Abstract
Spielmacher begins with a young man’s discovery of a progressive pastiche of incongruous elements, the magic of a Max Webster cassette glinting seductively within a sister’s boyfriend’s vinyl-covered case. He investigates the music of Max as a polyphony of sounds and sentiments, ranging from hard rock to progressive eclecticism, transporting themes from the pen of the inscrutable Pye Dubois – at one moment celebrating the motifs of a distinct Southwestern Ontario hoser identity and its take on jolly-seeking and the mating ritual, the next slyly provoking notions of American uptight patriotism, status seeking, and warmongering. The band produced five of the most exciting records of the late 70 s and early 80 s, guitarist/singer Kim Mitchell the heart and Dubois the anti-romantic soul. Trailing Canadian rising stars Rush around North America and the world, trying hard to ‘put a little blood in America’s veins’, Max Webster sought but never found the acceptance they deserved. The band’s wonderful weirdness may be what made wider success impossible for them, yet, it allowed their regional audience to discover, in the music and in themselves, something exuberantly different from mainstream American culture.
‘Max Webster? Oh, yeah, I think I’ve heard of him…Did you check under ‘W’?
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- 1.
The title of a Triumph album I discovered around the same time.
- 2.
The Zappa influence is mentioned in many of the reviews cited by Popoff; it is also mentioned by Derek Oliver on the back cover of the High Class in Borrowed Shoes reissue from Rock Candy Records: ‘They played complex progressive rock with a nod to King Crimson and Frank Zappa’.
- 3.
Max Webster (originally released on Taurus Records, 1976).
- 4.
‘Hoser’ (also ‘hose-head’) is a term associated with a certain type of Canadian numbskull that many Canadians associate with SCTV’s ‘Great White North’ segments, hosted by Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas). One suggestion for the origin of the term is that it is a reference to each player on the losing team of a hockey game, who were given the inglorious task of hosing down the rink after the game, smoothing the skating surface for the next users.
- 5.
From the album Hemispheres.
- 6.
These ‘Canadian’ mentions come from ‘April in Toledo,’ from Universal Juveniles; the title ‘Sarniatown Reggae,’ from Live Magnetic Air; and ‘Research (At Beach Resorts),’ from A Million Vacations, respectively.
- 7.
Live Magnetic Air: The Unlikely Saga of the Superlative Max Webster. Popoff’s passion for the band might very well be unequalled, although Derek Oliver also acknowledges that ‘to those who discovered them, they were arguably the most important rock band in the world’ (Oliver).
- 8.
Pevere is referring partly to the receding hairlines of Kim Mitchell and Mike Tilka (bassist on the first two albums), Mitchell’s more apparent by the third album, Mutiny Up My Sleeve.
- 9.
‘The Party’ from Mutiny Up My Sleeve.
- 10.
Haglund refers to social identity theory to explain Canadians’ attempt to define ourselves by determining what we are not: ‘any difference…will suffice to instill in members of a group a sense of distinctive identity, almost always accompanied by a feeling of superiority, vis-à-vis members of the referent group (the Other)’ (10).
- 11.
National stereotypes are common everywhere. See Cohen (11–12) for some typical examples.
- 12.
In 1969, Meredith Hunter pulled a revolver at the Altamont Free Concert before being stabbed to death by Hells Angel Alan Passaro. In 1972, Edward Lee Morgan was shot by his wife between sets at a New York jazz club. More recently, in 2004, Nathan Gale shot and killed guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell Abbott, who was performing onstage in Columbus, Ohio.
- 13.
‘Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt’. This witticism is often quoted in Canadian-American cultural studies; for example, see Thompson and Randall (250) and Dean and Dehejia (314).
- 14.
From ‘Toronto Tontos’ on the album Max Webster.
- 15.
The music is certainly progressive in the sense that it transcends the basic rock/boogie/blues format, focusing more on composition and borrowing from improvisational genres like jazz, as well as being characterized by complex musicianship. The lyrics are another case entirely: we don’t, for example, find typical prog-rock themes (or long ‘concept’ pieces) of the sword & sorcery or science fiction variety, but we do find unusual perceptions of human relationships, moral issues, and the quandaries related to individual freedom and expression.
- 16.
‘The Party’ from Mutiny Up My Sleeve.
- 17.
I read these as conformist lyrics: he’s not saying he’s evading capture; rather, the cops would never in the first place discover him involved in these infractions both minor and major.
- 18.
Martin Popoff also claims that Mitchell’s singing voice in this song ‘captures what it means to be Canadian, content at the middle of the pack, unobtrusive’ (69).
- 19.
From the debut album.
- 20.
From High Class in Borrowed Shoes.
- 21.
From ‘The Party’ on Mutiny Up My Sleeve.
- 22.
Another test on the scale suggests that in Canada ‘the overall cultural tone is more subdued with respect to achievement, success and winning, when compared to the U.S.’ (Hofstede Centre).
- 23.
From Mutiny Up My Sleeve.
- 24.
Lakeshore Road stands as a locally specific but universally understood reference to any posh neighbourhood where property values increase by virtue of their proximity to highly sought-after scenery.
- 25.
Granatstein refers to the ‘discomfort’ that Canadians feel about ‘the excesses that mar American life’ (4).
- 26.
Tristanne Connolly suggested this reading to me.
- 27.
From High Class in Borrowed Shoes.
- 28.
From High Class in Borrowed Shoes.
- 29.
President John F. Kennedy’s administration believed that ‘communism could no longer simply be contained: it had to be confronted everywhere and rooted out where possible’ (Thompson and Randall 216).
- 30.
See also chapter 8 (‘The Moose That Roared’) of Thompson and Randall’s Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies.
- 31.
The track ‘In the World of Giants,’ from Universal Juveniles, contains another ‘anti-corporate’ lyric, according to Dubois (Popoff 206).
- 32.
Popoff cites other factors: the inability to enjoy the kind of following and support that Rush had found, the sense of ‘losing contact with reality’ caused by moving from hotel to hotel and dealing with managers and bureaucrats, touring exhaustion, unreasonable contracts, and constant financial struggles (240–246).
- 33.
In an interview with Martin Popoff in June 2014.
- 34.
Regarding cultural imports, see also Thompson and Randall (258).
- 35.
That success was bound to elude the band is alluded to in the song ‘Chalkers’ from Universal Juveniles. Dubois suggests that a chalk is a gambling term for ‘the favourite in the race’ (quoted in Popoff 223). Of course, the favourites don’t always win: the song refers to the band as ‘underdogs’ who were a ‘Long shot in the dead heat of time’. As Dubois states, ‘in my mind, the audience, our fans – the people in the audience are chalkers…We might have been talking about us too. Being long shots’ (223).
- 36.
Jaimie Vernon concurs that ‘the lack of promotion and poor management organization is cited as the cause for Kim Mitchell’s resignation during a tour with Rush in April 1981…they had actually been close to hitting the big time’ (77).
- 37.
From High Class in Borrowed Shoes.
- 38.
From ‘Chalkers’ on Universal Juveniles.
- 39.
From A Million Vacations.
Works Cited
Lamont, John. ‘Max Webster: Zen Archery’. Roxy (June 1978).
Max Webster. Max Webster. Anthem Records, 1976.
Mitchell, Kim. Interview by Rick Ringer. CHUM-FM, Toronto, 1977.
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Spielmacher, M. (2017). The Max Webster Transfusion: A Little (Canadian) Blood for America’s Veins. In: Connolly, T., Iino, T. (eds) Canadian Music and American Culture. Pop Music, Culture and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50023-2_7
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