It’s been 35 years since The Tragically Hip’s debut album even here signaling the arrival of what would become Canada’s most popular rock band. Singles like “Blow at High Dough” and “New Orleans Is Sinking” made their mark, with the latter reaching #30. BillboardMainstream Rock radio tracks. The album itself is diamond-certified in Canada for sales of over one million units, and won the band a Juno Award for Most Promising Artist, a title they soon surpassed when they became the “Canadian Beatles.”
Deluxe remastered edition of even here Released on Friday (November 8), it includes live tracks, album demos, and four unheard studio tracks. One of them is “Get Back Again,” a song that blends acoustic and electric guitars. Guitarist/songwriter Gord Sinclair says American songwriter“It was one of my songs singing the lyrical idea that doing things the right way is often harder than just giving in to temptation or a quick reward.” The group performed the song in Canada in 1988 before even here Recording sessions at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.
“Back Again”
Sinclair recalls: “That song wasn’t always easy for us, and we were still learning our craft in the studio.” “We were all playing together at the same time, including Gord [Downie] singing in the ISO booth. We got the kind of live vibe that the band had, and the first time we played it, it was just a magical version of the song. I remember we were all looking at each other [thinking] “Yeah, we did it.” And then the engineer literally said: “That was awesome guys.” “Another one like that and we’ll set the record.” He adds, laughing: “We’ve never played it this good again.”
The guitarist mentioned that the band thought the song was a knockout for their debut, but while they were recording the album in Memphis, they were further inspired.
He says: “We were so excited to be in Memphis, we actually wrote a better acoustic song called ’38 Years. “Literally, beginning to end. And the other song was shocked off the record. That’s when we really started to realize that together we’re stronger and more efficient as songwriters.”
“He regretted it immediately”
They couldn’t play “38 Years Old” right after a certain point because people thought it was autobiographical on the part of singer/lyricist Gord Downie. It wasn’t, it was inspired by the escape from the notorious Millhaven Institution Prison in Kingston, Ontario. The narrator of the song is the brother of a man imprisoned for killing the man who raped his sister. The inmate’s name is Mike, and since Downey’s real-life brother has the same name, people mistakenly assumed there was a connection to his own life.
“When it first came out, it sold so well that people were saying, ‘Is your brother still in the box? Sinclair recalls. “That was his biggest issue, where he had this line Your sister was raped and a man was murdered. He regretted, from the moment the tape was recorded, that he had written it that way. He told the story very well and very effectively. But it’s an ugly lyric, the idea of rape and murder. He regretted it immediately. We rarely played it live, and that’s the main reason.
Tragic Hip has always moved forward and learned from their experiences. A great example of this was when they opened four stadium shows for the Rolling Stones in 1995, including a show in front of 85,000 people in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Sinclair says: “It actually made us a better band in a lot of ways,” Sinclair says. “It was a big audience that you know isn’t there to see you. We were doing public acceptance shows with them at soccer stadiums in Europe. It’s like your first day of high school where you go in and your goal is to not get hit. You’re in a completely new environment, and all you can do is be true to yourself. We stood there and played and walked out of the theater and felt good. Literally, not booing on stage was kind of the theme of the rehearsal. We came out of the theater and there was Mick Jagger in the lobby. “Great show, guys,” he said. The 16-year-old in you says: “Oh my God, I’m having a conversation with Mick Jagger about my band, which he just praised.”.“It was truly inspiring in many ways, and forced us to rise to the occasion.”
“Man, they made us a better band”
Sinclair says they had a parallel experience when Midnight Oil opened for them on their Canadian tour in 1993. The guitarist exclaimed: “Man, they made us a better band.” “We had to learn how to play better than we already did because it was great to play with them. We’re music lovers, first and foremost, and that means something, the power of performance and musicianship and the band’s ability to rock and roll with each other.
The most inspiring thing for the guys in The Tragically Hip is the activism of Midnight Oil. They taught them how to use their platform as successful artists for a good cause.
“They came with us to do a tour in Canada, and that was their first gig [was] They got on a private plane, and they went up to Clayoquot Sound where they were [loggers] Sinclair says: “It was a clear old growth forest.” “They went there in our country just to play for [environmental] the protesters who were there, and they literally taught us that. You have this platform, comrades, to help promote social change – not necessarily taking sides, but definitely taking sides in terms of right and wrong. [Singer] Peter Garrett and [drummer] Rob Hurst, we had a great time with them. And again, it changed our trajectory in so many ways.”
In the last years of his life, team captain Gord Downie committed himself to being an Indigenous activist in Canada.
It was another profound tour experience for the Hip when they opened for Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 1995. The Canadian band recently released their album Day to Night They were walking around to support him.
“It was fun to play live,” Sinclair says of this release. “And here we are supporting half of Led Zeppelin. You never know how these things come together. But Robert was a real fan of the band, and we were still writing and working all the time, so we were setting up a little drum kit and speakers in our dressing room. We were playing all the time, and Robert used to come and play with us every day, just hanging out and playing music. He was just inspiring. I never thought I was 16 years old that we were going to sit down and play music with the golden god of rock. These opportunities that we’ve had have been really cool. But he’s a music lover, and we’re music lovers. It’s about melodies and playing and having fun.”
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