The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal (2024) s01e03 Episode Script
Part Three: It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken
1
[producer]
In five, four, three, two, one, cue.
[audience cheering]
Thank you! Ladies and gentlemen,
from Kingston, Ontario, Canada,
home of Kirk Muller, Walter Frank High
and me,
it is my honour to introduce to America,
my friends, The Tragically Hip.
[audience cheering]
["Grace Too" playing]
[Sinclair]
It's a pretty nerve-wracking event.
Even the sound check
and the run-through in the afternoon,
literally, we were like, "Holy fuck!"
So, the geniuses that we are, we thought,
"Well, maybe we should just smoke
a bit of a reefer before we go, you know?
It's never hurt us in the past."
[Dan]
I'm sure it wasn't the only substance
that had been done in that dressing room.
Hey, any way you loosen up, man!
SNL's a pressurized gig.
[Paul] I remember thinking, "I shouldn't
have taken three or four hits,
I should've just taken one."
Live and learn.
Sometimes, it's not the best idea
if you're super nervous.
["Grace Too" continues]
I said I'm Tragically Hip ♪
[audience cheers]
Come on, just let's go! ♪
Instead of "I'm fabulously rich,"
Gord said, "I'm Tragically Hip."
[Sinclair] Gord misses the first lyric,
but on a legendary scale.
And I think he started the song like that
probably for the rest of our career.
"We're the Tragically Hip!"
I thought that was
a pretty clever introduction to America.
There'll be no knock on the door ♪
I can guarantee ♪
I'm total pro ♪
There'll be no knock on the door ♪
[Dan] I told Lorne,
"I'll come back and do the show,"
but the bargaining chip was, you know,
"I gotta have The Hip.
It just has to happen."
And the audience reaction was outstanding.
It was a night of triumph, no doubt.
Just a beautiful night.
[Rob] We played, in eight minutes,
to more people
than we'd played to
in our whole career put together.
[George] Seeing my two favourite songs
being played on Saturday Night Live,
being introduced by
one of the fuckin' Blues Brothers?
I kinda feel like Canadian rock,
that was it.
Thank you to Tragically Hip,
Mr. George
Today on Break This, we have a band.
And this is not just any ordinary band.
This is The Tragically Hip.
[Jake] "Day for Night" comes out
and it blows up.
We were on a real upward trajectory.
We're headlining Maple Leaf Gardens
for the first time.
"Day for Night" was the first arena tour,
where we officially said, "Okay,
we're gonna play arenas in every market."
-It's Maple Leaf Gardens.
-[Gord] MLG.
Some day it's gonna be MSG.
[Rob] Headlining Maple Leaf Gardens,
where the Beatles played
and Elvis played one of two shows
outside of the U.S.
Saw a lot of hockey games in there,
so you can't imagine the thrill.
[Dave] Grant, go dark, please.
Grant, go dark, please.
[audience cheering]
["Fire in the Hole" playing]
You had immunity to kill ♪
You had your dreams fulfilled ♪
And I love you still ♪
But there's a power beyond control ♪
There's a fire in the hole ♪
Ah, the nights are getting cold
All your secrets will be told ♪
Turn your lanterns low ♪
[Rob] There were a couple of moments
on that tour
where the crowds would get so loud
that you couldn't hear anything
happening on stage.
I got my amp cranked up
and my guitar is cranked up
and I'm stepping on any volume pedals,
anything to get through the din.
I thought, "God, just for a second,
I know what it must've been like
to be in the Beatles."
But there's a power beyond control ♪
There's a fire in the hole ♪
Yeah, the nights are getting cold
All his secrets will be told ♪
Turn your lanterns low ♪
[Mark] Guns N' Roses,
Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, INXS.
You name the bands that were doing
arena-level business then.
And when I would see The Hip,
I'd put them in that same pantheon.
[Johnny]
There was this swell that happened
during "Day For Night."
We did craziest tours.
[man] You're gonna be touring with Page
and Plant. How do you feel about that?
Doing 15 dates with them
and hopefully get to meet them.
The first night of the tour they asked us
to come to their dressing room.
Robert Plant said, "I learned about you
through an old girlfriend,
and she turned me onto you,
and I got "Fully Completely."
Then I went back
and got the first two records
and I loved them and
I've bought every record since then."
And Jimmy Page said, "We really dig
you cats, we dig what you're doing."
And we were like,
"Wow, fuckin' Jimmy Page."
Were you big Led Zeppelin fans
when you were growing up?
You know we were.
[Jake] And then, we get four shows
with The Stones.
[Sinclair] When we're playin' with a group
like the Rolling Stones,
lookin' over at Robbie, thinkin',
you know,
if the 16-year-old us down in
the basement of his mom and dad's house
could see us now. You know?
Thank you.
Musicians love us,
Page, Plant loved us.
We have a reputation.
We played Saturday Night Live.
And now we're making
"Trouble at the Henhouse."
-[producer speaking indistinctly]
-[hens clucking]
Does anybody have hens in the band?
[Mike] I mean, there could be.
It's a metaphor, man. It's gotta be.
Paul Langlois could be
the biggest hen rocker in Canada.
Yeah, maybe.
[guitar music]
[Paul] "Trouble at the Henhouse,"
that was really our first record
that we were doing at our studio
at the Bathouse.
[Gord]
Welcome to the Bathouse.
All you people
in all those movie-ators out there.
This is our home, thank you. Welcome.
[Johnny] We'd just purchased a house
in Bath, and it was exciting.
It was exciting to be building it
and makin' a record at the same time.
I mean, it was the ultimate clubhouse.
[Jake]
Because they owned their own studio,
and because it was
just outside of Kingston,
there wasn't the sense of urgency
that we had to go in and get out,
that the clock was ticking,
'cause there was no clock.
[Rob] We'd worked with
a few producers by that point.
Self-producing seemed like
the next logical step.
[random instruments playing]
We had the list of songs
that we were working on
and you always sort of have
an A list and a B list.
The A ones are like,
these songs are working.
And then, B list are the songs
that you're trying to improve.
And on the B list
was "Ahead by a Century."
["Ahead by a Century"]
It was Paul's music and Gord's lyrics.
And we didn't feel that involved
in the song the way it was.
So, one night, after everyone left
the studio, I said to Johnny,
"Why don't you stick around
and we'll work on that song
and see if we can't get something
to happen?"
I had an open string guitar part
and Johnny worked up a thing
on a LinnDrum.
The song lifted right away.
["Ahead by a Century"]
With illusions of someday ♪
Cast in a golden light ♪
No dress rehearsal ♪
This is our life ♪
"No dress rehearsal. This is our life."
That's what you gotta do.
You gotta make the most of it.
[Sinclair] As the lyric evolves and stuff,
then you realize,
"Wow, we're working on a good song."
-And that's where the hornet stung me ♪
-That's when a hornet stung me ♪
-And I had a feverish dream ♪
-I had a feverish dream ♪
With revenge and doubt ♪
-Tonight, we smoke them out ♪
-Tonight, we smoke them out ♪
[DJ] First single from the new album,
it's called "Ahead by a Century"
and it features some great backing vocals
by Paul Langlois.
[Gord] Yeah, Paul's singing is amazing
and it totally elevated that song.
You know, we've been friends
for a long time
and we used to sort of sing together
in high school.
And I think, 'cause we have
such a friendship,
such a bond with each other,
that it's just singing together
is like, um, entirely natural.
It's just a dialogue.
[Rob] It felt like all the things that our
band was about kind of coming together.
It's sometimes a struggle to find your way
into a song,
but you find a way to make a contribution
and make it better, make it a band song.
[Bernie] The special sauce
really is the five guys.
Take any one of these members
away from this band, there is no Hip.
You are ahead by a century ♪
This is our life ♪
-You are ahead by a century ♪
-This is our life ♪
You are ahead by a century ♪
"Ahead by a Century" brought Canada
to their knees in a different way.
And I saw that this band
had a lot more going for it
than being a big rock concert band.
And then the day began ♪
I tilted your cloud ♪
You tilted my hand ♪
[Dave] It was the final song
that they ever played as a band.
It was the final notes
that The Tragically Hip
ever rang out across Canada.
I think there's no question that it's
pretty much the second Canadian anthem.
["Ahead by a Century"]
[Jake] The record company
hears "Ahead by a Century" and goes,
"Holy shit, like,
we got a real song here."
And the head of the Canadian
record company comes to me and says
We want you to play the Tower Records
opening, downtown Toronto, on the rooftop.
We'll make it a huge media event.
We will be able to get
"Trouble at the Henhouse"
prioritized at Tower Records
all around the world.
The U.K., Japan, the U.S.
We'd be front-racked in so many stores.
And that this would advance us in the U.S.
[Jake]
So, we're set up now.
All we have to do is play
on the roof of Tower Records.
[Randy]
And the band said, "You know, Randy,
we buy our records at Sam the Record Man.
You know, we're loyal to Sam's."
[Jake]
Which was a Canadian chain.
We had a big problem with that.
You know, multinational companies
coming into Canada.
Like, we were Sam the Record Man guys.
[Paul] So, it was kinda like,
"Are we selling out to the Man,
and you know, doing all that?"
Ninety-nine out of 100 bands
would have pulled their knickers down
for an opportunity like this.
And yet, they sat at me, straight faced,
and they went, "Respectfully no."
[laughs]
[Rob] Maybe we'd pumped the brakes
a little more than was necessary.
We were never so big
on these record store promotion things.
It didn't feel right for us.
[Sinclair] Had we done this gig,
maybe the record company
would've participated a little bit more
and things may have been different.
But should we have played that gig? No.
[Jake]
The crazy thing about it, you know,
Sam's in Canada had their own magazine,
called Network Magazine.
Network Magazine comes out and
it's that illustration of Gord on a cross
at the US/Canada border.
And it was like one of these
typical Canadian media,
caring about, "Oh, we
have not broken huge in the U.S. yet."
And yet, they were helping
perpetuate that.
[Rob]
Jesus, that's disturbing.
Never seen that before.
Sam's had no fucking clue
that we had basically turned down
playing for Tower
because they said, "We shop at Sam's,
and we need to support
our Canadian retailers."
[Paul] Any article that was talking about
us not being successful in the States,
I always felt was bullshit. It's like,
"Why don't you come out on tour with us?"
They're probably writing those articles
while we were down
playing multiple nights at Irving Plaza
and the 9:30 Club,
or State Theatre in Chicago.
So, fuck them.
["Gift Shop"]
The beautiful lull ♪
[laughing]
The dangerous tug ♪
We get to feel small ♪
From high up above ♪
[Randy] This is a band
that could have sold out to America
15 times, off the top of my head,
and they chose to say no
because they wanted to have the integrity
of their conviction.
So, what are you gonna do?
Punish them for that?
Looking at The Tragically Hip and saying,
"But what about America?"
I just thought it was so weak.
[host] It seems the only thing tragic
about The Hip
is their failure to crack the U.S. market
in a big way.
Even after the release
of "Trouble at the Henhouse,"
a more mainstream disc
full of catchy hooks,
the question remains unanswered.
Why do you think
that the American public
hasn't quite gotten
the Tragically Hip yet?
Maybe they were never meant to.
And you don't think
that got in their fuckin' heads?
Every human being is deeply affected
by everything said to them,
and they said it to them
all the time.
[Gord]
I'm the guy out there living it, you know.
And someone sort of saying,
basically, "Does this bum you out?
You know, when I pick this scab,
does it hurt?"
I just did three interviews, and
all three people I did interviews with
said their editors wanted
the main thrust of the story
to be the canyon that exists
between our success in Canada
and our success in America.
[Sinclair] This kind of stuff
has dogged us all along,
and it's dogged a lot of Canadian bands.
One of the things in the Canadian
character to be admired the least
was our desperate, cloying need
to succeed outside of here
in order to be even kind of respected,
or taken seriously,
or worth being paid attention to.
[Dallas] It didn't matter
if you were popular in Canada.
It was like,
"What's America think of you?"
And I watched tons of bands
go through that, just as a fan of them,
and then, I went on to experience it
from my own perspective.
[video game gunfire]
[Denise]
The reality is, we live beside
the biggest cultural exporter
on the planet.
It's almost like
we're up against the glass.
We're at the game, we're not in it.
And then, you had a band like the Hip
and Gord going like,
"Hey, we don't need to do that.
We don't have to sing
for our supper anymore, man.
We're cool right where we are.
And we don't need to get it validated
by them."
[Sinclair]
People look on us as a cautionary tale
and a tale of failure
in the United States.
I take exception to that,
because we enjoyed an amazing career
in the United States.
[Sam] We've been down there.
We toured with them in the States.
To put it in context, The Hip
played the best rooms in America.
They weren't playing at the arenas
necessarily,
but they played at all the clubs
where any band worth their salt
would want to play.
Any band would be quite happy with
The Hip's career in the United States.
It's just that they
became so iconic in Canada
that you weren't gonna mirror that.
It was going to be a different thing,
wherever it was.
[Bernie]
The Hip are a global band.
Any band who can play
anywhere in the fuckin' world
to thousands of people every night
on the big bills.
The Hip did it consistently for 25 years.
-Thank you. Merci.
-[audience cheering]
Take care of each other.
Now get some sleep.
[chanting]
Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip!
["Leave" on TV]
[Dave] One night,
after Gord's daughter was born,
we were watching a show.
Gord was sitting right beside me.
And he was particularly manic,
running across the stage and
jumping over monitors and climbing things.
And we were all laughing.
[laughing]
And I look at Gord
and he's just serious
["Put It Off" playing]
staring at the TV.
I wrote unfriendly things ♪
And he's just like, "I'm a clown."
Truly cruel ♪
On the day that you were born ♪
[Dave]
"And I don't want to be a clown.
I don't want my children to grow up
thinking Daddy was a clown.
You know what? Tomorrow plug in
Paul's acoustic for me at sound check."
I put it off, I put it off ♪
[Dave]
For him, it was a a grounding spot.
It was, "I can stand here and strum along
during Robbie's guitar solo
instead of having to having to spin around
in circles on my mic stand."
[Paul] I totally understand
why he wanted to play guitar
and why he wanted
to just sort of calm down.
"Let me just be a musician
with you guys, please."
So, strapping on the guitar, I think,
was part of his way to deal with that.
I put it on, I put it on
I put it on again ♪
I'm playing a lot more guitar lately,
and I find I'm communing with the music
on a different level.
There was never an audition. [laughs]
So, everyone had feelings about it,
you know. Everyone did.
I hated it. [laughing] Are you kidding me?
He was one of the best frontmen
anywhere ever.
And strap an acoustic guitar on
and it pins you down.
[Paul] There was a worry,
probably in my head,
"Oh, is he gonna be
just playing guitar now?
Because what you were doin' back there
is pretty good,
you know, when you dance around
and stuff."
[Sinclair] He would kind of stand
in one spot and kind of strum.
Which, for the audience,
wasn't what they were used to seeing.
You could see fans go, "Pfft, he's
playing the guitar on this one." You know.
I don't think anyone really embraced it.
But he was ready for a change.
The other thing is, he could see that,
the more he moved around,
the more people
started pushing the barricade,
and we started to have security issues.
And then, he just thought,
"I'm gonna play guitar.
I'm just not gonna move around as much."
[Paul]
The testosterone levels up there are high.
We had a period of time
where it was very male aggressive.
Really on the edge of violence.
At our shows, it was mostly dudes
doing this stuff.
Being carried on each other
and on the stage and jumping up
and leaping. And that's
what rock and roll was there for awhile.
[Ricky] And I feel sorry
for the young ladies that were
You know, they waited in line,
some of them, all day or whatever.
They got up front
and by the time the lights go down,
we're basically plucking them
out of the front
because they were just getting crushed.
[Rob]
And it could get rough out there.
And then, you start seeing people
get taken out on stretchers after gigs.
And it's like, "Yeah, this isn't cool.
We need to change tack here."
You can make adjustments to the set.
Gord would say things from the stage.
You all be good to each other down here.
Hip shows are for men and women.
None of you boys
keep muscling out the girls.
I definitely was trying to figure out,
"How do you control this?"
And so, I'm protecting all these people
up front, that was my gig.
And, um, I wanted more women there.
I thought, "We're not doing it this way.
We're not going to do this this way."
[producer speaking indistinctly]
["Bobcaygeon" playing]
I left your house this mornin' ♪
It was a quarter after nine ♪
Could have been the Willie Nelson ♪
Could have been the wine ♪
As the band aged,
the music got a little mellower.
They wrote songs like "Bobcaygeon."
And there was more women
coming to the shows.
It was in Bobcaygeon
I saw the constellations ♪
Reveal themselves one star at a time ♪
I mean, that line;
that "I saw the constellations
reveal themselves one star at a time."
I can't look at a night sky
without "Bobcaygeon" coming into my mind.
The power of that imagery
and the power of connection there,
it's because we all lived that.
All of us have had that morning.
[Sinclair] Beautiful song. But what
Steve Berlin brought to that, sonically,
just small little bits of keyboard
that he put in there,
really elevated that song.
[Berlin] I tried to approach it
as if it was a new band.
Like I'm not worried about their legacy,
I'm not worried about anything
but making a great record.
On "Bobcaygeon," they'd come up
with a chord sequence.
It sounded like an older Hip song,
like something I would've associated
with like "Road Apples."
So, my suggestion was,
"What if we tried it like
a little bit like an R&B song."
[bass playing]
That was kinda when
the door opened on that one.
[Johnny] In a lot of ways, Steve Berlin
was the best producer we ever had.
He's a musician and would talk to,
you know,
Robbie and Paul and Gord
about the shape of a song.
He understood us,
he understands band dynamics.
And so, he was the right guy for us.
[playing guitar riff]
There were three, four
really important songs
in the larger Hip oeuvre, you know,
came out of that record.
["Poets" playing]
[Steve Berlin] "Poets" is one
that was like two different ideas.
There was the verse was one thing
and the chorus was a different thing.
I said, "What if we use that as a verse
and that bit as a chorus?"
They're like, "Really?
Yeah, let's give it a shot."
Don't tell me what the poets are doing ♪
Don't tell me that
They're talking tough ♪
Don't tell me that they're anti-social ♪
Somehow not anti-social enough
That's right ♪
"Don't tell me that poets are antisocial.
Somehow not antisocial enough."
"Don't tell me
how the universe is altered
when you find out how he gets paid.
All right." Yeah, sick.
Don't tell me what the poets are doing ♪
Those Himalayas of the mind ♪
Don't tell me
What the poet's been doing ♪
In the long grasses over time ♪
[Paul] The video, it's at kind of
a semi-famous house in Kingston.
'Cause it's just a bunch of cats.
Like, too many cats.
[reporter] It all started out
as a simple enough idea,
just one single little kitty.
And then, it sort of took off from there.
Now, 20 years later,
the family of Donna and Jack Wright
has mushroomed
into 145 cats under one roof.
I think we resurrected The Rodents idea
for that, you know,
because the cats and the rodents.
And then, you get to the place.
Oh, it was horrible.
It smelled like cat piss, dander,
humidity, you know, all the things
you want to be doing on a hot summer day.
It was our first experience
working with you cinematically.
[Mike] Gord said, "I think we should do it
in the house of cats."
-[whimpers]
-[Mike] And I said, "Gord, I'm allergic."
Oh, no!
[Mike] And he whispered in my ear,
"So am I."
[laughs]
[Sinclair]
It was a really important record for us
at a really important time in our career.
[Will] I think the reason they had
so many hit records in a row
was because they were just
constantly doing stuff
that got them off artistically,
at that moment.
I can't name, internationally, a band
who consecutively did that six times,
including Led Zeppelin, including The Who.
[Johnny] I would say it kinda
went to "Phantom Power"
and then, things changed for the group.
[children chattering]
-[host] How are you?
-Doing okay.
[host]
So, did you make this?
-Uh, this is my nephew, Angus.
-[host] Aww.
Why is it there's so many kids
this leg of the tour?
Oh, well, we're pretty close to home here,
so this is a good chance for them.
I mean, I think the whole idea
behind this is kiddy kinda stuff anyway.
You know, so.
[host] Who's kids are they?
They are really rambunctious.
I don't know, they just showed up.
We gotta take care of 'em now too.
By that point we were all at
a stage of our lives where [inhales]
home was, and our responsibilities
at home, were way more important.
[Paul] We were all really trying
to stay on the same page,
when to tour, when not to tour
and when we're recording.
Getting enough time at home
with the kids.
[Sinclair] We missed a lot of stuff
at home on the road.
My ex-wife went into labour
with my second son
when we were in Australia,
like, moments after we landed.
I missed Emma's birth, um,
because we were on the road.
We were all going through
the same things.
I could probably count on one hand
the number of times I was home
for my anniversary, or my son's birthday.
It's fuckin' hard.
You give up a lot, but everyone else
was giving up the same things.
When he was home,
he was very, very involved.
Coached hockey teams,
soccer teams, all sorts of stuff.
But, yeah, he definitely
was gone quite a bit
and I'm extremely close with my mom
for that.
Trying to do one true beautiful thing ♪
And your beautiful thing
It'd be a beautiful thing ♪
To see that beautiful thing ♪
Continuing ♪
[Willo]
It was really tough on him. Um
He always told us, at least,
that being a dad
was his favourite job of all of them.
And he missed a lot.
He missed a lot. But he really did try
to plan out his life.
He would never miss Halloween.
He'd never miss certain holidays,
or, you know, things that were important
to our family.
[Sinclair]
I think the songs that we wrote together,
and particularly Gord's lyrics and stuff
did matter. They matter a lot to people.
It came at its cost, though.
Your beautiful thing
It'd be a beautiful thing ♪
To see that beautiful thing ♪
[Jake]
They started putting restrictions
on how long I could put them
on the road for.
We would go out for a month
or six weeks,
but then it became like, "Oh, we can't go
for more than three weeks at a time,
then we have to come home."
They wanted a much more stable home life.
They didn't want their kids
to grow up without them.
[Rob] Five late-20-something-year-olds
living in a van together on the road
gives way to five 30-somethings
living in different places
with different needs and aspirations
and demands on them.
And Gord was physically separated,
living in Toronto.
[Gord] I've just been living
in Toronto for a while.
So, I'm really kind of enjoying
being here and checking this out
and sort of getting to know the city
a little better.
Gord was living in Toronto.
Uh, you know, we were all
still down here in Kingston.
It just changed the logistics right away.
We couldn't just phone each other up
and go out for a beer. Right?
Let alone sit around and write songs.
[George] You know that it's
a destabilizing factor
when you're no longer next door. So now,
they're not seeing the same things.
They're getting space. That codependency
that becomes a big part of a band's story
is no longer there.
And it can destabilize a band
and I'm certain it destabilized here.
[Jake] Because they had the studio there,
Gord always had to go to Kingston.
So, Gord was the one forced
to kind of be away from his family,
while the rest of them
were with their families.
And it definitely was contributing
to the already unrest that was developing
amongst the guys in the band.
[Sinclair] Going into "Music at Work,"
we weren't ready to make that record.
It was getting harder and harder
to get the five of us together
to get the songs finished
before we went into the studio.
[Jake] Steve Berlin,
who had made "Phantom Power,"
they brought him back
to make "Music at Work."
[Steve] I came back feeling and thinking
that we were just gonna
pick up where we left off.
But the guys were just in
a slightly different headspace, you know?
Certainly the pressures outside of them
had grown.
It seemed like by "Music at Work,"
they were thinking more.
I couldn't make them stop thinking.
And they were a little less willing
to experiment.
[Rob] Steve Berlin said
working with us was like
trying to get something
past the Security Council.
He's not wrong.
Five guys each with a veto.
And I think that there were
a lot of senses
that the record could go
in very different directions.
[producer]
Three, two
One of the Canadian pillars
of rock 'n' roll,
Gordon Downie of the Tragically Hip,
joined forces
with one of the Canadian
pillars of comedy,
Bruce McCulloch, in the brand-new
Tragically Hip video.
We are on location for a two-day shoot.
Right now, let's go inside, check out
the, uh, what's happe oh, fuck.
["Music at Work" playing]
Everything is bleak
It's the middle of the night ♪
You're all alone and
The dummies might be right ♪
You feel like a jerk
My music at work, my music at work ♪
[Sinclair] We were trying
to finish off these songs
and not knowing how to do it, you know.
Putting lots of keyboard things on it.
Steve was contributing an awful lot
to turn a six into a nine.
And then, when it came time to tour it,
we didn't have the instrumentation
to effectively present the material.
So, we had Chris and Kate
come on the road.
[Sook-Yin] Okay,
we have a question from James.
I love the new album.
I was just wondering if there's
any particular reason you guys
had some additional vocalists,
background vocalists,
for a few of the tracks?
Chris played piano, as you know,
on the record,
and they've agreed to join us
on the road with their band.
[Chris] When Kate Fenner and I
started touring with The Hip,
I think we arrived at a time when
I couldn't compare it to other times
in the band life,
but it, they definitely
were not communicating.
When we were playing Theatre
of the Living Arts in Philadelphia,
I called a band meeting which
either Robbie or Gord Sinclair said to me,
"This is the first band meeting
we've had in five years."
I was like, "Really? I couldn't notice."
[Sinclair] By the end of the tour,
they were on stage from the get-go.
It forced a reinterpretation of songs.
You know, all of a sudden you're playing
"New Orleans is Sinking"
with a keyboard solo in it.
Or Kate has to have more to do
than play the tambourine.
So, all of a sudden,
she's singing in every song.
No offense to Chris, no offense to Kate.
Love 'em both.
But I just didn't think
it was a good idea.
I played ball because everyone else
thought it was a good idea.
But I was so kinda protective of my role,
protective of the five of us
playing together.
It feels like a whole new band.
I think that's probably why you do it.
Gord's imaginings were
that every band member is equal,
including Chris and Kate,
and nobody else felt that way.
He really wanted them fully integrated,
and part of that was,
I'm sure, his sense of alienation
from the rest of the guys.
[Johnny] It felt like a bit
a real breach of the friendship.
You know, it was just like,
"This is not cool."
[Paul] It wasn't our best period of time.
It wasn't.
We were having trouble getting along,
being on the same page.
Trouble kinda getting together.
[Gord]
We're trying to achieve familyhood.
I guess one would assume
we'd already figured that one out.
But, no, you know.
We have a lot to learn about each other
and about being in a band.
We have another question
from the audience. Hey.
I was just wondering, since Gord Downie's
coming out with a new solo album,
if that, you guys, is there any conflict
between that?
[Gord chuckles]
I'm not sure I heard that question. Um
-But, um
-What was that? No?
[girl]
The band's not gonna split up?
-No.
-No? Good!
-[Gord] No, it's, uh
-[cheering]
[Sinclair] You never want to hear
a guy in your band's making a solo record.
It kind of suggests, just by definition,
that he's unhappy in the situation
that he's in.
"Oh.
You're gonna make a solo record,
yet, you know,
we're your band, and you're in The Hip,"
and that kind of thing.
I felt threatened. I was irritated, angry.
Probably felt a little betrayed.
[Jake] Gord never kind of explained
why he wanted to make a solo record.
He just said, "Hey, guys,
I'm gonna make a solo record."
"Oh, you are?" And then,
no one confronted him on it.
Like, there was never any discussion
about it.
There's always that thought where,
"Oh, my God, if this takes off,
you know, I'm out of a job."
[Dave] I think there was
always a fear that, what if?
What if this blows up? What if
he writes something that's so good
that, like, people just want to come
to Gord Downie concerts now,
and the Hip are no longer a band?
My first foray into the Gord Downie
as a solo artist
was a show in Toronto.
In the softer hours, he's there ♪
Sitting, talking in the voice
Of your mother ♪
About leaving one good party ♪
I think, for Hip fans, they would've
scratched their head and said,
"What the fuck is this?"
And I think for people that weren't fans
or weren't aware of The Hip,
or didn't like them, would've gone,
"Wow, I didn't expect this
from Gord Downie."
I mean, I'm really just trying to learn
a thing or two.
Um, I'm trying to get access
to more words
and more ways of expressing myself.
And the ability to go deeper
with a pen and paper is very seductive.
[Paul] "Coke Machine Glow" comes out
and doesn't sound like The Hip.
Same singer, but different style.
So, I think we all thought,
"Good on ya," in the end.
I think, more like, "Well,
that's not his meal ticket. [laughs]
He's stuck with us
if he wants to pay the bills."
I just make this shit up, I'm sorry.
[Bruce] Having been in a group,
I know it can get onerous
always seeking permission
to do everything you want to do.
You wanna just go and kind of
blather out something else
without it having to go through
this sort of formal machine
that a group becomes.
You become pretty lustful for new things,
you know.
I mean, you know, I don't know how
to paint, but I want to paint.
And I don't know how to take pictures,
but I want to take pictures.
And I don't know how to make movies,
but I want to make movies.
[Bruce] I think Gord was doing that
also for the band,
so he could go do things
and get some impulses out,
and not have to drive them crazy
with everything he wanted to do.
And yeah, "I'm gonna go blow off some
steam here and then come back to you."
[Paul] I do think
by him doing that first solo record,
it kind of opened the gates up
a little bit
for allowing any of us to do that,
allowing any of us
to sort of be creative outside The Hip.
In the end, I did a couple solo ones.
You know, Robbie did a couple.
It's satisfying to be in that situation.
I can speak from personal experience.
To write and record a record where
the buck stops with you every time,
there's satisfaction in it.
Recording, writing songs together,
five people
complicated, very complicated.
The older you get,
the shorter your kinda patience becomes.
Musically, everybody was always on
the same page when they would get there.
[laughs] They would
just get on each other's nerves.
Everybody wanted it to be a specific way.
[Geddy]
The middle years are the toughest
because each musician has their own ideas
and has maybe a bit too much confidence
in their own ideas.
And so, personalities can butt heads
and that's when it's not the best idea
that wins,
it's who expresses their idea
the loudest and most insistent way.
[Rob]
We're all stubborn in our own right,
but Gord definitely had a feeling
that the person who argues the loudest
and the longest and the most passionately
should win the argument.
We kind of fell into the same trap
that we set for ourselves
with "In Violet Light"
and "In Between Evolution"
that we did with "Music at Work."
The songs weren't written going in.
[Rob] You have a year and a half
or two years to write your first album,
and all the songs are road tested.
By the time you get to your sixth album,
or seventh album,
you're writing in the studio.
So, it was suggested
from within the band
that, um we need
to go away and do a record,
like, isolate ourselves like we used to.
So, we ended up in the Bahamas.
We're makin' a record with a British guy
by the name of Hugh Padgham.
I was over the moon about this guy
because he produced The Police,
"Ghost in the Machine,"
[Dave] I can still picture Gord
sitting on the outside porch
at Compass Point Studio
with the ocean crashing in,
with this huge thing of paper that
could've been three albums worth of stuff,
and he was like, "No, this is
just the one song," you know.
[Johnny] I was doing a little walk
and I was on a beach.
And I saw Hugh and he said,
"Can I chat with you for a second?"
He said, "Now, your singer said
he was gonna change some of the lyrics."
And I said, "Well, that's the way
he works." And he goes,
"But if Sting says to me,
'I'm gonna change some lyrics,'
he changes an "and" and a "the."
And that's it, that's Sting.
But your singer, he's changed everything."
And he just didn't get that about Gord.
He's not just a singer, he's a poet.
And so, people
are gonna hang on every word now.
He really did labour over them.
And you could hear him just [sighs]
I thought he was being way too hard
on himself, you know, torturing himself.
Trying to make it perfect and often times
kind of losing the thread of
You know, you start replacing words here
and words there,
and before you know it,
you've rewritten the entire thing.
When you're in that kinda cocoon,
making a record,
you're nothing else matters.
You don't know if it's any damn good
until the smoke clears
and you see, "What have I done?" Which is
why cracks start to appear within bands.
[Rob] Our records went from being
a couple of pretty great albums,
some good, focused albums,
and then, some less focused albums.
[clears throat]
[Dave] Personally, I would say
to anybody, listen a little harder,
because "In Violet Light,"
which nobody talks about that record,
it's an incredible record.
["It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken"
playing]
When the colour of the night ♪
And all the smoke in one life ♪
Gives way to shaky movements ♪
Improvisational skill ♪
And a forest of whispering speakers ♪
Let's swear that we will ♪
Get with the times ♪
In a current health to stay ♪
Let's get friendship right ♪
And get life day to day ♪
In the forget yer skates dream ♪
Full of countervailing woes ♪
In diverse as ever scenes ♪
Proceeding on a need to know ♪
In a face so full of meaning ♪
As to almost make it glow ♪
All for a good life
We just might have to weaken ♪
And find somewhere to go ♪
Go somewhere we're needed ♪
Find somewhere to grow ♪
Go somewhere we're needed ♪
I think the early records,
and the early take of the band,
is they were like
an amazing kind of blues band.
It just felt like sweat on vinyl.
And I think, as the band went on,
the music became more complicated.
I think some of the things
that Gord was talking about
were more personal to him.
And I think some of the riff rockers
are going,
"Well, when are we going to hear
"New Orleans is Sinking" again?"
Audiences weren't as engaged.
Um, we weren't selling as many tickets.
The shows weren't as good.
We were playing full arenas.
All of a sudden, it was like,
"Do we now put curtains up
and do arena shows
that are like two-thirds full?"
[Paul]
We just noticed that the top bowl
wasn't full.
[Jake] Gord Downie hated being
up on stage in these cavernous places.
And I thought we needed something
to reinvigorate the audience.
"Let's move to theatres and we'll
do multi nights and work our way back up."
[Rob] I think there was some concern
on the band's part,
that if we bumped down to the theatres,
bumping back up could be hard.
[sound engineer]
One, two two two
[Sinclair] You start to question
each other and what you're doing.
You start to question management.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Paul] We knew that we
needed a change and, yeah,
we weren't gonna sorta change
anyone in the band.
It was heavy bananas, you know,
at the time, for sure.
And obviously, it was heavy for Jake.
[pensive music]
[Jake] Gord Downie sits down beside me,
and he starts reading this letter.
-Did you find it? Well, look at you.
-[Mike] Got it.
You have it.
[Mike]
What do we have here, Jake?
"We are slow, top-heavy, dysfunctional,
a burden to ourselves.
We're distrustful of each other and
that distrust is coming perilously close
to damaging the one pure thing
we made together,
a strong-beating,
communally creative heart."
[Sinclair] Gord would've been up,
probably for days,
writing this the way
he would write a song
Is it a mean streak
You'd swear, you'd swear ♪
changing it and massaging it
and trying to make it perfect.
You know, the breakup letter.
"The band feels it's time to part ways
with the management trust.
We've enjoyed many great times"
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Is it a mean streak
A desolation sound ♪
A copy of desire
Oh, nothing's that far down ♪
If you ask Jake, you say, "Who are you?"
he wouldn't say, "Jake Gold."
He wouldn't say, "I'm a man."
He'd say, "I'm the manager
of The Tragically Hip."
So, when that occurred,
they took away his identity.
[Jake]
But I think they felt that, maybe,
I was taking them down a road
they didn't want to go.
In addition to the fact
that they couldn't agree on anything.
And it was dysfunctional
and there was a lot of distrust.
They needed a fall guy
for their dysfunction.
We should've done something differently
than what we were doing, you know.
But Jake took the fall.
[Johnny] Like any family,
there's certain things
you just don't want to address
and you sweep it under the carpet
and you're like,
"We'll deal with it later."
But, um, we probably
should've had some therapy,
because I think, at that point,
we probably needed it.
[Sinclair] We were at another juncture
where we kinda needed
to reinvent ourselves, somehow.
Needed to inject something different
into what we were doing.
[Patrick] Bernie and I
had started managing the band.
The band had already stepped away
from arenas,
and were, you know,
already doing less business.
So, certainly part of our job was
to re-engage
and to bring the band back to arenas.
[Shannon]
Well, you have a new album out.
It came out in the U.S. last month,
called "World Container."
Did you, um, did you deliberately try
to do anything different on this CD?
Well, we had Bob Rock come in,
who's a Canadian living in Maui.
And he was a it was like opening
all the windows and doors
in a very stuffy house. Um
-Sorry. Uh, a sort of stuffy house.
-[laughs]
[Bob] Let's go from the top again,
it's getting better and better.
It's sounding really good, guys.
As a producer, Bob Rock's name had
come up a number of times over the years.
We all loved the Motley Crue album,
"Dr. Feelgood."
The Metallica "Black Album."
Great sounding record.
[Bob] Do these guys know
about the D you're playing?
Yep.
Okay. And then you come in.
When I met them,
we just concentrated on songs,
and kind of focusing what's best
about The Hip. And I found it.
I think "World Container" was interesting
because they really liked the sonics
and they saw where it could go.
[Rob] You know, every producer
comes to it with a bag of tricks,
and, uh, Bob had his eight or ten things
that blew everyone's mind a little bit.
[Bob]
You see, uh, in the riff, it goes
[imitates drums]
[band playing]
[Johnny] It was exciting to be
in the band again, at that point.
You know, to be working with Bob.
That's when it felt like it was new again.
[Sinclair] He was hands-on
with the songwriting.
He was workin' each guy individually
to draw parts out,
draw the performance out and stuff.
[laughs]
I think things are on the mend.
And Bob's pushing it.
There was a feeling that
"World Container" was gonna be kinda
some kind of return to form.
[Johnny]
We needed a lifeline. We did.
And Bob Rock put us back on the radio
when we needed to get back on the radio
to get people to come out
and see us again.
[playing "In View"]
[audience clapping to beat]
[Patrick]
The impact of "In View" was considerable,
because it was from a record then
that was different.
Yes, that turned off
some Tragically Hip fans, of course.
But it also turned on
some Tragically Hip fans,
and it was a real step back
into the spotlight.
I love you
You know I do ♪
Yeah, it's perfect ♪
Well, it isn't and it is ♪
I've been meaning to call you ♪
I've been meaning to call you
Then I do ♪
Phone rings once ♪
Phone rings twice ♪
Phone rings three times ♪
I, I am of you ♪
[phone rings]
["Morning Moon"]
The reactor's down ♪
I guess for Labour Day, today ♪
It's the first day I ain't seen ♪
A great plume of steam
From across the lake ♪
From across the lake ♪
Hey, that's a morning moon ♪
Gord said, "Bob will produce
the next record, or I'm out."
So, Bob produced the next record.
[Bob] You know,
Gord, between "World Container,"
the more we worked together,
the freer he thought.
this morning moon ♪
Whatever constraints he had,
he felt he had,
maybe they weren't there,
but he felt safe.
[singing]
-Let's solve this first lyric.
-Right?
So, would there be three verses?
The reason I ask
is because I could put like, um
[Johnny] Gord,
he's lost some confidence in his writing.
Bob instills, in Gord, the confidence.
Again, he needs a voice to tell him,
"Go down that path."
So, I just think that there
was a lot of trust there,
that he didn't have for a long time
with other people.
What was that other phrase
that you repeated before?
Yesterday, you were repeating
not "this is a curse,"
it was another line that you were
And this is as bad as, or worse.
That's what I do.
Oh, "That's what I do."
[Sinclair] Over their conversations
of making "We Are the Same," you know,
they had great ambitions of making
the great Canadian record.
This is Gord and Bob talking.
Without necessarily
bringing the rest of the guys
in on the ambition for the project,
or really what the project
is actually gonna be.
Bob went out of his way
to nurture that performance from Gord
and to cozy up to Gord.
Maybe, a little bit at the expense
of the way I would look at the band.
There was more tension because we knew
that he was spending a lot of time
with Gord, and they were talking deeply.
Of course, every producer's talking
about the lyrics,
but it just seemed like more than that.
Gord and I just became friends.
Uh, and maybe that changed the dynamic.
Bands are weird.
You're married to another four other guys,
or whatever, it's weird.
[Sinclair]
It was really the first time that Gord
was not bringing lyrical ideas
to me personally.
He was clearly having them with Bob,
and I felt super dislocated from it.
And it got a little ugly there
where, like,
Bob kinda treated the band guys
like they were the musicians,
and that Gord was the artist.
And I said to Bob,
"Gord is not The Tragically Hip.
Gord is the singer of The Tragically Hip.
The Tragically Hip are five guys
that melt together and
make this incredible music together."
It sounds like everyone's
gonna head back out
and reconvene out at Bob's place
in Maui, which will be cool.
[gunshot]
But that didn't happen.
Gord ultimately went over to Bob's place
out in Hawaii
for months to work on the vocals.
[Bob]
When I do vocals, I work quick.
So, we did a lot of backgrounds
while the band wasn't there,
which is a huge mistake,
um, not having the band there.
[indistinct chatter]
[Paul]
Bob's at the board and we walk in.
He's about to play a song,
and he was like,
"By the way, uh,
Eric and I did all the backups."
And I was like, "All of them?
Like, what do you mean, all of them?"
We weren't used to that kind of thing.
Like, "What?
You sang all the backups?"
And it's just like, "That is not The Hip.
Sorry."
I always erred on the side of
just the five of us, that's it, you know.
I was feeling protective of Gord,
and of our relationship.
It's the biggest thing.
And it didn't feel like
Bob was doing any help there.
I can't hear you ♪
I can't stay here ♪
When you get invited to
come up and sing background vocals
on your band's record,
and then you kinda realize
there's only one song that they've left
for you to sing background vocals on,
it's just like, "Okay
Fuck you, too."
And so, yeah, Paul and I walked out
on that, that session.
[Paul]
So, we were up there for three hours.
We were supposed to, we were assuming
we were gonna be a few days,
singing backups and stuff,
but just didn't happen.
That was a, that was
a very dark period for me.
Because backups are personal.
It's personal.
I can't hear you ♪
I can't stay here ♪
[Paul] It was probably Gord and I's
biggest fight.
Almost in our career, as friends.
Certainly, our biggest fight in the band.
It was the first time I'd ever been fired
from a job in my entire life,
in my own fuckin' band.
[Rob] "We Are the Same,"
or "We Are Not the Same,"
as we often refer to it.
Uh, it has some good songs on it.
But I think it really set the band back
a lot.
Hard to recover from working with him.
[commentator on TV chatter]
[Johnny]
It's not the way that The Hip works.
This is total bullshit.
[Johnny] We either work as a unit
or we don't work at all.
[George]
There are a couple of things
that you can't tell the truth about
in this country,
and one of the things you can't tell
the truth about in the country
is that the guys in The Tragically Hip
probably didn't get along
as often as everybody said they did.
Lots of bands have drama, for sure.
But with The Hip, you never saw it.
But you knew it.
Has it been a challenge
to keep the band friends?
Uh, well, I think anybody
in a long-term relationship
will tell you it has its challenges,
obviously.
Yeah, I mean, we're five guys trying
to make things every couple of years
and, uh
and sometimes, you gotta break some eggs
to make the cake.
So, yes and no, I guess, obviously.
We knew that, internally,
there were problems.
No one covered it. We couldn't bear it.
The Tragically Hip are one of those bands
where we just needed the fuckin' lie
to be real.
There was anger and frustration
and resentment.
And how do you deal with that stuff?
Everyone has their own way.
I would drink.
It got to the point with Gord
where Gord would walk into the room,
and I would instantly stand up
and pour a drink.
I just had a lot of trouble
coping with it.
There was a period there of a few years
things were pretty tough.
But when we were making
the, uh, last record,
and Gord came to me and
we sat in my room at the Bathouse,
had a little heart-to-heart.
We actually had a conversation
where we sat and talked to each other
face-to-face
as real friends could and should do,
and we got to a very good place.
Lots of tears, lots of hugs.
Lots of I love yous.
And we came out of that in a good spot.
And about six weeks later,
Gord got his diagnosis.
[playing "Pretend"]
You can't pretend ♪
And I can't pretend ♪
Pretending might end ♪
Pretend, I can pretend ♪
To end, that's right ♪
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
[man] What song is that?
-[Gord] Hm?
-[man] What song is that?
[Gord] Ah, it's just one I'm working on.
[clears throat]
[man] You got a name for it?
-[Gord] "You Can't Pretend"
-[man laughs]
[Gord] Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
I just love doing that.
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
-[man] I like it.
-[Gord] Yeah.
[man] It's a nice song.
[Gord]
Send it through to Bob.
He'd asked for it
when I was playing it, so.
The other guys haven't heard it yet.
[producer]
In five, four, three, two, one, cue.
[audience cheering]
Thank you! Ladies and gentlemen,
from Kingston, Ontario, Canada,
home of Kirk Muller, Walter Frank High
and me,
it is my honour to introduce to America,
my friends, The Tragically Hip.
[audience cheering]
["Grace Too" playing]
[Sinclair]
It's a pretty nerve-wracking event.
Even the sound check
and the run-through in the afternoon,
literally, we were like, "Holy fuck!"
So, the geniuses that we are, we thought,
"Well, maybe we should just smoke
a bit of a reefer before we go, you know?
It's never hurt us in the past."
[Dan]
I'm sure it wasn't the only substance
that had been done in that dressing room.
Hey, any way you loosen up, man!
SNL's a pressurized gig.
[Paul] I remember thinking, "I shouldn't
have taken three or four hits,
I should've just taken one."
Live and learn.
Sometimes, it's not the best idea
if you're super nervous.
["Grace Too" continues]
I said I'm Tragically Hip ♪
[audience cheers]
Come on, just let's go! ♪
Instead of "I'm fabulously rich,"
Gord said, "I'm Tragically Hip."
[Sinclair] Gord misses the first lyric,
but on a legendary scale.
And I think he started the song like that
probably for the rest of our career.
"We're the Tragically Hip!"
I thought that was
a pretty clever introduction to America.
There'll be no knock on the door ♪
I can guarantee ♪
I'm total pro ♪
There'll be no knock on the door ♪
[Dan] I told Lorne,
"I'll come back and do the show,"
but the bargaining chip was, you know,
"I gotta have The Hip.
It just has to happen."
And the audience reaction was outstanding.
It was a night of triumph, no doubt.
Just a beautiful night.
[Rob] We played, in eight minutes,
to more people
than we'd played to
in our whole career put together.
[George] Seeing my two favourite songs
being played on Saturday Night Live,
being introduced by
one of the fuckin' Blues Brothers?
I kinda feel like Canadian rock,
that was it.
Thank you to Tragically Hip,
Mr. George
Today on Break This, we have a band.
And this is not just any ordinary band.
This is The Tragically Hip.
[Jake] "Day for Night" comes out
and it blows up.
We were on a real upward trajectory.
We're headlining Maple Leaf Gardens
for the first time.
"Day for Night" was the first arena tour,
where we officially said, "Okay,
we're gonna play arenas in every market."
-It's Maple Leaf Gardens.
-[Gord] MLG.
Some day it's gonna be MSG.
[Rob] Headlining Maple Leaf Gardens,
where the Beatles played
and Elvis played one of two shows
outside of the U.S.
Saw a lot of hockey games in there,
so you can't imagine the thrill.
[Dave] Grant, go dark, please.
Grant, go dark, please.
[audience cheering]
["Fire in the Hole" playing]
You had immunity to kill ♪
You had your dreams fulfilled ♪
And I love you still ♪
But there's a power beyond control ♪
There's a fire in the hole ♪
Ah, the nights are getting cold
All your secrets will be told ♪
Turn your lanterns low ♪
[Rob] There were a couple of moments
on that tour
where the crowds would get so loud
that you couldn't hear anything
happening on stage.
I got my amp cranked up
and my guitar is cranked up
and I'm stepping on any volume pedals,
anything to get through the din.
I thought, "God, just for a second,
I know what it must've been like
to be in the Beatles."
But there's a power beyond control ♪
There's a fire in the hole ♪
Yeah, the nights are getting cold
All his secrets will be told ♪
Turn your lanterns low ♪
[Mark] Guns N' Roses,
Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, INXS.
You name the bands that were doing
arena-level business then.
And when I would see The Hip,
I'd put them in that same pantheon.
[Johnny]
There was this swell that happened
during "Day For Night."
We did craziest tours.
[man] You're gonna be touring with Page
and Plant. How do you feel about that?
Doing 15 dates with them
and hopefully get to meet them.
The first night of the tour they asked us
to come to their dressing room.
Robert Plant said, "I learned about you
through an old girlfriend,
and she turned me onto you,
and I got "Fully Completely."
Then I went back
and got the first two records
and I loved them and
I've bought every record since then."
And Jimmy Page said, "We really dig
you cats, we dig what you're doing."
And we were like,
"Wow, fuckin' Jimmy Page."
Were you big Led Zeppelin fans
when you were growing up?
You know we were.
[Jake] And then, we get four shows
with The Stones.
[Sinclair] When we're playin' with a group
like the Rolling Stones,
lookin' over at Robbie, thinkin',
you know,
if the 16-year-old us down in
the basement of his mom and dad's house
could see us now. You know?
Thank you.
Musicians love us,
Page, Plant loved us.
We have a reputation.
We played Saturday Night Live.
And now we're making
"Trouble at the Henhouse."
-[producer speaking indistinctly]
-[hens clucking]
Does anybody have hens in the band?
[Mike] I mean, there could be.
It's a metaphor, man. It's gotta be.
Paul Langlois could be
the biggest hen rocker in Canada.
Yeah, maybe.
[guitar music]
[Paul] "Trouble at the Henhouse,"
that was really our first record
that we were doing at our studio
at the Bathouse.
[Gord]
Welcome to the Bathouse.
All you people
in all those movie-ators out there.
This is our home, thank you. Welcome.
[Johnny] We'd just purchased a house
in Bath, and it was exciting.
It was exciting to be building it
and makin' a record at the same time.
I mean, it was the ultimate clubhouse.
[Jake]
Because they owned their own studio,
and because it was
just outside of Kingston,
there wasn't the sense of urgency
that we had to go in and get out,
that the clock was ticking,
'cause there was no clock.
[Rob] We'd worked with
a few producers by that point.
Self-producing seemed like
the next logical step.
[random instruments playing]
We had the list of songs
that we were working on
and you always sort of have
an A list and a B list.
The A ones are like,
these songs are working.
And then, B list are the songs
that you're trying to improve.
And on the B list
was "Ahead by a Century."
["Ahead by a Century"]
It was Paul's music and Gord's lyrics.
And we didn't feel that involved
in the song the way it was.
So, one night, after everyone left
the studio, I said to Johnny,
"Why don't you stick around
and we'll work on that song
and see if we can't get something
to happen?"
I had an open string guitar part
and Johnny worked up a thing
on a LinnDrum.
The song lifted right away.
["Ahead by a Century"]
With illusions of someday ♪
Cast in a golden light ♪
No dress rehearsal ♪
This is our life ♪
"No dress rehearsal. This is our life."
That's what you gotta do.
You gotta make the most of it.
[Sinclair] As the lyric evolves and stuff,
then you realize,
"Wow, we're working on a good song."
-And that's where the hornet stung me ♪
-That's when a hornet stung me ♪
-And I had a feverish dream ♪
-I had a feverish dream ♪
With revenge and doubt ♪
-Tonight, we smoke them out ♪
-Tonight, we smoke them out ♪
[DJ] First single from the new album,
it's called "Ahead by a Century"
and it features some great backing vocals
by Paul Langlois.
[Gord] Yeah, Paul's singing is amazing
and it totally elevated that song.
You know, we've been friends
for a long time
and we used to sort of sing together
in high school.
And I think, 'cause we have
such a friendship,
such a bond with each other,
that it's just singing together
is like, um, entirely natural.
It's just a dialogue.
[Rob] It felt like all the things that our
band was about kind of coming together.
It's sometimes a struggle to find your way
into a song,
but you find a way to make a contribution
and make it better, make it a band song.
[Bernie] The special sauce
really is the five guys.
Take any one of these members
away from this band, there is no Hip.
You are ahead by a century ♪
This is our life ♪
-You are ahead by a century ♪
-This is our life ♪
You are ahead by a century ♪
"Ahead by a Century" brought Canada
to their knees in a different way.
And I saw that this band
had a lot more going for it
than being a big rock concert band.
And then the day began ♪
I tilted your cloud ♪
You tilted my hand ♪
[Dave] It was the final song
that they ever played as a band.
It was the final notes
that The Tragically Hip
ever rang out across Canada.
I think there's no question that it's
pretty much the second Canadian anthem.
["Ahead by a Century"]
[Jake] The record company
hears "Ahead by a Century" and goes,
"Holy shit, like,
we got a real song here."
And the head of the Canadian
record company comes to me and says
We want you to play the Tower Records
opening, downtown Toronto, on the rooftop.
We'll make it a huge media event.
We will be able to get
"Trouble at the Henhouse"
prioritized at Tower Records
all around the world.
The U.K., Japan, the U.S.
We'd be front-racked in so many stores.
And that this would advance us in the U.S.
[Jake]
So, we're set up now.
All we have to do is play
on the roof of Tower Records.
[Randy]
And the band said, "You know, Randy,
we buy our records at Sam the Record Man.
You know, we're loyal to Sam's."
[Jake]
Which was a Canadian chain.
We had a big problem with that.
You know, multinational companies
coming into Canada.
Like, we were Sam the Record Man guys.
[Paul] So, it was kinda like,
"Are we selling out to the Man,
and you know, doing all that?"
Ninety-nine out of 100 bands
would have pulled their knickers down
for an opportunity like this.
And yet, they sat at me, straight faced,
and they went, "Respectfully no."
[laughs]
[Rob] Maybe we'd pumped the brakes
a little more than was necessary.
We were never so big
on these record store promotion things.
It didn't feel right for us.
[Sinclair] Had we done this gig,
maybe the record company
would've participated a little bit more
and things may have been different.
But should we have played that gig? No.
[Jake]
The crazy thing about it, you know,
Sam's in Canada had their own magazine,
called Network Magazine.
Network Magazine comes out and
it's that illustration of Gord on a cross
at the US/Canada border.
And it was like one of these
typical Canadian media,
caring about, "Oh, we
have not broken huge in the U.S. yet."
And yet, they were helping
perpetuate that.
[Rob]
Jesus, that's disturbing.
Never seen that before.
Sam's had no fucking clue
that we had basically turned down
playing for Tower
because they said, "We shop at Sam's,
and we need to support
our Canadian retailers."
[Paul] Any article that was talking about
us not being successful in the States,
I always felt was bullshit. It's like,
"Why don't you come out on tour with us?"
They're probably writing those articles
while we were down
playing multiple nights at Irving Plaza
and the 9:30 Club,
or State Theatre in Chicago.
So, fuck them.
["Gift Shop"]
The beautiful lull ♪
[laughing]
The dangerous tug ♪
We get to feel small ♪
From high up above ♪
[Randy] This is a band
that could have sold out to America
15 times, off the top of my head,
and they chose to say no
because they wanted to have the integrity
of their conviction.
So, what are you gonna do?
Punish them for that?
Looking at The Tragically Hip and saying,
"But what about America?"
I just thought it was so weak.
[host] It seems the only thing tragic
about The Hip
is their failure to crack the U.S. market
in a big way.
Even after the release
of "Trouble at the Henhouse,"
a more mainstream disc
full of catchy hooks,
the question remains unanswered.
Why do you think
that the American public
hasn't quite gotten
the Tragically Hip yet?
Maybe they were never meant to.
And you don't think
that got in their fuckin' heads?
Every human being is deeply affected
by everything said to them,
and they said it to them
all the time.
[Gord]
I'm the guy out there living it, you know.
And someone sort of saying,
basically, "Does this bum you out?
You know, when I pick this scab,
does it hurt?"
I just did three interviews, and
all three people I did interviews with
said their editors wanted
the main thrust of the story
to be the canyon that exists
between our success in Canada
and our success in America.
[Sinclair] This kind of stuff
has dogged us all along,
and it's dogged a lot of Canadian bands.
One of the things in the Canadian
character to be admired the least
was our desperate, cloying need
to succeed outside of here
in order to be even kind of respected,
or taken seriously,
or worth being paid attention to.
[Dallas] It didn't matter
if you were popular in Canada.
It was like,
"What's America think of you?"
And I watched tons of bands
go through that, just as a fan of them,
and then, I went on to experience it
from my own perspective.
[video game gunfire]
[Denise]
The reality is, we live beside
the biggest cultural exporter
on the planet.
It's almost like
we're up against the glass.
We're at the game, we're not in it.
And then, you had a band like the Hip
and Gord going like,
"Hey, we don't need to do that.
We don't have to sing
for our supper anymore, man.
We're cool right where we are.
And we don't need to get it validated
by them."
[Sinclair]
People look on us as a cautionary tale
and a tale of failure
in the United States.
I take exception to that,
because we enjoyed an amazing career
in the United States.
[Sam] We've been down there.
We toured with them in the States.
To put it in context, The Hip
played the best rooms in America.
They weren't playing at the arenas
necessarily,
but they played at all the clubs
where any band worth their salt
would want to play.
Any band would be quite happy with
The Hip's career in the United States.
It's just that they
became so iconic in Canada
that you weren't gonna mirror that.
It was going to be a different thing,
wherever it was.
[Bernie]
The Hip are a global band.
Any band who can play
anywhere in the fuckin' world
to thousands of people every night
on the big bills.
The Hip did it consistently for 25 years.
-Thank you. Merci.
-[audience cheering]
Take care of each other.
Now get some sleep.
[chanting]
Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip!
["Leave" on TV]
[Dave] One night,
after Gord's daughter was born,
we were watching a show.
Gord was sitting right beside me.
And he was particularly manic,
running across the stage and
jumping over monitors and climbing things.
And we were all laughing.
[laughing]
And I look at Gord
and he's just serious
["Put It Off" playing]
staring at the TV.
I wrote unfriendly things ♪
And he's just like, "I'm a clown."
Truly cruel ♪
On the day that you were born ♪
[Dave]
"And I don't want to be a clown.
I don't want my children to grow up
thinking Daddy was a clown.
You know what? Tomorrow plug in
Paul's acoustic for me at sound check."
I put it off, I put it off ♪
[Dave]
For him, it was a a grounding spot.
It was, "I can stand here and strum along
during Robbie's guitar solo
instead of having to having to spin around
in circles on my mic stand."
[Paul] I totally understand
why he wanted to play guitar
and why he wanted
to just sort of calm down.
"Let me just be a musician
with you guys, please."
So, strapping on the guitar, I think,
was part of his way to deal with that.
I put it on, I put it on
I put it on again ♪
I'm playing a lot more guitar lately,
and I find I'm communing with the music
on a different level.
There was never an audition. [laughs]
So, everyone had feelings about it,
you know. Everyone did.
I hated it. [laughing] Are you kidding me?
He was one of the best frontmen
anywhere ever.
And strap an acoustic guitar on
and it pins you down.
[Paul] There was a worry,
probably in my head,
"Oh, is he gonna be
just playing guitar now?
Because what you were doin' back there
is pretty good,
you know, when you dance around
and stuff."
[Sinclair] He would kind of stand
in one spot and kind of strum.
Which, for the audience,
wasn't what they were used to seeing.
You could see fans go, "Pfft, he's
playing the guitar on this one." You know.
I don't think anyone really embraced it.
But he was ready for a change.
The other thing is, he could see that,
the more he moved around,
the more people
started pushing the barricade,
and we started to have security issues.
And then, he just thought,
"I'm gonna play guitar.
I'm just not gonna move around as much."
[Paul]
The testosterone levels up there are high.
We had a period of time
where it was very male aggressive.
Really on the edge of violence.
At our shows, it was mostly dudes
doing this stuff.
Being carried on each other
and on the stage and jumping up
and leaping. And that's
what rock and roll was there for awhile.
[Ricky] And I feel sorry
for the young ladies that were
You know, they waited in line,
some of them, all day or whatever.
They got up front
and by the time the lights go down,
we're basically plucking them
out of the front
because they were just getting crushed.
[Rob]
And it could get rough out there.
And then, you start seeing people
get taken out on stretchers after gigs.
And it's like, "Yeah, this isn't cool.
We need to change tack here."
You can make adjustments to the set.
Gord would say things from the stage.
You all be good to each other down here.
Hip shows are for men and women.
None of you boys
keep muscling out the girls.
I definitely was trying to figure out,
"How do you control this?"
And so, I'm protecting all these people
up front, that was my gig.
And, um, I wanted more women there.
I thought, "We're not doing it this way.
We're not going to do this this way."
[producer speaking indistinctly]
["Bobcaygeon" playing]
I left your house this mornin' ♪
It was a quarter after nine ♪
Could have been the Willie Nelson ♪
Could have been the wine ♪
As the band aged,
the music got a little mellower.
They wrote songs like "Bobcaygeon."
And there was more women
coming to the shows.
It was in Bobcaygeon
I saw the constellations ♪
Reveal themselves one star at a time ♪
I mean, that line;
that "I saw the constellations
reveal themselves one star at a time."
I can't look at a night sky
without "Bobcaygeon" coming into my mind.
The power of that imagery
and the power of connection there,
it's because we all lived that.
All of us have had that morning.
[Sinclair] Beautiful song. But what
Steve Berlin brought to that, sonically,
just small little bits of keyboard
that he put in there,
really elevated that song.
[Berlin] I tried to approach it
as if it was a new band.
Like I'm not worried about their legacy,
I'm not worried about anything
but making a great record.
On "Bobcaygeon," they'd come up
with a chord sequence.
It sounded like an older Hip song,
like something I would've associated
with like "Road Apples."
So, my suggestion was,
"What if we tried it like
a little bit like an R&B song."
[bass playing]
That was kinda when
the door opened on that one.
[Johnny] In a lot of ways, Steve Berlin
was the best producer we ever had.
He's a musician and would talk to,
you know,
Robbie and Paul and Gord
about the shape of a song.
He understood us,
he understands band dynamics.
And so, he was the right guy for us.
[playing guitar riff]
There were three, four
really important songs
in the larger Hip oeuvre, you know,
came out of that record.
["Poets" playing]
[Steve Berlin] "Poets" is one
that was like two different ideas.
There was the verse was one thing
and the chorus was a different thing.
I said, "What if we use that as a verse
and that bit as a chorus?"
They're like, "Really?
Yeah, let's give it a shot."
Don't tell me what the poets are doing ♪
Don't tell me that
They're talking tough ♪
Don't tell me that they're anti-social ♪
Somehow not anti-social enough
That's right ♪
"Don't tell me that poets are antisocial.
Somehow not antisocial enough."
"Don't tell me
how the universe is altered
when you find out how he gets paid.
All right." Yeah, sick.
Don't tell me what the poets are doing ♪
Those Himalayas of the mind ♪
Don't tell me
What the poet's been doing ♪
In the long grasses over time ♪
[Paul] The video, it's at kind of
a semi-famous house in Kingston.
'Cause it's just a bunch of cats.
Like, too many cats.
[reporter] It all started out
as a simple enough idea,
just one single little kitty.
And then, it sort of took off from there.
Now, 20 years later,
the family of Donna and Jack Wright
has mushroomed
into 145 cats under one roof.
I think we resurrected The Rodents idea
for that, you know,
because the cats and the rodents.
And then, you get to the place.
Oh, it was horrible.
It smelled like cat piss, dander,
humidity, you know, all the things
you want to be doing on a hot summer day.
It was our first experience
working with you cinematically.
[Mike] Gord said, "I think we should do it
in the house of cats."
-[whimpers]
-[Mike] And I said, "Gord, I'm allergic."
Oh, no!
[Mike] And he whispered in my ear,
"So am I."
[laughs]
[Sinclair]
It was a really important record for us
at a really important time in our career.
[Will] I think the reason they had
so many hit records in a row
was because they were just
constantly doing stuff
that got them off artistically,
at that moment.
I can't name, internationally, a band
who consecutively did that six times,
including Led Zeppelin, including The Who.
[Johnny] I would say it kinda
went to "Phantom Power"
and then, things changed for the group.
[children chattering]
-[host] How are you?
-Doing okay.
[host]
So, did you make this?
-Uh, this is my nephew, Angus.
-[host] Aww.
Why is it there's so many kids
this leg of the tour?
Oh, well, we're pretty close to home here,
so this is a good chance for them.
I mean, I think the whole idea
behind this is kiddy kinda stuff anyway.
You know, so.
[host] Who's kids are they?
They are really rambunctious.
I don't know, they just showed up.
We gotta take care of 'em now too.
By that point we were all at
a stage of our lives where [inhales]
home was, and our responsibilities
at home, were way more important.
[Paul] We were all really trying
to stay on the same page,
when to tour, when not to tour
and when we're recording.
Getting enough time at home
with the kids.
[Sinclair] We missed a lot of stuff
at home on the road.
My ex-wife went into labour
with my second son
when we were in Australia,
like, moments after we landed.
I missed Emma's birth, um,
because we were on the road.
We were all going through
the same things.
I could probably count on one hand
the number of times I was home
for my anniversary, or my son's birthday.
It's fuckin' hard.
You give up a lot, but everyone else
was giving up the same things.
When he was home,
he was very, very involved.
Coached hockey teams,
soccer teams, all sorts of stuff.
But, yeah, he definitely
was gone quite a bit
and I'm extremely close with my mom
for that.
Trying to do one true beautiful thing ♪
And your beautiful thing
It'd be a beautiful thing ♪
To see that beautiful thing ♪
Continuing ♪
[Willo]
It was really tough on him. Um
He always told us, at least,
that being a dad
was his favourite job of all of them.
And he missed a lot.
He missed a lot. But he really did try
to plan out his life.
He would never miss Halloween.
He'd never miss certain holidays,
or, you know, things that were important
to our family.
[Sinclair]
I think the songs that we wrote together,
and particularly Gord's lyrics and stuff
did matter. They matter a lot to people.
It came at its cost, though.
Your beautiful thing
It'd be a beautiful thing ♪
To see that beautiful thing ♪
[Jake]
They started putting restrictions
on how long I could put them
on the road for.
We would go out for a month
or six weeks,
but then it became like, "Oh, we can't go
for more than three weeks at a time,
then we have to come home."
They wanted a much more stable home life.
They didn't want their kids
to grow up without them.
[Rob] Five late-20-something-year-olds
living in a van together on the road
gives way to five 30-somethings
living in different places
with different needs and aspirations
and demands on them.
And Gord was physically separated,
living in Toronto.
[Gord] I've just been living
in Toronto for a while.
So, I'm really kind of enjoying
being here and checking this out
and sort of getting to know the city
a little better.
Gord was living in Toronto.
Uh, you know, we were all
still down here in Kingston.
It just changed the logistics right away.
We couldn't just phone each other up
and go out for a beer. Right?
Let alone sit around and write songs.
[George] You know that it's
a destabilizing factor
when you're no longer next door. So now,
they're not seeing the same things.
They're getting space. That codependency
that becomes a big part of a band's story
is no longer there.
And it can destabilize a band
and I'm certain it destabilized here.
[Jake] Because they had the studio there,
Gord always had to go to Kingston.
So, Gord was the one forced
to kind of be away from his family,
while the rest of them
were with their families.
And it definitely was contributing
to the already unrest that was developing
amongst the guys in the band.
[Sinclair] Going into "Music at Work,"
we weren't ready to make that record.
It was getting harder and harder
to get the five of us together
to get the songs finished
before we went into the studio.
[Jake] Steve Berlin,
who had made "Phantom Power,"
they brought him back
to make "Music at Work."
[Steve] I came back feeling and thinking
that we were just gonna
pick up where we left off.
But the guys were just in
a slightly different headspace, you know?
Certainly the pressures outside of them
had grown.
It seemed like by "Music at Work,"
they were thinking more.
I couldn't make them stop thinking.
And they were a little less willing
to experiment.
[Rob] Steve Berlin said
working with us was like
trying to get something
past the Security Council.
He's not wrong.
Five guys each with a veto.
And I think that there were
a lot of senses
that the record could go
in very different directions.
[producer]
Three, two
One of the Canadian pillars
of rock 'n' roll,
Gordon Downie of the Tragically Hip,
joined forces
with one of the Canadian
pillars of comedy,
Bruce McCulloch, in the brand-new
Tragically Hip video.
We are on location for a two-day shoot.
Right now, let's go inside, check out
the, uh, what's happe oh, fuck.
["Music at Work" playing]
Everything is bleak
It's the middle of the night ♪
You're all alone and
The dummies might be right ♪
You feel like a jerk
My music at work, my music at work ♪
[Sinclair] We were trying
to finish off these songs
and not knowing how to do it, you know.
Putting lots of keyboard things on it.
Steve was contributing an awful lot
to turn a six into a nine.
And then, when it came time to tour it,
we didn't have the instrumentation
to effectively present the material.
So, we had Chris and Kate
come on the road.
[Sook-Yin] Okay,
we have a question from James.
I love the new album.
I was just wondering if there's
any particular reason you guys
had some additional vocalists,
background vocalists,
for a few of the tracks?
Chris played piano, as you know,
on the record,
and they've agreed to join us
on the road with their band.
[Chris] When Kate Fenner and I
started touring with The Hip,
I think we arrived at a time when
I couldn't compare it to other times
in the band life,
but it, they definitely
were not communicating.
When we were playing Theatre
of the Living Arts in Philadelphia,
I called a band meeting which
either Robbie or Gord Sinclair said to me,
"This is the first band meeting
we've had in five years."
I was like, "Really? I couldn't notice."
[Sinclair] By the end of the tour,
they were on stage from the get-go.
It forced a reinterpretation of songs.
You know, all of a sudden you're playing
"New Orleans is Sinking"
with a keyboard solo in it.
Or Kate has to have more to do
than play the tambourine.
So, all of a sudden,
she's singing in every song.
No offense to Chris, no offense to Kate.
Love 'em both.
But I just didn't think
it was a good idea.
I played ball because everyone else
thought it was a good idea.
But I was so kinda protective of my role,
protective of the five of us
playing together.
It feels like a whole new band.
I think that's probably why you do it.
Gord's imaginings were
that every band member is equal,
including Chris and Kate,
and nobody else felt that way.
He really wanted them fully integrated,
and part of that was,
I'm sure, his sense of alienation
from the rest of the guys.
[Johnny] It felt like a bit
a real breach of the friendship.
You know, it was just like,
"This is not cool."
[Paul] It wasn't our best period of time.
It wasn't.
We were having trouble getting along,
being on the same page.
Trouble kinda getting together.
[Gord]
We're trying to achieve familyhood.
I guess one would assume
we'd already figured that one out.
But, no, you know.
We have a lot to learn about each other
and about being in a band.
We have another question
from the audience. Hey.
I was just wondering, since Gord Downie's
coming out with a new solo album,
if that, you guys, is there any conflict
between that?
[Gord chuckles]
I'm not sure I heard that question. Um
-But, um
-What was that? No?
[girl]
The band's not gonna split up?
-No.
-No? Good!
-[Gord] No, it's, uh
-[cheering]
[Sinclair] You never want to hear
a guy in your band's making a solo record.
It kind of suggests, just by definition,
that he's unhappy in the situation
that he's in.
"Oh.
You're gonna make a solo record,
yet, you know,
we're your band, and you're in The Hip,"
and that kind of thing.
I felt threatened. I was irritated, angry.
Probably felt a little betrayed.
[Jake] Gord never kind of explained
why he wanted to make a solo record.
He just said, "Hey, guys,
I'm gonna make a solo record."
"Oh, you are?" And then,
no one confronted him on it.
Like, there was never any discussion
about it.
There's always that thought where,
"Oh, my God, if this takes off,
you know, I'm out of a job."
[Dave] I think there was
always a fear that, what if?
What if this blows up? What if
he writes something that's so good
that, like, people just want to come
to Gord Downie concerts now,
and the Hip are no longer a band?
My first foray into the Gord Downie
as a solo artist
was a show in Toronto.
In the softer hours, he's there ♪
Sitting, talking in the voice
Of your mother ♪
About leaving one good party ♪
I think, for Hip fans, they would've
scratched their head and said,
"What the fuck is this?"
And I think for people that weren't fans
or weren't aware of The Hip,
or didn't like them, would've gone,
"Wow, I didn't expect this
from Gord Downie."
I mean, I'm really just trying to learn
a thing or two.
Um, I'm trying to get access
to more words
and more ways of expressing myself.
And the ability to go deeper
with a pen and paper is very seductive.
[Paul] "Coke Machine Glow" comes out
and doesn't sound like The Hip.
Same singer, but different style.
So, I think we all thought,
"Good on ya," in the end.
I think, more like, "Well,
that's not his meal ticket. [laughs]
He's stuck with us
if he wants to pay the bills."
I just make this shit up, I'm sorry.
[Bruce] Having been in a group,
I know it can get onerous
always seeking permission
to do everything you want to do.
You wanna just go and kind of
blather out something else
without it having to go through
this sort of formal machine
that a group becomes.
You become pretty lustful for new things,
you know.
I mean, you know, I don't know how
to paint, but I want to paint.
And I don't know how to take pictures,
but I want to take pictures.
And I don't know how to make movies,
but I want to make movies.
[Bruce] I think Gord was doing that
also for the band,
so he could go do things
and get some impulses out,
and not have to drive them crazy
with everything he wanted to do.
And yeah, "I'm gonna go blow off some
steam here and then come back to you."
[Paul] I do think
by him doing that first solo record,
it kind of opened the gates up
a little bit
for allowing any of us to do that,
allowing any of us
to sort of be creative outside The Hip.
In the end, I did a couple solo ones.
You know, Robbie did a couple.
It's satisfying to be in that situation.
I can speak from personal experience.
To write and record a record where
the buck stops with you every time,
there's satisfaction in it.
Recording, writing songs together,
five people
complicated, very complicated.
The older you get,
the shorter your kinda patience becomes.
Musically, everybody was always on
the same page when they would get there.
[laughs] They would
just get on each other's nerves.
Everybody wanted it to be a specific way.
[Geddy]
The middle years are the toughest
because each musician has their own ideas
and has maybe a bit too much confidence
in their own ideas.
And so, personalities can butt heads
and that's when it's not the best idea
that wins,
it's who expresses their idea
the loudest and most insistent way.
[Rob]
We're all stubborn in our own right,
but Gord definitely had a feeling
that the person who argues the loudest
and the longest and the most passionately
should win the argument.
We kind of fell into the same trap
that we set for ourselves
with "In Violet Light"
and "In Between Evolution"
that we did with "Music at Work."
The songs weren't written going in.
[Rob] You have a year and a half
or two years to write your first album,
and all the songs are road tested.
By the time you get to your sixth album,
or seventh album,
you're writing in the studio.
So, it was suggested
from within the band
that, um we need
to go away and do a record,
like, isolate ourselves like we used to.
So, we ended up in the Bahamas.
We're makin' a record with a British guy
by the name of Hugh Padgham.
I was over the moon about this guy
because he produced The Police,
"Ghost in the Machine,"
[Dave] I can still picture Gord
sitting on the outside porch
at Compass Point Studio
with the ocean crashing in,
with this huge thing of paper that
could've been three albums worth of stuff,
and he was like, "No, this is
just the one song," you know.
[Johnny] I was doing a little walk
and I was on a beach.
And I saw Hugh and he said,
"Can I chat with you for a second?"
He said, "Now, your singer said
he was gonna change some of the lyrics."
And I said, "Well, that's the way
he works." And he goes,
"But if Sting says to me,
'I'm gonna change some lyrics,'
he changes an "and" and a "the."
And that's it, that's Sting.
But your singer, he's changed everything."
And he just didn't get that about Gord.
He's not just a singer, he's a poet.
And so, people
are gonna hang on every word now.
He really did labour over them.
And you could hear him just [sighs]
I thought he was being way too hard
on himself, you know, torturing himself.
Trying to make it perfect and often times
kind of losing the thread of
You know, you start replacing words here
and words there,
and before you know it,
you've rewritten the entire thing.
When you're in that kinda cocoon,
making a record,
you're nothing else matters.
You don't know if it's any damn good
until the smoke clears
and you see, "What have I done?" Which is
why cracks start to appear within bands.
[Rob] Our records went from being
a couple of pretty great albums,
some good, focused albums,
and then, some less focused albums.
[clears throat]
[Dave] Personally, I would say
to anybody, listen a little harder,
because "In Violet Light,"
which nobody talks about that record,
it's an incredible record.
["It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken"
playing]
When the colour of the night ♪
And all the smoke in one life ♪
Gives way to shaky movements ♪
Improvisational skill ♪
And a forest of whispering speakers ♪
Let's swear that we will ♪
Get with the times ♪
In a current health to stay ♪
Let's get friendship right ♪
And get life day to day ♪
In the forget yer skates dream ♪
Full of countervailing woes ♪
In diverse as ever scenes ♪
Proceeding on a need to know ♪
In a face so full of meaning ♪
As to almost make it glow ♪
All for a good life
We just might have to weaken ♪
And find somewhere to go ♪
Go somewhere we're needed ♪
Find somewhere to grow ♪
Go somewhere we're needed ♪
I think the early records,
and the early take of the band,
is they were like
an amazing kind of blues band.
It just felt like sweat on vinyl.
And I think, as the band went on,
the music became more complicated.
I think some of the things
that Gord was talking about
were more personal to him.
And I think some of the riff rockers
are going,
"Well, when are we going to hear
"New Orleans is Sinking" again?"
Audiences weren't as engaged.
Um, we weren't selling as many tickets.
The shows weren't as good.
We were playing full arenas.
All of a sudden, it was like,
"Do we now put curtains up
and do arena shows
that are like two-thirds full?"
[Paul]
We just noticed that the top bowl
wasn't full.
[Jake] Gord Downie hated being
up on stage in these cavernous places.
And I thought we needed something
to reinvigorate the audience.
"Let's move to theatres and we'll
do multi nights and work our way back up."
[Rob] I think there was some concern
on the band's part,
that if we bumped down to the theatres,
bumping back up could be hard.
[sound engineer]
One, two two two
[Sinclair] You start to question
each other and what you're doing.
You start to question management.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Paul] We knew that we
needed a change and, yeah,
we weren't gonna sorta change
anyone in the band.
It was heavy bananas, you know,
at the time, for sure.
And obviously, it was heavy for Jake.
[pensive music]
[Jake] Gord Downie sits down beside me,
and he starts reading this letter.
-Did you find it? Well, look at you.
-[Mike] Got it.
You have it.
[Mike]
What do we have here, Jake?
"We are slow, top-heavy, dysfunctional,
a burden to ourselves.
We're distrustful of each other and
that distrust is coming perilously close
to damaging the one pure thing
we made together,
a strong-beating,
communally creative heart."
[Sinclair] Gord would've been up,
probably for days,
writing this the way
he would write a song
Is it a mean streak
You'd swear, you'd swear ♪
changing it and massaging it
and trying to make it perfect.
You know, the breakup letter.
"The band feels it's time to part ways
with the management trust.
We've enjoyed many great times"
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Is it a mean streak
A desolation sound ♪
A copy of desire
Oh, nothing's that far down ♪
If you ask Jake, you say, "Who are you?"
he wouldn't say, "Jake Gold."
He wouldn't say, "I'm a man."
He'd say, "I'm the manager
of The Tragically Hip."
So, when that occurred,
they took away his identity.
[Jake]
But I think they felt that, maybe,
I was taking them down a road
they didn't want to go.
In addition to the fact
that they couldn't agree on anything.
And it was dysfunctional
and there was a lot of distrust.
They needed a fall guy
for their dysfunction.
We should've done something differently
than what we were doing, you know.
But Jake took the fall.
[Johnny] Like any family,
there's certain things
you just don't want to address
and you sweep it under the carpet
and you're like,
"We'll deal with it later."
But, um, we probably
should've had some therapy,
because I think, at that point,
we probably needed it.
[Sinclair] We were at another juncture
where we kinda needed
to reinvent ourselves, somehow.
Needed to inject something different
into what we were doing.
[Patrick] Bernie and I
had started managing the band.
The band had already stepped away
from arenas,
and were, you know,
already doing less business.
So, certainly part of our job was
to re-engage
and to bring the band back to arenas.
[Shannon]
Well, you have a new album out.
It came out in the U.S. last month,
called "World Container."
Did you, um, did you deliberately try
to do anything different on this CD?
Well, we had Bob Rock come in,
who's a Canadian living in Maui.
And he was a it was like opening
all the windows and doors
in a very stuffy house. Um
-Sorry. Uh, a sort of stuffy house.
-[laughs]
[Bob] Let's go from the top again,
it's getting better and better.
It's sounding really good, guys.
As a producer, Bob Rock's name had
come up a number of times over the years.
We all loved the Motley Crue album,
"Dr. Feelgood."
The Metallica "Black Album."
Great sounding record.
[Bob] Do these guys know
about the D you're playing?
Yep.
Okay. And then you come in.
When I met them,
we just concentrated on songs,
and kind of focusing what's best
about The Hip. And I found it.
I think "World Container" was interesting
because they really liked the sonics
and they saw where it could go.
[Rob] You know, every producer
comes to it with a bag of tricks,
and, uh, Bob had his eight or ten things
that blew everyone's mind a little bit.
[Bob]
You see, uh, in the riff, it goes
[imitates drums]
[band playing]
[Johnny] It was exciting to be
in the band again, at that point.
You know, to be working with Bob.
That's when it felt like it was new again.
[Sinclair] He was hands-on
with the songwriting.
He was workin' each guy individually
to draw parts out,
draw the performance out and stuff.
[laughs]
I think things are on the mend.
And Bob's pushing it.
There was a feeling that
"World Container" was gonna be kinda
some kind of return to form.
[Johnny]
We needed a lifeline. We did.
And Bob Rock put us back on the radio
when we needed to get back on the radio
to get people to come out
and see us again.
[playing "In View"]
[audience clapping to beat]
[Patrick]
The impact of "In View" was considerable,
because it was from a record then
that was different.
Yes, that turned off
some Tragically Hip fans, of course.
But it also turned on
some Tragically Hip fans,
and it was a real step back
into the spotlight.
I love you
You know I do ♪
Yeah, it's perfect ♪
Well, it isn't and it is ♪
I've been meaning to call you ♪
I've been meaning to call you
Then I do ♪
Phone rings once ♪
Phone rings twice ♪
Phone rings three times ♪
I, I am of you ♪
[phone rings]
["Morning Moon"]
The reactor's down ♪
I guess for Labour Day, today ♪
It's the first day I ain't seen ♪
A great plume of steam
From across the lake ♪
From across the lake ♪
Hey, that's a morning moon ♪
Gord said, "Bob will produce
the next record, or I'm out."
So, Bob produced the next record.
[Bob] You know,
Gord, between "World Container,"
the more we worked together,
the freer he thought.
this morning moon ♪
Whatever constraints he had,
he felt he had,
maybe they weren't there,
but he felt safe.
[singing]
-Let's solve this first lyric.
-Right?
So, would there be three verses?
The reason I ask
is because I could put like, um
[Johnny] Gord,
he's lost some confidence in his writing.
Bob instills, in Gord, the confidence.
Again, he needs a voice to tell him,
"Go down that path."
So, I just think that there
was a lot of trust there,
that he didn't have for a long time
with other people.
What was that other phrase
that you repeated before?
Yesterday, you were repeating
not "this is a curse,"
it was another line that you were
And this is as bad as, or worse.
That's what I do.
Oh, "That's what I do."
[Sinclair] Over their conversations
of making "We Are the Same," you know,
they had great ambitions of making
the great Canadian record.
This is Gord and Bob talking.
Without necessarily
bringing the rest of the guys
in on the ambition for the project,
or really what the project
is actually gonna be.
Bob went out of his way
to nurture that performance from Gord
and to cozy up to Gord.
Maybe, a little bit at the expense
of the way I would look at the band.
There was more tension because we knew
that he was spending a lot of time
with Gord, and they were talking deeply.
Of course, every producer's talking
about the lyrics,
but it just seemed like more than that.
Gord and I just became friends.
Uh, and maybe that changed the dynamic.
Bands are weird.
You're married to another four other guys,
or whatever, it's weird.
[Sinclair]
It was really the first time that Gord
was not bringing lyrical ideas
to me personally.
He was clearly having them with Bob,
and I felt super dislocated from it.
And it got a little ugly there
where, like,
Bob kinda treated the band guys
like they were the musicians,
and that Gord was the artist.
And I said to Bob,
"Gord is not The Tragically Hip.
Gord is the singer of The Tragically Hip.
The Tragically Hip are five guys
that melt together and
make this incredible music together."
It sounds like everyone's
gonna head back out
and reconvene out at Bob's place
in Maui, which will be cool.
[gunshot]
But that didn't happen.
Gord ultimately went over to Bob's place
out in Hawaii
for months to work on the vocals.
[Bob]
When I do vocals, I work quick.
So, we did a lot of backgrounds
while the band wasn't there,
which is a huge mistake,
um, not having the band there.
[indistinct chatter]
[Paul]
Bob's at the board and we walk in.
He's about to play a song,
and he was like,
"By the way, uh,
Eric and I did all the backups."
And I was like, "All of them?
Like, what do you mean, all of them?"
We weren't used to that kind of thing.
Like, "What?
You sang all the backups?"
And it's just like, "That is not The Hip.
Sorry."
I always erred on the side of
just the five of us, that's it, you know.
I was feeling protective of Gord,
and of our relationship.
It's the biggest thing.
And it didn't feel like
Bob was doing any help there.
I can't hear you ♪
I can't stay here ♪
When you get invited to
come up and sing background vocals
on your band's record,
and then you kinda realize
there's only one song that they've left
for you to sing background vocals on,
it's just like, "Okay
Fuck you, too."
And so, yeah, Paul and I walked out
on that, that session.
[Paul]
So, we were up there for three hours.
We were supposed to, we were assuming
we were gonna be a few days,
singing backups and stuff,
but just didn't happen.
That was a, that was
a very dark period for me.
Because backups are personal.
It's personal.
I can't hear you ♪
I can't stay here ♪
[Paul] It was probably Gord and I's
biggest fight.
Almost in our career, as friends.
Certainly, our biggest fight in the band.
It was the first time I'd ever been fired
from a job in my entire life,
in my own fuckin' band.
[Rob] "We Are the Same,"
or "We Are Not the Same,"
as we often refer to it.
Uh, it has some good songs on it.
But I think it really set the band back
a lot.
Hard to recover from working with him.
[commentator on TV chatter]
[Johnny]
It's not the way that The Hip works.
This is total bullshit.
[Johnny] We either work as a unit
or we don't work at all.
[George]
There are a couple of things
that you can't tell the truth about
in this country,
and one of the things you can't tell
the truth about in the country
is that the guys in The Tragically Hip
probably didn't get along
as often as everybody said they did.
Lots of bands have drama, for sure.
But with The Hip, you never saw it.
But you knew it.
Has it been a challenge
to keep the band friends?
Uh, well, I think anybody
in a long-term relationship
will tell you it has its challenges,
obviously.
Yeah, I mean, we're five guys trying
to make things every couple of years
and, uh
and sometimes, you gotta break some eggs
to make the cake.
So, yes and no, I guess, obviously.
We knew that, internally,
there were problems.
No one covered it. We couldn't bear it.
The Tragically Hip are one of those bands
where we just needed the fuckin' lie
to be real.
There was anger and frustration
and resentment.
And how do you deal with that stuff?
Everyone has their own way.
I would drink.
It got to the point with Gord
where Gord would walk into the room,
and I would instantly stand up
and pour a drink.
I just had a lot of trouble
coping with it.
There was a period there of a few years
things were pretty tough.
But when we were making
the, uh, last record,
and Gord came to me and
we sat in my room at the Bathouse,
had a little heart-to-heart.
We actually had a conversation
where we sat and talked to each other
face-to-face
as real friends could and should do,
and we got to a very good place.
Lots of tears, lots of hugs.
Lots of I love yous.
And we came out of that in a good spot.
And about six weeks later,
Gord got his diagnosis.
[playing "Pretend"]
You can't pretend ♪
And I can't pretend ♪
Pretending might end ♪
Pretend, I can pretend ♪
To end, that's right ♪
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
[man] What song is that?
-[Gord] Hm?
-[man] What song is that?
[Gord] Ah, it's just one I'm working on.
[clears throat]
[man] You got a name for it?
-[Gord] "You Can't Pretend"
-[man laughs]
[Gord] Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
I just love doing that.
You can't pretend ♪
Yes, I can, yes, I can
Yes, I can ♪
-[man] I like it.
-[Gord] Yeah.
[man] It's a nice song.
[Gord]
Send it through to Bob.
He'd asked for it
when I was playing it, so.
The other guys haven't heard it yet.