Ahead by A Century

It’s hard to name a band more beloved in Canada than the Tragically Hip. Formed in 1984 by a group of high school friends in Kingston, they quickly became a favourite of student bars and hangouts in and around Queen’s University, led by magnetic frontman Gord Downie and backed by bassist Gord Sinclair, lead guitarist Rob Baker, drummer Johnny Fay and—after a brief stint with saxophonist Davis Manning—rhythm guitarist Paul Langlois.

Even after the Hip was discovered by music managers Allan Gregg and Jake Gold in 1986, the band’s origins playing bar gigs stuck with them throughout the years. They were signed by MCA and began releasing ever-more-successful albums, touring North America and selling out shows from San Francisco to Chicago. Their commitment to frenetic, high-energy performances goes a long way to explaining their hold on the Canadian imagination. Even as they were putting together their own festivals and surfing the airwaves, you could still catch them playing for hometown crowds.

Then, in 2015, Gord Downie received a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. Soon afterward, the band organized a farewell tour, which began in Victoria and worked its way east, ending in a now-legendary final show in Kingston, watched by 11.7 million Canadians. For the band’s 40th anniversary, a new docuseries directed by Mike Downie, Gord’s brother, cracks open the archives to deliver a definitive history of the band. Ahead of the September 20 release of The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal on Prime Video, we spoke with the band, Jake Gold and Mike Downie about the group’s three-decade reign.

The Hip was born in Kingston circa 1984. You guys met in high school. How did you start playing together?

Gord Sinclair: I grew up across the street from Rob, so I’d known him since I was two years old. We grew up as little kids dancing together, playing tennis rackets like guitars. We even cut a piece of plywood to look like a guitar.

Rob Baker: Gord Sinclair and I started playing together when we were around 13, and we played in bands all through high school. There was a competing band a year behind us, the Filters, who were lousy—but they had a good singer, a guy named Gord Downie. The year after we graduated, he asked me to play with them.

Mike Downie: I shared a room with my brother for 20 years, until he moved out. All along, his bandmates were just friends from high school and Queen’s. No matter how big they got, they were the same modest guys.

Johnny Fay: In 1984, I saw the Filters open for another band at the Lakeview Manor, a now-closed venue in Kingston. Seeing Gord Downie, a guy from my high school, up on stage was just mind-blowing. I went away for a summer to study drumming, and when I got back, my mom said, “A guy phoned you and said he wants you to audition for a band—he said his name was Doug Downie.” I said, “I don’t know any Doug Downie” and forgot about it. Four days later, I saw the note she’d written in the kitchen. It was Gord, not Doug! That guy was a rock star, and he wanted me to audition? I thought I’d blown it. But it worked out—I got my first job in music.

Paul Langlois: I learned to play guitar so I could perform some songs for my mom as a Christmas present—I’d blown all my OSAP money in my first two months of university, so it was all I could afford. The next year, I quit school and became a cab driver in Kingston. Gord Downie and I had been best friends through high school, and one day waiting at my cab, I saw him come out of a club with a bunch of beautiful women—classic. I yelled out his name, and I’ll never forget how happy he was to see me. We hung out for the next four years as the Hip slowly came together, though I never played with them. By 1986, I had decided to pack a bag and try my luck in Nashville, but Gord was so sad to see me go that he begged the guys to let me join the band.

Johnny: A couple of us said, “Can he play anything?” Gord was just like, “It doesn’t matter—he’ll pick it up.” Our sax player had just quit, and both Gords were thinking we needed another guitar player. They were totally right.

Paul: I created a role for myself, which was just to play with Johnny and Gord Sinclair, stay within my limits and make no mistakes. Gradually I fit in. It was lucky—like Johnny, this was my first band, and I could already tell it was going somewhere.

In 1986, you guys got scouted by Jake Gold, who was running the Management Trust, and Allan Gregg, who was working as a pollster for the federal Conservative party. How did a bunch of rocker kids hanging out in bars end up negotiating with guys in suits?

Gord: When we first met the management guys, it was like, Oh, there’s a next step to this? We didn’t really aspire to be recording artists. It was always just, When is the next gig going to be?

Jake: Allan played me the band’s tape in the car while we were driving to a Blue Jays game, and I thought Gord Downie’s voice was interesting, so I set up a gig at Larry’s Hideaway, a cabaret-style club in the basement of the Prince Carlton Hotel, across from Allan Gardens, where they knew a guy.

Rob: They had us open for a Rolling Stones cover band. I had to lug my amplifier through the park to get there, and my hands were so tired. I’m sure I had a terrible show.

Jake: Thirty seconds into the first song, I was sold. I said, “We have to sign them!” I had been in the music business for five years at that point, and I had a sense of what greatness was: it’s when you just go, “Holy shit!” I felt it then, and I knew if I did, others would too. Sure enough, when they were finished, the crowd gave them a standing ovation—and they’d never seen them before.

Rob: We went to the Pilot Tavern in Yorkville afterward to meet Allan and Jake, and I was suitably unimpressed. Gord Sinclair was the main songwriter, and Gord Downie was the face, so Allan took the two “important” guys down to one end of the table and left the three dummies with Jake. I was like, “This is my fucking band!” We had a pretty big fight about whether to go with them or not.

Gord: We knew Allan Gregg had a reputation as a smart guy. But it was contentious for sure. We never worked democratically—everything had to be unanimous. It was hard to make decisions without voices getting raised and feelings getting hurt, but we’d always come back around to the issue at hand. And that’s what we did.

Rob: At first, we thought Allan was the brains of the operation and Jake would do the day-to-day work. In retrospect, Jake turned out to be the brains and Allan stepped aside.

Johnny: Jake is like our brother. We’ve done some things that we can’t really talk about. But there were also things like prank phone calls in the middle of the night, you know. He took his lumps very well. But, really, in the early times he was a pillar for us. As managers do, after a gig he’d say, “We made a lot of money last night!”

Gord: Allan financed our first EP, The Tragically Hip, in 1987 and brought in Ken Greer to produce it. Ken really helped us make our songs better. We were recording in Sounds Interchange in Toronto rather than in some tiny studio in Kingston, which felt like a big deal. When you hold your first EP as a young man and see your mug on the cover, it’s like, Oh, this is pretty cool!

Jake: I set up a showcase at the Horseshoe Tavern to show them to Bruce Dickinson at MCA in November of 1988. The venue let them go on early, at 8 p.m., before the opener, so there was no one there. I remember Bruce standing beside me and pinching himself. They were signed in January and were recording in Memphis by the end of the month.

That recording session led to Up to Here in 1989, followed by Road Apples in New Orleans in 1990 and Fully Completely in 1992. The band was getting more and more airtime. When did it start to feel like things were really taking off?

Paul: We were just trying to stay together long enough that we could keep the ship sailing. We toured Canada three times before we recorded our first album, which we didn’t love the sound of, but it did get a bit of play on Much Music. Then Bruce, who had signed us with MCA, suggested we work with Don Smith, a producer who had worked with Keith Richards. He was exactly what we were hoping for: he just wanted us to sound like ourselves. That album was Road Apples, and sure enough, people liked it. By the time we got home from touring our next one, Fully Completely, in England, we knew we were there. We had “Locked in the Trunk of a Car,” “Fifty-Mission Cap,” “Courage”—we could do whatever we wanted. It was a great feeling.

Rob: The very first time we got together, played and sounded pretty good, it felt like we were a success. A couple of days later, we had our first original song idea, and again, it felt like we were a good, successful band. Every little success after that just added to the pile. It wasn’t like crossing a finish line or summitting Everest. It was more like, I managed to put one foot in front of the other. Success!

Johnny: People have asked us if we’d change anything in those 40 years. No! We had fallow periods, but they allowed us to be reflective. There was no internet, so people assumed we were in Australia playing a gig or making some record in England when really we were at home in Kingston, just hunkering down, left to our own devices.

Mike: It was wonderful watching my brother in the band all those years. There were so many shows and high-water marks for them, and every time something new happened, it filled me with pride. The first film I ever directed was a rock documentary, Heksenketel, which follows their Another Roadside Attraction tour in 1993. I had been working in television for only about a year, but Jake and Allan lent me $17,000—not nearly enough—to follow the band from Vancouver to Thunder Bay. Somehow we pulled it off, and the next year it was amazing to see my own film, on VHS, sitting with their records in the front row of every record store.

Jake: For the band, family was first. You trusted them; they gave you the benefit of the doubt. Mike was family, not an outsider.

Mike: I got to work with Gord on three music videos in 1998, for “Poets,” “Something On” and “Bobcaygeon.” I had done some music videos already, but nothing like those, with a proper budget and songs that became big hits. It was a huge boost in my career as a director.

Jake: I remember standing stageside when they played the Forks in Winnipeg for War Child in 2000. Gord walked out in front of a crowd of 100,000 and just went wild. I turned to Denise Donlon, who was there filming it for Much Music, and said, “This is why we do this.” It’s the greatest high in the world.

There’s this myth that you never broke into the US, but you played plenty of shows down there. Can you share some stories from south of the border to disprove that idea?

Rob: If the myth sells records, keep it alive!

Johnny: Canada loves to do that to artists. First it happened to the Guess Who, then to us, then to Our Lady Peace, then to Sam Roberts, then to the Arkells. Yet all of us played those same places in New York, Chicago and Miami. We could sell out venues in Tucson, San Francisco and Pittsburgh; we even did four nights at the House of Blues. And we did it on our own terms.

Paul: We toured the States constantly. If we did two months in Canada, we’d do six months in the US. But that talk started anyway. Look, come with us on the bus for six gigs in a row and tell us we haven’t made it. We had a story in every city, but the American media never covered us. We weren’t ever mentioned in Rolling Stone.

Johnny: Actually, we were—we got two sentences, about our final show in Kingston. Thanks, Rolling Stone.

Rob: Any US band would be thrilled to be able to play to 1,000 people a night, and that’s what we did. Well, eventually—we once played to four people in Bloomington, Indiana, and to two people in Hoboken, New Jersey. But we also played to zero people in Hamilton one time. It’s just what happens when you’re a young band. You get shitty gigs, and you just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Jake: Most bands would be happy with having a career like they did in the US, and no band has ever been as big as they were in Canada. It wasn’t their ambition to get huge in the US. They wrote about Canadian stuff, and they were unabashed about it.

Gord: We never had the benefit of having a national hit in the United States, but regional radio gave us a lot of support. Wherever they were playing ice hockey, we did really well.

In the early years, both Gords wrote songs, as did Paul. But, from Road Apples on, Gord Downie wanted to write all the lyrics. How did that sit with the band?

Paul: I remember handing him some lyrics and him looking distinctly unpleased, not knowing what they meant. That was the beginning of it.

Gord: It was another one of those really difficult band meetings. Gord Downie was, unquestionably, evolving as a great songwriter. I totally appreciated the idea that, to be a convincing singer, he felt it had to be his own words, his thoughts, his feelings. But, at the same time, four heads are better than one. I always thought we were cutting ourselves off by having just one songwriter. But Gord felt strongly enough, and the band was the most important thing. So that’s the way we went.

Rob: It was sort of a dictate, and I don’t like dictates, so it bothered me. We were all coming up with ideas, but when you’re told, Don’t bother, don’t try, it stunts your growth. Then again, maybe that was all the dope I smoked.

Gord: It changed the way we wrote songs, because Gord Downie wasn’t a guitarist, and that made him a great songwriter. He could put the lyrics ahead of the meter and the melody. It made the Hip what it was, so it all worked out great.

Paul: The thing is, it probably made us all dig into the music more and focus on the riffs, the rhythms and the arrangement. Gord Downie was good at writing lyrics, and he was doing it relentlessly. I think it was the right call.

The documentary describes the early 2000s as your “middle years.” After several major tours and frenetic performances, Gord Downie decided to tone down his stage antics. He also began living in Toronto while the rest of you stayed in Kingston. Then there was a stadium tour that didn’t sell well, and Jake was fired. What was going on?

Gord: It was the creep of real life into what we were doing. We started the group as young men, and the band always came first. As we got older, got married and started having kids, you realize, Oh, it doesn’t come first anymore.

Rob: We spent so much time on the road—we left our partners behind as rock-and-roll widows. When we were home, it made sense to be with them. Gord Downie married a woman from Toronto, so he had to be in Toronto.

Gord: That made it way more difficult for us to get together and do friend stuff, let alone band stuff. When we were all in Kingston, it was so easy to get an idea goofing around on the guitar then bring it to the guys. Now we had to actually schedule it. It was like date night.

Rob: And date-night sex sucks.

Jake: Their camaraderie was based around the music together. When they talked, they tended to communicate only about the bad stuff, not the good stuff. Gord Downie never asked if doing a solo album was okay. He just left it hanging in the air.

Rob: I felt a lot of resentment, bitterness and anger about that. Gord Downie was the face of the band. He was surrounded by people in Toronto saying, “You don’t need those guys—you should play with us.” He called them the fart sniffers: everything you emit smells like roses. But, over time, he started to listen to them.

Jake: I was fired by the band in 2003. There was a lot of tension in the last tour before it happened, so it was a big weight off my shoulders. Two weeks later I got a gig on Canadian Idol, so I figured, “Oh, I guess somebody wants me.” In retrospect, losing me helped them. They had to talk and figure out their careers together.

Rob: As soon as I heard Gord Downie’s solo album, I thought, Oh, this isn’t going anywhere. He’s going to be with us for a long time.

In 2015, Gord Downie had a seizure on the day of his father’s funeral in Kingston. The next day, he received a diagnosis of brain cancer. How did you find out about it ?

Rob: I was with him at the funeral. It was a lovely, touching day, and we agreed that the next night we’d go see Daniel Romano at the grad club at Queen’s University. That same day, I got a call from him around six o’clock saying, “I’m not going to make it. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.” It wasn’t until the next day that I learned he’d called me from the hospital.

Johnny: I got a call about the diagnosis. I didn’t really know what was going on—it was just all Hang tight, we’ll get you more information.

Gord: The first diagnosis gave us a glimmer of hope. But then more results came back from the lab, and we learned it was glioblastoma—a brain tumour.

Paul: He had one brain surgery, and then another one, and he was pretty out of it for a few months. Only then did we learn it was a terminal diagnosis. We were all in shock, but he was totally normal about it.

It was Gord Downie’s idea to do one last tour, starting in Victoria and playing towns across the country before ending in Kingston, where it all began. What did you think of that idea? And what was it like playing together for the last time?

Paul: The spring after Gord’s surgeries were all over, he came to me and said, “Didn’t we make a record?” I told him that we did and that it was coming out in June. He asked me, “Weren’t we going to tour?” When I responded that, originally, that had been the plan, he replied, “Well, are we going to tour?” When I hesitated, he said, “I want to tour! We made a record!”

Paul: I knew he could do it. No offence to the other guys, but they didn’t think he could. I believed in him one thousand per cent.

Rob: I thought it was the worst idea I’d ever heard. I’ve never vetoed an idea in this band in 33 years, but I was really on the verge of it. I thought it would be like attending a funeral every night, across the country, with the guy whose funeral it was right there on stage. Plus, what if he had a grand mal seizure in front of everyone’s cellphones? I just hated the idea.

Gord: Gord wanted to play, and I just wanted to hang out like we did as kids. I never thought for a second that we were actually going to perform for people. I was just happy to play. It’s what I miss more than anything.

Paul: I saw him every day. He never stopped working. He’d go downstairs and ride on an exercise bike, listening to every song we ever wrote, and then come up all sweaty and say, “Okay, we should do this deep cut.” Then I’d have to get on the phone with everybody and say, “All right, guys, we’re going to do this one.” And they’d say, “What?!”

Rob: Gord wanted it to be this huge three-hour show with all these interludes and breaks. The dress rehearsal was in shambles.

Johnny: It was really hard on Paul, because Gord would just say, “This our final tour—I want to do these songs.” Every night was different, and Paul had to lay out each set on a Bristol board, mixing in the obscure tunes while massaging hits in there. He put the whole thing together masterfully. We knew in Victoria what we were going to play in Kingston. Rob: The first night was surprisingly good. And every successive night, Gord got stronger. He was benefiting from the love of the people. And my fears were not realized.

Gord: He just kept getting better and better. He had a couple of key treatments that cleared his head and stopped the tumour from growing for a couple of months. And he hit it out of the park. Every night, off we’d go out for dinner and just have the best time. He pulled it off. He pulled it off like crazy.

Mike: That final show in Kingston was televised, and 11.7 million Canadians watched. It was a special thing for me to experience that outpouring of grief. It showed the true impact he had on people. And all the while, I just kept thinking that this was someone I grew up with, shared a room with and loved. I feel a deep gratitude for my brother and the life that he lived.

Making the documentary, all roads led to the tragedy of Gord’s passing. The project is all about gratitude and pride in what the band accomplished, and to have been a small part of it is something I’ll take to the grave. I’ll never work on something as meaningful to me and my family again. It’s like a home movie, except for an international audience.

The last song you played together was an extended cut of “Ahead By a Century,” with an outro that seemed to go on forever. What was going through your minds while playing that?

Johnny: I had this little dinosaur of a drum machine that plays on that track, which we had live as well. Once, in Calgary, me and Robbie got out of sync, so I had to stop it. In Kingston, all I was thinking about was not screwing it up—you can see Robbie and I looking at each other, counting in.

Gord: Everyone helped hold Gord Downie up. When he faltered with the words, the audience would sing back to him, helping him find his place. We could have done three more weeks of shows, and I’m sorry that we didn’t.

Paul: It was the obvious last song. It starts with Robbie’s acoustic, then I come in with electric, and the rhythm is incredible. There’s something all-encompassing about it. When we got off the stage, the first thing Gord Downie said to me was, “That really felt like the last show.” And I agree. How do you go out any better?

Johnny: It dawned on me as we did the outro, This is it. No one wanted to end it. We might still be playing it now, I swear to God. I would love to be back on stage with those guys. It would mean Gord was still here.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.