had his multi-colour
pen, the red, green, blue pen.
Always stuffed in his pocket.
He'd whip it out and
just write something down quickly,
and then stuff it back away.
And this is where the songs came from.
Gord was like Andy Warhol,
and in that I mean,
he thought that everything was important.
He would repeat things,
and they would become art to him.
He was a beat poet.
He was trying to, like, hum
every bit of life as it was going,
to kind of understand it,
and to savour it.
[Dan]
If you look at Gord's notebooks,
boy, that's a sacred body of work
that should go into some kind of vault.
'Cause it yielded such
great entertainment, such great music,
such great self-reflection and, you know,
an experience of living in this country.
[Billy Ray] You'd say something
and out came his book
and he would write something down,
and you'd find
a conversation you had that morning
is a song that afternoon.
[Sinclair]
This is how we composed.
We would get together,
whether it's at a jam space,
or a sound check,
and start playing something new
that would tick something
in Gord's brain,
and inspire him.
And the books would come out
and he'd start filtering through it,
and he'd settle on something
that would fit,
perhaps, a melodic idea that we had had.
And then he would start to riff on it,
and that's how songs were born.
-[man 1] Are we running?
-[man 2] Yeah.
[man 3]
He's rollin'.
["Fiddler's Green"]
I remember Gord Sinclair
coming to the band
with a song he had on acoustic guitar,
and I just thought,
"Wow, that is really it's like
a nice sort of lilting, Celtic thing."
I remember really liking the lick,
you know?
[mimics guitar] It was real pretty.
September 17 ♪
For a girl I know it's Mother's Day ♪
Her son has gone alee ♪
[Charlyn] The letter I have
is the letter from Gord
where he introduces the song
"Fiddler's Green" to us.
Wind on the weather vane ♪
[Charlyn]
"Dear Char and Jamie.
This is the song I was telling you about
that I wrote for Charles.
It's called 'Fiddler's Green,'
which means 'sailor's heaven.'
I like to think of my little man
this way."
For a boy in Fiddler's Green ♪
Charles was, um, my second son
and he was born in 1986.
We didn't know at the time,
but at three weeks old,
discovered that he had been born
with a serious congenital heart defect.
[Charlyn]
Can you wave? Oh, hi! Hi, Charles!
He's just the sweetest little guy.
They told me he's the only child in ICU
that listened to music
when he was in there.
And that would have been The Hip.
He loved Gordie's music.
He was my musical guy.
The same wind that moves her hair ♪
[Charlyn] At three-and-a-half, he was
supposed to have the definitive repair.
The surgery went really well.
His heart was functioning as it should.
But he got a staph infection,
uh, within 72 hours post-op,
and it just, it swept him,
and he, uh, passed away from it.
Um, that was September 17th, 1989.
[Sinclair] When Charles died,
Gord came right over to the house.
He was pretty upset.
We didn't really have to talk about it,
you know, because he knew
that I knew what he was going through.
My brother was born
with a congenital heart defect.
He'd just gotten into KC,
first high school dance.
And he was letting her go
and had a massive electrical storm
in his heart and died.
And my life changed big time.
I was at the dance
that, um, he passed away at.
And yeah, it was, it was heavy, you know.
It's just one of those things
that's just so, uh, so very sad, you know.
["Fiddler's Green"]
[Rob] Gord Sinclair was my brother
from another mother,
so Colin was my little brother.
That was the worst day of my life.
[Sinclair] Having those early experiences
of grief together,
and love for each other, you know,
we were always really, really tight,
but that made it even tighter.
[Gord]
This is for Charles.
And Colin.
[Sinclair]
It makes it more life affirming
to honour the memory,
and to be able to articulate that
night after night on stage.
That's what kind of drove us.
September 17 ♪
For a girl I know it's Mother's Day ♪
Her son has gone alee ♪
And that's where he will stay ♪
Wind on the weather vane ♪
[Sinclair] "Fiddler's Green"
is a nice little melody, for sure,
but Gord took it to another level,
you know, that helps people
in a moment of grief.
You think about your sister, you know,
think about my mom,
and all those families that
have to go through something like that.
in Fiddler's Green ♪
I think it's like a, it's a bit
of a lullaby for grieving parents.
For a boy in Fiddler's Green ♪
[waves lapping]
[seabirds squawking]
[interviewer]
Where do the lyrics come from?
I don't know. They come from
[clears throat]
all over the place, I guess.
The guys in the band
actually contribute a lot to the lyrics
when they least expect it or know it.
I mean, you spend
a lot of time with people
they're, you know, wise-cracking
and things come up.
That's where probably my biggest source
of inspiration comes from.
[Sinclair] The great thing
about being in a band
is that we're always able
to bounce ideas off of each other.
And this was our way
of making music together.
And we wanted to be true
to what we wanted to do,
which is tell stories,
write about what we know.
["Three Pistols"]
Well, Tom Thomson came paddling past ♪
I'm pretty sure it was him ♪
And he spoke so softly in accordance ♪
To the growing of the dim ♪
[narrator] Deep in the heart of every man
lies an image of his land.
To Canadians, that image lies
in the picture of a windswept pine tree.
The painter of the picture
is Tom Thomson.
Tom Thomson.
We thought, "There's a great story."
Thomson has become a mythical figure
in Canadian art.
And his tragic death makes the most
dramatic story in our art history.
[Rob] And we would talk about,
you know, there's a mystery.
How did he die?
[Justin Trudeau] As a kid
who paddled across Canoe Lake,
you know, so many times, knowing that
"Three Pistols" talks about Tom Thomson,
I'm like, "I know who Tom Thomson is.
I know that story."
I mean, those, those stories were ours.
Bands just weren't doin' that, man.
Gord was secretly telling you,
"Read books, look at art."
[Dan] The lyrics and the music
touch us in a very heart-piercing way,
as no other Canadian band has ever done.
[pensive music]
In Canada, because, you know,
there's always the North,
there's always this space,
you could hear it in Leonard Cohen
and Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
And you can hear it in Gord's lyrics.
You could hear it in The Tragically Hip
as a rock band.
They didn't sound
like American rock bands.
[Sinclair] We resisted that push
to be something that we weren't.
You know, we wanted
to tell authentic Canadian stories.
[guitar strumming]
[shutter clicks]
[Paul]
Things are sounding really good.
And I think the songs are better.
I think the sounds are better,
at least, we just hope that people dig it.
And obviously, if they dig it,
they buy it. [laughs]
[Johnny] There was some pressure
with "Road Apples."
We still didn't know
how it was gonna be received.
It was definitely
a different sounding record.
Here we are now where are we? ♪
[Jake] When the record was finished,
I loved the record.
The American record company
thought it was DOA.
They didn't hear any singles.
I think it was Johnny said,
"We're gonna call this 'Saskadelphia,'
because we've been touring so much,
we never know whether
we're in Saskatoon or Philadelphia."
We thought it was funny. Record company
hated it because it was too Canadian.
I thought it would exacerbate the idea
of the, you know,
excuse that people use of,
"Well, they're too Canadian."
They did hate "Saskadelphia."
They didn't get it.
That is the stupidest name.
Allan hated it.
The record company hated it.
So, then the band said,
"Well, we're gonna call it 'Road Apples'."
Yeah, "Road Apples."
They'll never go for that.
'Cause obviously every Canadian
knows that "road apples"
are frozen pieces of horse shit
that you use to play road hockey with.
And they loved it.
They had no fucking clue
that "road apples" meant horse shit.
[Bruce]
I knew what "road apples" were.
I don't know
if the rest of the company did,
and I wasn't about to tell them.
And so, yeah.
So, it was called horse shit.
It's a record named after shit.
How funny is that?
["Fight"]
[Allan] It was their way of going,
"You know what?" Have this.
If you don't like 'Saskadelphia,'
you can have 'Road Apples.'"
We wake up different ♪
Rifle through our dreams ♪
Another placid day ♪
[Ron]
I was in Saint John, New Brunswick.
A Mustang pulled up at a red light
and it had a "T" roof,
and "Little Bones" is blasting
out of this car,
and I'm, "Wow, what is that?"
"Little Bones."
I can honestly say that song
probably saved my life.
Now I do eat my chicken slow.
The Tragically Hip. Savin' lives.
I dropped the needle on that song,
"Little Bones," over and over,
the same way I dropped the needle
on the beginning of "Revolution"
by the Beatles.
Just, like, so infectious.
We lay down seething ♪
Smell our pillows burn ♪
And drift off to the place ♪
Where you'd think we'd learn ♪
[crowd cheers]
[Allan] You've got a band
whose ascendency now is phenomenal,
because there's no denying it anymore.
This isn't a one-shot, two-shot record.
This is a band that is causing Canadians
to do things that no band has ever done.
["Twist My Arm"]
They are called one of Canada's
ultimate best band, and here they are!
[host] Much Music's in Halifax tonight.
There's a line up at the Misty Moon.
Everybody's talking about
The Tragically Hip.
-They're awesome!
-They were awesome!
You name it, we know every word
to every song.
From Kingston, Ontario!
Do I want to with all that charm? ♪
Do I want to twist my arm? ♪
And the Juno goes to: The Tragically Hip!
-[crowd cheers]
-Yay!
You just hit me where I live ♪
I guess it looked quite primitive ♪
[Jake] In Canada, we did triple platinum,
which is 300,000 records.
And then, "Up to Here"
went from 200 to 300,000.
We now knew that everyone who
bought one record had bought them both.
So, what we saw was
we had some serious hardcore fans.
Whoo!
[Rob] After making "Road Apples,"
there was a confidence, a feeling like,
"We're not trying to do something,
we're doing it. This is it."
Life was pretty fucking good.
[crowd cheering]
[announcer]
After The Hip's sold-out appearance,
they're off to the Maritimes,
then, you guessed it,
a major tour of the States.
[Sinclair]
We're doin' great in Canada
and there's ten times as many people
in the United States,
so it was just a matter of time
we were gonna be livin' in Bel Air.
But it was pretty quick
in our first tour of the United States
that we kinda realized, like, "Wow.
We got a lot of work to do down here."
["Putting Down"]
United state of ricochet ♪
From the boardwalk to the Appian Way ♪
The diamond files, the corporate raves ♪
You'd practically kill ♪
Not to be afraid ♪
And I'm starting to choke ♪
On the things I say ♪
I'm putting down, I'm putting down
I'm putting down ♪
I'm putting down, I'm putting down
I'm putting down ♪
Down here in the States,
we play, generally,
a lot smaller shows like we did
a couple of years ago in Canada.
[crowd chatting indistinctly]
[fan]
"Happy Hour!"
We're called The Tragically Hip
and we're from Canada.
And we're here to ascertain you.
[crowd cheering]
[Allan]
It felt like going backwards.
It was hard for them to do the same things
in 1990 in America
that they were doing in 1986 in Canada.
It was literally like starting over again.
[pensive music]
[Paul] It was a lot like
our first time across Canada,
not a lot of people had heard our name.
So, we're basically goin' out there
at the beginning of the night,
tryin' to just make people stay
and drink a couple more.
And it seemed to work out.
[Sarah] I mean,
it's pretty daunting touring the U.S.
There's a lot of places to play,
and you kinda gotta go back again
to build on what you did last time.
[Sinclair] Our career
was all based on live performance
and that was travelling to play.
We had learned to play a hockey rink
like we were in a small club,
and we learned to play a small club
like a hockey rink.
And that's because of jumpin' back
and forth across that border all the time.
[Dallas]
A lot of bands can't handle that.
You can't handle going from
this giant thing to a small thing.
It's very difficult. I know this.
[machine sloshing]
Remember, there are like ten cities
in Canada to break, right?
America, there's ten cities
just in the northeast.
[Bruce] It was hard for The Hip,
because they were so huge in Canada,
and there was, I think,
an internal expectation
that they could repeat their success
in America.
He said,
Bring on the brand-new renaissance ♪
'Cause I think I'm ready ♪
[Johnny]
I've obviously put too much soap in here.
But if I have a good rinse,
it might come out.
[Gord] For me, it's like, you know,
the two hours we're on stage
is like our time off during the day.
All this hard work, you know,
that we have to go through and
endure during the day.
Watchin' soaps in a laundromat.
I think, at times, it was frustrating
for the rest of us
to not be like a broken,
well-known entity in the States.
But then we go over to Europe
and it's completely different.
["The Last of the Unplucked Gems"]
[Paul] There were way more people
in the clubs
waiting to see us than we had expected.
Give us a full room, back then,
and it just felt like we can't lose.
Violins and tambourines ♪
And this is what we think they mean ♪
It's hard to say, it's sad but true ♪
I'm kinda dumb and so are you ♪
When the mystique varies thus ♪
You can send a man to bury us ♪
It's hard to say, it's sad but true ♪
I'm kinda dumb and so are you ♪
The last of the unplucked gems ♪
[Sinclair] We had come over
from North America
with pretty honed live chops.
[cheering]
[man]
I've seen a couple of bands in this place,
but I've never seen this place
packed like this.
No, they're brilliant.
They're gonna make it in this country.
Fuckin' good. Really fuckin' good.
[Jake] Right from the beginning, we got
ourselves on a couple of cool festivals,
and the media loved the band,
and the fans loved the band.
And it was definitely a predisposition
to liking Canadians.
[Sinclair] That really established
a really great foundation for us,
in the Netherlands in particular.
And it made, somehow,
it less important
that we do what we're doing
successfully in the United States.
[upbeat orchestral music]
[Jake] Well, we were looking for
a new producer for "Fully Completely."
Bruce Dickinson was putting forth some
names of different people to work with.
And one of the names that came up
was Chris Tsangarides,
because he had done Concrete Blonde
and a couple of other records
that the band liked the sound of.
[Rob] Chris was the Godfather
of English heavy metal.
Your Judas Priests and Iron Maidens.
Bringing on an English producer was,
I think, part of that strategy
of trying to get
a little bit more European sensibility.
[Rob]
London seemed like an obvious choice,
because that was the scene that really
inspired the band in the first place,
the early London club scene.
That was the grain in the oyster
that made the pearl.
The band mix is good. I'm just,
I'm screaming at the top of my lungs.
Two check
Your voice sounds a lot more heraldic
than mine.
[Sinclair] Chris Tsangarides just had
a very clear image
of how he was gonna record.
It was a completely different experience.
You know, Don Smith,
we played together all the time.
Chris tore the band apart
and did bass and drums first,
and then guitars, and then vocals last.
["At the Hundredth Meridian"]
Me debunk an American myth? ♪
And take my life in my hands? ♪
Where the great plains begin ♪
At the hundredth meridian ♪
Where the great plains begin ♪
Driving down a corduroy road ♪
Weeds standing shoulder high ♪
Ferris wheel is rusting ♪
Off in the distance ♪
At the hundredth meridian ♪
At the hundredth meridian ♪
At the hundredth meridian ♪
Where the great plains begin ♪
[Will]
"Lower me slowly and sadly and properly.
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy.
At the hundredth meridian."
And you're like,
"A Canadian guy wrote that?
That's fuckin' cool."
At the hundredth meridian ♪
At the hundredth meridian ♪
Where the great plains begin ♪
[Jake] The guys are recording
over in London. They know I'm coming over.
They ask me to stop at the kiosk
at the airport,
'cause all those stores would sell
those nature sound CDs
that people would listen to when
they're flying to relax them, or whatever.
He picked one up, didn't really
think too much about it. Gave it to us.
-[loons calling]
-Chris Tsangarides grabbed the loon call
and put it onto "Wheat Kings."
Went, "Ah, it sounds pretty cool.
Yeah, we'll keep it."
[loons calling]
[narrator] The calls of the loon have come
to symbolize Canada's wilderness
because of their lonely, haunting quality.
[Johnny] Five months later,
some guy contacted us
and said, "I'm the creator
of the loon sound."
And Chris Tsangarides said,
"You mean God?"
And we said, "No, this guy
who's made a recording of it
that we used at the beginning
of "Wheat Kings."
[reporter] Gibson got great results
using a microphone
he designed especially for the job.
I thought, "Well,
this would be like a little sideline."
It's not a sideline anymore.
[loons calling]
[Gordon Gibson] It was this beautiful,
warm, rich echoing call on top of itself.
It's probably one of the most identifiable
recordings that Dan has ever done.
We were all rookies
about the idea of sampling.
You know, it was a lesson learned.
[Gordon Gibson] We were never interested
in being compensated,
so Dad's idea was to ask The Hip
to make a donation to a loon fund.
But this was really quite a compliment
that a substantial band like The Hip
had chosen to use his sounds
at the start of a very emotional song.
[loons calling]
[David] I told Gord, I said,
"My dad used to take me camping
when I was a young man, and sometimes,
I would hear those loons
and they would make me
a little bit scared out on the lake."
And I said that was one of the best kind
of memories I had of my father.
And that's how he opened up the song
"Wheat Kings."
I won't pretend to understand
what it's like to be in jail for 20 years,
nor will I pretend to understand
what it feels like,
especially if you're innocent.
This is "Wheat Kings."
For David Milgaard.
["Wheat Kings"]
[reporter] Stoney Mountain
is the latest in a string of prisons
David Milgaard's called home
since he was 16.
Milgaard has always insisted
he did not commit the rape and murder
which has kept him
behind bars for 21 years.
Sundown in the Paris of the prairies ♪
Wheat kings ♪
Have all the treasures buried ♪
And all you hear are the rusty breezes ♪
-Pushing around the weather vane Jesus ♪
-Jesus ♪
[Rob] David Milgaard
was a little bit in the news
and for people who paid attention,
he was kind of very much on our minds.
Well, it's good to be out forever, right?
Twenty years for nothing ♪
Well, that's nothing new ♪
Besides, no one's interested ♪
In something you didn't do ♪
Writing it was like
a year and a half long thing,
following your trial and, you know,
following the thing as it was unfolding.
And I sort of, A, had to change it
for a lot of reasons,
but probably most the biggest reason
was probably that I didn't want to
even attempt to try
and pretend to understand
what it must have been like,
you know what I mean?
[David]
I really truly love this song.
[sighs] Sometimes, when, I don't know,
I just need to find a good space,
need to feel a little bit better
about myself, about my life,
I listen to "Wheat Kings."
Gord was now writing Canadian themes.
You know, he did some of it on
"Road Apples," but now even more.
[Sarah] You know,
it's kind of emboldening, in a way,
when someone's writing
about your culturally small country,
in a way that is proud
or that is confident.
And that's inspired me.
The fact that someone like me,
I was born in Bombay,
and for me to be moved
by what happened to David Milgaard
is entirely down to what The Hip did
with that man's story.
It introduced me to a side of Canada
that I didn't think existed.
There's a huge, vast,
untapped reservoir of stories here.
Tell those stories. Re-tell those stories.
Ninth cut on the disk
is the one that became
the Hockey Night In Canada
second theme song, "Fifty Mission Cap."
And just the power
with which it blew through the speakers
["Fifty Mission Cap"]
[Sinclair] We didn't know anything
about Bill Barilko
until we were literally rehearsing one day
in Johnny's mom and dad's garage.
And Gord Downie's sitting back,
trying to figure what he's gonna do.
And he opens up a pack of hockey cards
and he pulls out this one,
and it's the Bill Barilko goal.
I remember Gord lookin' at the card,
and then he stepped up to the mic
and started singing the lyrics
to "Fifty Mission Cap."
Bill Barilko disappeared ♪
That summer ♪
He was on a fishing trip ♪
"He disappeared that summer
on a fishing trip.
The Leafs didn't win another cup
until 1962,
the year his body was found."
With a couple of minor changes,
the song wrote itself.
I stole this from a hockey card ♪
I keep tucked up under ♪
My fifty-mission cap ♪
I worked it in ♪
I worked it in to look like that ♪
It's my fifty-mission cap ♪
Whether you're into hockey or not,
I mean, the idea
of someone disappearing for 12 years
and not being able to find any trace
of his or her body, well, I mean,
it's getting a little macabre,
but, you know,
it's still, it's an interesting story.
I loved "Fifty Mission Cap," even before
I realized it was about Bill Barilko.
[laughs] Who writes a song
about Bill Barilko?
It was almost like
they had no business marrying
but they did marry,
and they married beautifully
and created an original thing.
And I love that.
It's ballsy to try to make, like,
a rock song and sing about hockey,
and make it not a joke,
and make it heartfelt,
and make it move people.
[Rob] We just thought,
"If that were the U.S.,
this would be a really big deal."
Amelia Earhart
everyone in the US knows her story.
But what about Bill Barilko's?
Like, he disappeared in a plane too.
What happened to him?
So, when Gord sang those lyrics,
it just, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Why wouldn't you write a song
about that?
[narrator]
This anomalous land,
this sprawling waste of timber,
rock, water,
where the only living sounds
were the footfalls of animals,
or the fantastic laughter of the loon
[loons calling]
This nation,
undiscovered by the rest of the world
and unknown to itself.
The last year or two,
I've sort of just found a need to,
you know, to hear Canadian voices,
and that's where that, you know,
"Hugh McLennan" comes from.
["Courage"]
[Paul] Gord read
a lot of Canadian authors,
had a definite lean towards the country.
He was just almost obsessed with
sort of getting
to the bottom of certain stories,
and if he could find a way to get it
into a song, he was certainly gonna try.
[Gord] It's for Hugh McLennan only
because the last verse
is essentially from The Watch
That Ends the Night, you know?
It's a, you know, entirely I mean,
I just took it and screwed around with it.
Simple explanation ♪
For anything important any of us do ♪
Human tragedy consists in the necessity
of living with the consequences
[Jay]
"consequences of actions
performed under the pressure
of compulsions so obscure,
we do not and cannot
understanding them."
I would be hard pressed
to think of anyone
who takes words from a Canadian novelist
writing in the '50s
and turns them into one of the greatest
rock anthems the country's ever produced.
Courage, your word ♪
It didn't come, it doesn't matter ♪
Courage, my word ♪
It didn't come, it doesn't matter ♪
Courage ♪
It couldn't come at a worse time ♪
To see people bawl at a rock show,
singing "Courage,
it couldn't come at a worse time."
What a fuckin' lyric, right?
What a lyric.
It couldn't come at a worst time ♪
[vocalizing]
Gord Downie was spectacular
at telling our stories.
[dogs barking]
He was triggering, there are things
to tell about Canada that are exciting,
and interesting, and beautiful,
and different, and compelling.
And that you want to know,
and you should know.
Well, I think we think of history
as being a long time ago,
and the great thing that The Hip did is,
they make us feel that our actual history
of our brothers and our fathers
and our friends is actually our history.
You know, we're one of the only
kinda wealthy countries in the world
where you grow up seeing
someone else's culture on TV
and in the movie theatres all the time,
and the music, as well.
So, here was someone
talkin' about my world.
Bands would tell me, "Oh, we never
put Canadian place names in our songs
because they hurt our chances of success
in the States."
The Tragically Hip
unabashedly singing about Canada
just cleaved the fans ever closer to them.
There's a lot of music
that I love over the years. A lot. Uh
But none of it spoke
to my experience growing up
as a Canadian here in Canada,
and my connection.
Yeah, it's weird.
I feel silly being
sort of emotional about it.
Gord made it cool to be a Canadian.
[Justin Trudeau] "Sundown
on the Paris of the prairies,"
and the "our parents' Prime Ministers,"
and the little pieces
that were unique
and universal for each of us,
uh, crafted a narrative of this country
that I don't know
that we properly had before,
and not, certainly, in that level,
and not in a way that was able
to suffuse us
with such a quiet pride in our country.
Here's what's really important
to note about the band:
I never found them to be patriotic.
They weren't a rah-rah Canada band.
'Cause I think they knew,
by telling stories to people
who may not have paid attention in school,
who knows what gem will land.
There's not a single moment
of nationalism in any of it.
It is just portrayal.
That, in itself, in this fucking country,
is political.
To shoot Canada as Canada.
What a fuckin' crazy concept.
So, that's why it's important
that they did what they did, man.
[distant cheering]
[Sinclair]
We sometimes lose sight of the fact that,
you know, we have to look for the things
that bind us together.
Kids across the country hear
the musical stories of our fellow citizens
in order to better understand who we are,
and what we are as a nation.
I think there's nothing
that does that better than song.
[Mark] We're here
at Dallas City Limits backstage.
This is the new release from
The Tragically Hip, "Fully Completely."
A real excellent release.
I want to congratulate you.
Some really excellent songwriting
on there.
[Gord] Thanks, Mark.
It was fun putting it together, for sure.
Hi, I'm Gord Sinclair
from the Tragically Hip
here with Gord Downie
from the Tragically Hip, as well,
and this is our new video.
They don't know how old I am ♪
They found armour in my belly ♪
From the 16th century ♪
[Johnny] "Fully Completely" kind of put
us in a different stratosphere altogether.
That record, out of the gate,
was big for us.
[Bruce] Hearing those songs
for the first time, it was, like, elation.
It was the album
that I knew they could all make together.
They were growin' up,
and that was the idea.
It'd be better for us ♪
If you don't understand ♪
It'd be better for me ♪
If you don't understand ♪
[Denise] "Fully Completely"
was a record that, well
I remember it
blowing the roof off everything.
"Locked in the Trunk of a Car"
and "Courage"
and "The Hundredth Meridian,"
it's all over, and all Canadians
can see it.
And they can see The Hip
next to Boy George,
and Madonna, and The Rolling Stones.
We went from 300,000
on the other two records,
to all of a sudden
a half a million in a month.
It was massive.
We thought, "Okay,
we need to solidify the band
as the biggest band in this country."
And so we said,
"Let's do a big festival tour."
No one had done a tour
across the country, really,
and that was the birth
of Another Roadside Attraction.
[man]
That's my boy.
Yeah. [laughs]
[laughing, indistinct chatter]
[Mark] I think we did
something like 11 festival dates
in 17 days, travelling across the country.
It was pretty phenomenal.
[pensive music]
[indistinct chatter]
[Rob] I'm not supposed to say this
'cause I have a kid and I'm married,
but some of the happiest days of my life
were on that tour.
That was a life changer for me.
[easy orchestral music]
[Allan] I think Lollapalooza
had occurred before that,
but other than that, there was nothing
that had ever been seen like this
in the world, let alone Canada.
[Tom]
They were relentless.
It was almost like a wildfire
they set across this country
to get themselves goin'.
[cheering]
[Sinclair] Another Roadside Attraction
was yet another dream come true for us,
and we assembled our dream bill.
[Paul] We were gonna get all these bands.
Some bands that are heroes.
Certainly all bands that we're fans of.
Thought, "Well, it's our chance to be DJ
for the day, except with live bands."
We didn't get everyone we wanted,
but we got Midnight Oil.
Oh, my God. Midnight Oil.
[Rob Hirst] We were
sitting in our office in Sydney,
management comes in and says,
"You've got this offer to be part
of a travelling festival across Canada."
And we said,
"Well, that sounds interesting. Who's on?"
And he said,
"But you're not gonna headline.
There's a band called
The Tragically Hip."
And we said, "Who?"
["Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil]
How can we dance ♪
When our earth is turnin'? ♪
How do we sleep ♪
While our beds are burnin'? ♪
[Sinclair] The very first gig
that we played out in Victoria
was the first time
I'd ever seen them play.
And we were like, "Wow.
Like, we're up against it."
They clearly came fully intending
to blow us off the stage every night.
[Gord] I wouldn't recommend
going on after Midnight Oil to anyone.
Talk about the, "Oh, God"
Fuck me. I hate that fuckin' band.
Let's go, guys, let's have a good one.
[Johnny]
It was a great, heavy bill.
Still, to this day,
I think it's the biggest Hip show
that we ever played, Markham Fairground.
I think there were 60,000 people there.
[cheering]
["Locked in the Trunk of a Car"]
They don't know how old I am ♪
They found armour in my belly ♪
From the 16th century ♪
Conquistador, I think ♪
They don't know how old I am ♪
They found armour in my belly ♪
Passion out of machine revving tension ♪
Rushing by the machine revving tension ♪
Lashing out at machine revving tension ♪
Morning broke out the backside ♪
Of a truck stop ♪
[Peter]
They were clearly a Canadian band,
playing to their audience
at the full strength of their powers.
There was a wild spirit
abroad in the land, so to speak.
[Rob Hirst]
Night after night, on that tour,
I'd stand by the side of the stage
and just wait for Gord Downie to erupt.
Really very joyful.
We'd never really seen anything like it.
[explosion]
[Billy Ray] The second that
that crowd roared, he realized,
"I'm not playing the guitar solo.
I've gotta do something else
because all the eyes are on me."
[Gord] Someone told me once, you know,
for a show to be great,
something has to happen,
and that usually involves, at some point,
instructing the people down there
to take away the net.
[orchestral music]
He was gone. He was gone in the songs.
The eyes were rolling up.
It felt like he was possessed.
[Willo]
People call it the "flow state,"
but he's just sort of gone,
on another planet.
As a teenager, I found it
thoroughly embarrassing. [laughs]
But, to me, it was just a
necessary movement of energy in his body.
[orchestral music]
We always had people saying,
"What's he on? Is he on acid?
Is he coked out of his head?"
It was like, "No, he's performing.
He's entertaining you."
[Gord] I think
my body's basically giving subtext.
For anybody out here that, you know,
is, uh, is big on meaning,
then I'll get,
then they can look at my body.
[chuckles] I give you my body.
[Dan] It was dancing
that really directly kind of related
to what he was singing about
more than the rhythm.
With James Brown,
a lot of the dancing was rhythm.
But with Gord, the body
began to feel and live the lyrics,
and that's what the fun
about watching him was.
Yeah. So here I've just said
that Gord Downie and James Brown
are on an equal as artists,
and, well, I'm gonna stay by that.
Do you think there's any similarities
between what he's feeling
and what you're feeling?
[Gord]
I'd like to think so.
You look at me. You look at me.
Look at me. Look at me.
Not him. Look at me.
Hey. Look at me.
Holy shit. It's worse than I thought.
[Will]
Gord was so theatrical.
It was like part performance art
and part speaker in the town square,
getting up on a, on a soapbox.
You know, he'd come out
and inhabit the role
of whoever was the main character
of that story, of that song.
When I worked at the aquarium.
You know where?
In the killer whale tank, unh!
In the killer whale tank, unh!
[Johnny]
He was a great storyteller,
and he always kept us on our toes.
You know, we never knew where it would go.
I used to scrub the window
so people could have a better vantage,
better vision, you know.
If they see me swim by,
I'd swim from the deep.
Top of the food chain!
Swingin' around the tank towards 'em.
Holy shit!
It's big, it's carnivorous!
Carnivorous. Ooh! Two whales, one male!
[Rob]
Three-and-a-half-minute song,
and Gord starts to go off
in a different direction.
It's like, "Oh, God, cock your ear.
Where's he goin' with this?"
Is this just exposition?
'Cause if it is,
you're just gonna hang back
and get into a little groove.
She'd look at me
with that hundred-year-old eye,
and I felt like I knew her.
I felt like she really knew me.
And then I discovered
at the top of the food chain,
there's jealousy. Uh-huh.
And now, oh, there's some tension
creepin' in. Here we go!
And then in a swift jerk,
doing what he was bred to do
just fulfilling his obligation
to Jacques Cousteau,
he rips my arm off like it was nothing!
Like it was no big deal.
Like it was no big deal!
[Paul] It was all unspoken,
all done with looks.
And he knew and we knew when to go back.
[Dan]
Although they're a great studio band,
the power and joy of The Hip's existence
for every Canadian
was seeing them play live.
-Thank you very much.
-[crowd cheering]
Try and pick up your garbage.
Be safe going home.
See you tomorrow.
[Gord] A lot of people say, "You're
very different from when you're on stage
compared to when you're,
you know, off stage."
And sometimes,
I feel kinda weird about that,
like maybe I should be the way
I am on stage all the time.
Or more on stage,
the way I am walking down the street.
And the fact of the matter is,
I think this is the same part of me.
It's just, you know, it's, it's my gig.
[Mike] Would you say this is
the high watermark for the band so far?
[Johnny]
Oh, yeah. Definitely, definitely.
And right now,
I think it's really important
that we take some time off, you know,
and sort of regroup,
and get ideas together
for the next record,
the next thing that we're gonna do,
that's different.
We wanna do something different. So
There's this fucking band ♪
You gotta see ♪
They used to scare the fuckin' shit ♪
Outta me ♪
No frothing dog, no cool insanity ♪
No rock and roll, no Christianity ♪
Makes me feel the same way ♪
We went back to New Orleans,
got back into that setting
where it's much more casual,
but at the same time,
you're allowed to work hard.
I'll stay where I am. I don't care.
We didn't want to make a record again
like we had done with "Fully Completely."
While that record had been
wildly successful for us,
the experience of making "Road Apples"
was so much more an enjoyable experience.
It felt like a band event. Everyone was
connected and we were relaxed and happy.
So much came out of jamming.
So, we decided to make a record
that was more entirely stemmed
from jamming.
[bass playing]
[Johnny] Mark Howard was our producer.
He always kept it interesting.
He would change the drum set,
he would change the acoustic vibe.
[Paul] It sort of became the most
experimental we had ever been,
but we were confident that this was us.
This is us, you know.
Nothing's changed. We're just playin'
different sort of songs right now.
[guitars strumming]
[Gord singing]
[Johnny]
It's a pretty aggressive record.
If you think about the sounds,
there's a real darkness to it.
"Nautical Disaster,"
"Inevitability of Death."
Even in the titles, it's right there.
I like the idea of a radio DJ
having to announce that song to,
you know, drivers on their way to work,
on a, you know, stormy Wednesday morning.
"Now, listeners,
'The Inevitability Of Death.'"
They were grownups at this point, right?
It had to be different.
And I think, also, you could see
the lyrics got even more intense.
I had this dream ♪
Where I relished the fray ♪
And the screamin' ♪
Filled my head all day ♪
[Will] There aren't a lot of bands
that get into the studio,
or in that writing process that go, like,
"Hey, guys. I got one about the U-boats
bombing the Lusitania."
"From a hundred years ago?"
"Yeah. You guys ready?
Five, six, seven"
You know?
We just feel a lot more comfortable,
a lot more sort of joyous
in what we're doing.
It seems like a natural evolution.
It's the best record we could make.
["Grace, Too"]
[Sinclair] They were songs
that were outside of the norm
of what you would hear on the radio,
and that were unique to our group.
It certainly wasn't
as commercial sounding.
And I'm sure the record company
felt that way, too.
He said, I'm fabulously rich ♪
Come on, just let's go ♪
When we first got the mixes back,
it was like, "Wow. This is heavy."
[Allan]
They delivered the record,
and I just said, "You guys have to go back
into the studio. This isn't finished."
And it's like a big, long silence.
And I said, "It just isn't.
I mean, you've got two tracks here.
We've got 'Nautical Disaster,'
which we can go with.
And 'Grace, Too.' All the rest is shit."
"It is B-side crap."
[Jake] I remember him saying it to me
and he said it to them.
They didn't want to hear it.
[Sinclair] Radio singles.
That was the be-all and end-all
at that stage in the game,
in the early '90s.
That equals stardom in their,
in their minds.
And that's always been
part of the business.
And we weren't in it, necessarily,
for the business.
They don't call it the music business
for nothing.
If you start compromising your
songwriting, you know, your integrity
to try and fit somebody else's model
of what they think you should be doing,
then you compromise your art.
[Sinclair] We sort of began to chafe
at what Allan's suggestions were,
that rock 'n' roll
couldn't necessarily be achieved
with a business plan, you know.
It had to be driven by the art first.
[George]
Isn't the point of all of this in life
to bust the door so wide open,
so you can do whatever the fuck you want?
If they'd come up with
another "Fully Completely,"
I wouldn't have thought they were artists.
["Scared"]
I could make you scared ♪
If you want me to ♪
I'm not prepared ♪
But if I have to ♪
He said, I can make you scared ♪
It's kind of what I do ♪
If you're prepared ♪
Here's what I propose to do ♪
[Allan] Gord Downie said to me,
"I'd rather have you as my friend,
than my manager."
And while he said it with great kindness
and affection, it also was a threat,
very clearly,
that I could be one or the other,
but I couldn't be both.
I took Gord's advice.
I wasn't their manager anymore.
It's been a pleasure ♪
Doing business with you ♪
The band has got its own personality
and sometimes it does
whatever the hell it wants.
I think, within the band,
we all were wondering,
"How is this gonna go?
Is this cracking?"
If I'm unclear ♪
Can I get out of this thing ♪
With me and you? ♪
If you feel scared and a bit confused ♪
[Johnny] It was a new chapter.
Things are changing.
And the five of us couldn't control
the direction it was gonna go.
We knew that big changes
are about to happen.
["Scared" continues]