My generation
of Montreal musicians got burned, man. When we came up in
the late ‘70s and ‘80s in a PQ-dominated, referendum-mad
Quebec there was close to nothing even resembling an anglo
music scene here: a handful of punk/alternative bands hardly
anybody cared about -- with the possible exception of Men
Without Hats, whose success originated out of England anyway
-- and a whole lotta bar bands doing Zeppelin covers at shitholes
like the Moustache, a rocker bar directly across from the
old Forum.
The biggest local
bands at the time were a fuckin’ Styx tribute called
Traxis and the Blushing Brides, who pretended they were the
Rolling Stones. CHOM, which had actually been a relatively
cool FM radio station earlier in the decade, if and when they
could be bothered to champion local bands, would hype these
fuckin’ cover groups as if they were actually something,
smugly ridiculing punk/alt bands like my own as novelty acts
because we had the audacity to write our own songs and, in
their eyes, couldn’t play to begin with and wore funny
looking clothes. Montreal was a virtual musical wasteland
back then, and anybody who wanted any recognition for their
shit had little choice but to flee to Toronto, New York, London,
L.A. . . . anywhere really; it felt like musicians in Regina
had it better than we did here.
Yet
only a decade earlier, back in the swingin’ '60s/early
‘70s, there’d been a legitimate anglo music scene
in Montreal. Damn, it rivalled the relative prosperity of
the scene today. Artists like the Haunted, the Rabble, JB
and the Playboys, April Wine, Gino
‘fuckin’ Vanelli, Andy Kim; these
dudes were making records locally and reaching audiences across
the continent. English Montreal, before everybody got spooked
by Rene Levesque et al and fled for more welcoming pastures,
had a genuinely happening thing going on. And at least part
of the credit for that has to be attributed to a local TV
show, produced by CFCF 12, called Like Young.
Like Young
began life in 1962 as a way for Channel 12 to reach the
then enormous teen market. “You have to realize,”
says Jim McKenna, who at the tender age of 17 scored the gig
to host the program, “at that time there were more Canadians
under 25 than at any other period in history, so we were just
responding to who the audience was. Back then stations like
CFCF had to do a lot of local programming. CTV wasn’t
even a network yet, so each station had to produce a lot of
its own content. Like Young was just one of many
shows CFCF 12 put together.”
Although initially
an education/info-entertainment thing for the youngins –
“our first shows featured stuff like Ukrainian folk
bands and teenagers talking about arts and crafts,”
recalls McKenna today. Like Young soon morphed into
an all-music show, showcasing pretty well every major –
and minor – artist who ever passed through Montreal
in that most musical of decades. The Beatles, the Stones,
Martha Reeves, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Tim Hardin, The
Haunted, Joni Mitchell, Tommy James and the Shondells, Joe
Tex, Ben E King, “basically if you had a half-way decent
single in that decade you probably would have been on Like
Young – and almost certainly if you were a Montreal
or Canadian act.”
Most interestingly,
the show was shot live-to-air every Saturday night from 6
to 7 pm, with none of that lip-synced stuff and kids dancing
to the hit parade common to other youth shows of the day,
like American Bandstand. “We had the perfect
time slot,” recalls McKenna, “because say a group
were performing at the Forum or Esquire Show bar, we could
get them on shortly after they’d done their soundcheck
and before they had to be back at the venue for their gig.
When we couldn’t get a band to come play live in our
studio, like, say, the Beatles, then we’d send a crew
to film their show and I’d go over and interview them,
airing it the following week. We ran a lot of film clips like
that, shooting artists backstage, at their rehearsals, recording
sessions, but the vast majority of Like Young was
shot live-to-air in the CFCF studio.”
The format worked.
According to McKenna, by the mid-1960s Like Young
had become a Saturday night Montreal tradition that was killing
not only in the local ratings, but nationally as well. “We
were getting three times the audience in our time slot than
all the other stations combined.”
In 1971 the show
got picked up by Dick Clark’s empire and started airing
prime time in all the major U.S. markets as well.
“Like
Young was the first ever Canadian program to be syndicated
to the U.S,” McKenna offers proudly. “We always
wanted our show to be somewhat redeeming, to be hip, and by
that time we were well into the Woodstock era, a spirit Like
Young fully embraced. I suspect Dick probably figured he could
reach an audience with us that he simply couldn’t attract
with the American Bandstand format anymore.”
Looking
back, McKenna reckons much of Like Young’s
appeal came from the variety of acts they’d book on
to the program. A typical Like Young episode could
include a band like Alice
Cooper or the Blues Magoos alongside
the likes of Tom T Hall, the Turtles, and/or a couple local
acts like Andy Kim or The Wackers.
“We had
such a wide gamut of artists on our show. We’d have
these so-called “underground artists” alongside
country, R&B, and bubblegum acts. Basically whatever was
happening is what we’d have on. We never had a policy
of “we do this, we don’t do that.” Whoever
was coming through town or coming on to the scene would generally
find themselves on our show.”
Not all of the
“underground artists,” however, were as certain
of Like Young’s hip quotient as McKenna might
have been. “I remember when Frank
Zappa did our show,” recalls McKenna,
“He was at the height of his hipness then. He’d
even recorded a two album set with Wild Man Fischer –
this totally psychotic freak he found on Sunset Boulevard.
I mean, Warner Brothers would have let him produce anything
at that time. Anyway, off-camera the guy was intense but friendly,
but as soon as he got on-camera he suddenly became this big
counterculture creep, saying stuff to me like "I don't
really dig doing these stupid interviews," giving me
a rough time, being aloof, challenging me on everything, not
answering questions, basically just putting me down. He certainly
wasn't all that aloof or anti-establishment when it came to
the record business though. His record exec told me that when
he met him at the airport the first thing Zappa wanted to
know as soon as he got off the plane was how his sales were
doing.”
“You see,
a lot of these bands wanted to be counterculture”, McKenna
continues, “they weren’t getting any AM radio
play, they were appealing to a druggy, underground, FM radio
rock crowd. So when they’d get on television they sort
of had to portray that they weren’t buying into any
of this commercial TV bullshit, that they didn’t need
it. So I’d often have to deal with these artists like
Zappa. And yeah, it could be embarrassing sometimes.”
Funny enough,
it was actually comedian Jerry Lewis who, of all the performers
who visited the Like Young set, McKenna recalls as being the
most difficult.
“We generally
only had rock stars and singers on the show, so having him
as a guest was weird to begin with, but he wanted to be on
because he had a new movie coming out and knew we could deliver
him big numbers. Anyway, apparently Lewis arrived at the CFCF
studio with a sirens-blazing police escort and decided to
stumble on to the set unannounced, hamming it up something
fierce while shamelessly milking the audience for applause.”
“When he
finally sat down for our interview I didn’t have much
prepared for him so we just talked about his new movie for
awhile. After that subject was exhausted I threw him some
softball question and suddenly this dark look comes over his
face and he turns on me, grabs the mic out of my hand and
shouts “Let me teach you something about comedy, boy!”
So he starts lecturing
me very loudly for awhile and then just stops in the middle
of his rant, screams “Who needs this!” drops the
mic to the floor and walks off the show. To this day I still
can’t watch that asshole on his Telethon with his fake
sincerity and crocodile tears. He was probably the biggest
jerk I ever encountered.”
“That was
the thing about being live to air,” says McKenna, “It
was like doing a Broadway show and it was opening night every
week. It was an amazing high. Every week I’d do a show
and then come home and pour myself a drink and get into a
hot bath just to try to come down because the adrenaline was
so high. It was an exciting effort because you were on edge
all the way through. But it was also really fun.”
