Walkers Road part 3
The fourteen-hour drive to Montreal was uneventful. It was, however, more comfortable than the one to Halifax. I rode with Marty, which freed up some room in the Walkers Road van.
It’s worth noting that this was a return gig of sorts for some of the band members. Actually, four of them. Helen, Art, Jim and Jon had played here in Montreal in an earlier version of the band.
The Queen Elizabeth Hotel had hired them to play in its lounge for two weeks in 1973. They recalled that they were given really nice rooms and a deal on meals.
With those memories, they anticipated a month of similar comfort.
Surprise!
Things had changed. Upon arrival, we discovered the hotel had booked us to perform in its new bar on the 42nd floor of Place Ville Marie, the tallest building in Montreal, a few blocks away from the hotel. Perhaps that’s why they felt no obligation to waste expensive rooms on us.
Instead, they had us in three small apartments up near McGill University, at least ten blocks from the gig. The apartments were in one of those hastily erected buildings meant for EXPO 67, later as accommodations for college students.
Austere, small and a little run-down partially describes these apartments we’d be staying in for a month. One bonus, though, each one had a little kitchenette, so after some creative shopping, we were able to cook inexpensive meals for the duration of our stay.
Art and Jim were in one, Marty, Rick and I shared one on the same floor, and Helen and Jon, who were a couple, stayed on another floor.
The walls needed paint. In our apartment, they appeared to have once been a drab neutral beige. Now they had faded into a dirty cream colour with peeling on the corners.
The place smelled of stale tobacco and spicy food. We joked that it would be worse by the time we left.
A Cloistered Monastery
There were no amenities. No TV, radio or telephone and of course, no air conditioning. Our booking took up most of July. As well as having harsh winters, Montreal also had periods during the summer when it was very hot and humid. Where would we cool off in the middle of the city?
Marty found something that helped. He discovered a way to the roof of our 12-story building. We were up there almost every night, or more accurately, every morning. We seldom got back from the gig before 2:30 am.
Art, Jim, Marty and I would take a few beers and a joint up there and yap frequently until dawn. There wasn’t much to prevent falling off the edge. A flimsy plastic barrier, like a child gate, around the edge of the roof was all that stood between fun times and lights out. We had to be very careful, but it added to the illicit pleasure. Being non-conventional was like a drug, and Marty was an expert dealer.
Interior Decorators
After being pampered at our Halifax gig, we were disappointed and depressed by the adverse conditions, but we put some posters on the walls, freshened up the kitchenettes and bathrooms, made sure there was always beer in the fridge and made the best of it.
The Bright Side
Certainly not ideal, but the toilets flushed, there was hot water, and the doors locked. There would be times coming up in my career where those three things would be considered a luxury you couldn’t depend on.
SO WHAT ABOUT THE GIG?
We found out the first night that we were just noisy wallpaper. Nobody paid much attention to us. The main attraction was an enormous DJ booth in the middle of the room. The records would kick in seconds after we finished a set, and these strange colourful polyester people would get up and dance to a relentless straight 4 hypnotic beats to the bar. Song after song at 120 BPM would segue one into the other for half an hour, then suddenly, a ballad.
This place was one of the first, if not the first, discotheque in Canada.
In the wake of Expo 67 and the acquisition of Canada’s first major league baseball team in 1969, along with the preparations for the 1976 summer Olympics, Montreal was the centre of the universe…..Just ask anyone who’s from there. As for culture, there was a presumption of being hip and trendy ala Paris or New York.
The sequinned dresses, strobe lights, spandex pants, glittery polyester suits, the Bee Gees, and platform shoes had yet to burst on the scene like a hyper-kinetic fireworks show, but most of that was literally just months away.
It was spooky. The dancers didn’t smile or look at each other. Sometimes it seemed like they were just practicing their moves, other times like they were following some kind of zombie directive.
The Devil Wears Armani
All bars have to deal with hot tempers from time to time. Disagreements can escalate into fights or all-out brawls. The Altitheque 727 had a unique way of dealing with this.
As I said, this nightclub was on the 42nd floor of Place Ville Marie. Access was by a high-speed express elevator. One evening, two men in suits began pushing each other. I was sitting just two tables away. Two more people joined in, and they began punching. Then two more got up, turning that section of the bar into a rumble.
Conveniently, it took place near the elevator. Four big bouncers showed up and somehow moved the whole fight towards the doors. One of them pushed the call button. The doors opened, and the battlers were shoved in as the doors closed behind them. There was only one stop. And that would have been street level, where people were undoubtedly waiting to board.
Can you imagine what it was like waiting for those doors to open and six Tasmanian devils in designer suits fall out, beating the shit out of each other?
Just Stay Home And Read The Tourist Pamphlets
Being booked for a month in the same place was rare. For me it was a five and a half year wait before it occurred again. It meant that you’d have two actual days off. Usually bands used the one day a week that they weren’t playing (in Quebec it was Monday, most of the rest of Canada it was Sunday) to travel to the next gig.
Marty and I spent the first of the two free days exploring Montreal. We were staying right downtown so there was a lot to check out within walking distance.
Driving is a poor option in Montreal. It’s a confusing place to find your way around in. Most cities I’ve been to, if you miss making a turn, you can correct the mistake fairly quickly. Not so in Montreal. If you screw up even one step in a set of directions, it can easily be twenty minutes before you have any hope of fixing the mistake.
To begin with, most cities that have one or more mountains can’t really set up a grid. It’s difficult, even for those who live there, to develop even a basic mental map. Streets are crooked and often dog-legged, which messes with your memory and intuition.
Mount Royal isn’t totally to blame for the difficulty in navigation.
Here’s the sign that’s ubiquitous along the many thoroughfares downtown. It’s as though their intention is to run the tourists (anglophones from Ontario) right off the island.
“So you ended up twice across the river in St. Hubert? Où est passé votre sens de l’humour?”
Walking’s no bargain either. It’s like a giant game of Frogger. To avoid having to cross any of the busy high-speed streets, you keep turning right until you’re back where you started.
Getting My Wings
The second free day, I did something totally out of character. Rick, our bass player, was a qualified pilot and owned a small airplane that was parked at Pearson Airport in Toronto. He decided to take a commercial flight there and get his plane. He asked if anyone wanted to go. It meant leaving on Monday morning and returning Tuesday afternoon. I disliked flying, but I was so homesick I volunteered.
Travelling on an Air Canada DC-8 was bad enough, but putting my life in the hands of a fellow musician (a bass player, no less) the next day….
We took off on the same runway as the big jets. As we waited for our turn, I felt like we were a mosquito next to a flock of pterodactyls.
Finally, we got the go-ahead from the tower, and Rick hit the throttle. The single engine roared, and we started to move. Not quickly. We seemed to just putter along for quite a while before the nose went up and the aircraft, to me, broke some serious laws of physics as it hesitated a few times and then reluctantly became airborne.
There didn’t seem to be anything graceful about our initial bumpy climb until we turned to the east and rose to eight thousand feet. When we levelled off, Rick apologized for the turbulence.
“It’s okay right now, but it’s likely we’ll bounce around again before long. If we go up a couple of thousand feet, it’ll be smoother, but it might scare you to be up that high.”
“What the hell difference would it make?” I remember asking, “We’re still going to hit the ground like a dart if anything goes wrong.”
We landed a few hours later at a small airport across the river from Montreal. For the rest of the trip, Rick flew from place to place. I chose to ride with Art and Jim in the now very spacious Walkers Road van. Jon had returned home as well to get his station wagon that he and Helen would share.
No Sarcasm….. I Do Love This City. I Lived Here For Five Years
We packed up on the final Sunday, and on Monday, we headed to “The Bears Den” in Richibucto, New Brunswick.