It was a life-changing blow for Lewis, who later in life suffered from clinical depression. But while the band continued recording and touring, it had lost its place in line. “This was the Head’s turn,” the group’s disappointed manager, Jack Morrow, told The Globe at the time. The promising schedule of shows was cancelled – a major opportunity missed. The force of the impact broke his back and some ribs as well. Lewis, a passenger, was wearing a lap seatbelt. “I knew we were going to crash,” Lewis told the Hamilton Spectator. The tires skidding on the road was sound of the group’s early-career momentum coming to a halt.
Lewis landed in a hospital intensive care unit after the van the band was travelling in ran off a county road into a ditch near Elora, Ont. Shortly before the tour was set to begin, however, their luck abruptly came to a halt.
CHORDS IN TAKE A BREAK HAMILTON SERIES
The mob chanted “fight, fight, fight.” And a harmless, simple-minded rock and roll band welcomed the international attention that arose from the melee.Ī series of showcase gigs in New York were arranged in hopes of landing a U.S. Mounted policemen pushed the crowd back through a hail of beer bottles, stones and firecrackers.
The band gained front-page notoriety when, on June 2, 1980, some 1,000 angry fans battled 75 police officers for almost four hours outside Toronto’s Ontario Place after they were refused admission to a sold-out concert. Parents did not exist it was the teenagers’ turn to “heat up the RCA.” For a young generation raised on corporate beer-commercial jingles, they offered electric anthems – “Give me that opener, give me that beer” – for the house-party people. Within Teenage Head’s repertoire were proposals that were often irresistible ( Let’s Shake) but not always practical ( Let’s Go To Hawaii, a cover). “And he was always a gentleman, calling me Mr. “I remember Gord as living for the music,” Mair told the Globe and Mail.
Mixing pop-song savvy with joyous rockabilly energy and proto-punk swagger, Teenage Head recorded seven LPs and EPs between 19, including a pair of successful albums in the early 1980s for Attic Records, a Canadian independent label co-founded by Alexander Mair. It can end the same way.įrom 2015: Teenage Head: The band that (unintentionally) inspired Canadian punkįrom its inception, Frankie Venom contributed the lyrics Lewis wrote the unfancy music. Its 2017 compilation album is Fun Comes Fast. The band will be remembered for a bad twist of fate.
CHORDS IN TAKE A BREAK HAMILTON FULL
In a punk world full of Johnnys – Thunders and Ramone – Canada rolled with a Gordon.īut here’s the thing: The words lucky and Teenage Head don’t belong in the same sentence. New York had its Dolls Canada had theirs. Its live-wire shows were the stuff of lore – riot starters, literally. Beginning with its chugging debut single Picture My Face in 1978, the Head rocked lean and hard and bopped with cocksure esprit.
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