Tom Cochrane will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Sept. 28.Supplied
Tom Cochrane has been around a long time. Way before chart hits White Hot and Lunatic Fringe with Red Rider and his breakthrough solo song Life is a Highway, he played in a country-rock band called King Harvest (later shortened to Harvest). Before that, as a Toronto teenager, he absorbed the late 1960s coffeehouse scene.
“I used to play hooky from school so I could be first in line at the Riverboat to see Bruce Cockburn,” Cochrane told The Globe and Mail this week.
On Saturday, the 71-year-old rock troubadour and Order of Canada member will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at Toronto’s Massey Hall. Other inductees are Sarah McLachlan, Diane Tell and Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor. Cochrane spoke from Kelowna, B.C.
Perhaps it’s not as glitzy as your six Juno Awards or your Canada’s Walk of Fame induction, but I imagine recognition for your songwriting specifically is awfully satisfying.
Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I’ve never been terribly fond of the label, ‘rocker Tom Cochrane.’ I’ve always considered myself a singer-songwriter in the strong Canadian tradition. As far as these accolades go, this one, along with the Order of Canada, is the most poignant for me.
Do I detect the influence of artists such as Harry Chapin and Murray McLauchlan in your songwriting?
I drew from a lot of inspirations. I remember seeing Murray in coffeehouses, before I cut my teeth doing the same thing. I think if you listen to my first record, 1974′s Hang On to Your Resistance, on Frank Davies’s Daffodil Records, you’ll hear a lot of Murray McLauchlan.
On that debut album you had a modest hit, You’re Driving Me Crazy (Faith Healers). Where did that come from?
It was pretty topical, not directly taking a shot at organized religion but indirectly talking about phonies in that area. That album had a lot of topical stuff. I think when Bob Dylan came along, a lot of writers, including Murray and Harry Chapin, who you mentioned, and Bruce Cockburn, who was a huge impact on me, were deeply influenced. I carried that with me.
If you’re not comfortable with the title ‘rocker Tom Cochrane,’ how about rock troubadour?
That’s it. Quite a bit during my shows, I’ll do two or three acoustic songs. I’ve always felt that with a good song, you should be able to play it on the piano or an acoustic guitar, and that it should stand up. You wouldn’t think Lunatic Fringe would stand up that way, but if you go back and listen to it on my acoustic album Songs of a Circling Spirit, it’s pretty profound.
Bruce Springsteen’s unplugged version of Born in the U.S.A. is a great example of what you’re talking about.
He’s amazing – he walks the walk. I had the pleasure of opening for him, and he’s exactly the way you’d hope he’d be. He came off the stage soaking wet, laughing like Santa Claus. I learned from him that you could be a certain type of troubadour, mixing Dylan with James Brown. He taught a lot of us how to give 150 per cent and how to get out there and perform, and that you didn’t have to stand still behind a microphone to deliver some pretty profound messages with songs.
Any stories about opening for him?
Yeah. At Magnetic Hill in Moncton, in 2012, our keyboard tech told me that Springsteen was back stage like a big kid, saying ‘You guys, you gotta hear this, it’s the guy who wrote Lunatic Fringe!’
He would have known Lunatic Fringe as a song by Red Rider, the band you were a member of when it came out in 1981. Why did you later call the band Tom Cochrane and Red Rider?
The criticism was that the songs as Red Rider were faceless. They need a songwriter attached to them. Red Rider was a means to an end for me. As a band, we weren’t tightly knit. We weren’t like Rush or the Tragically Hip.
Did you think a heavy rock song like Lunatic Fringe would be a hit?
Management tried to discourage me from the lyrics. I was going through a tortuous time. People were telling me, ‘Cochrane, get on with writing pop songs and making some money.’ I stood by my guns, and it paid off. That song was No. 1 on the album orientated radio chart for eight or nine weeks. I’m proud of that.
Given this induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, do you have any advice for aspiring songwriters?
Don’t chase hits. It works for some people, and I’m not criticizing those people. But I think you have to write from your heart. Sometimes people will tell you something’s wrong. That’s when you know you’re onto something.
This interview has been edited and condensed.