Early last year, Canadians were struck with the news that beloved lead singer of The Tragically Hip, Gordon Downie, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He passed away last night.
Over his career, Downie’s voice has become a staple to Canadian cottage country, backyard BBQ’s and a pure sign of a Canadian summer. Downie’s love for hockey has shone through his music and into his concerts. In honour of that love for hockey, we’re going to share some of this hardcore Boston Bruins fan’s notable hockey in music moments.
Downie’s passion for hockey started at a young age, as his Godfather is Hall of Fame builder Harry Sindon – a long-time coach, GM and President of the Boston Bruins. While his career in the NHL was probably enough to make him a Hall of Famer, Sinden also coached Team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series. It’s to see where his fandom started.
One of his most famous songs has a strong connection to his favourite team and ultimately his favourite player. Here are some of the opening lines from Fireworks:
If there's a goal that everyone remembers
It was back in old seventy two
We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger
And all I remember is sitting beside you
You said you didn't give a f*** about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr
There was also the night Downie swapped Bobby Orr's name for Derek Roy's name in a concert in Erie, PA while performing the song “Fireworks”. This happened in 2007, when the Sabres were playing the Ottawa Senators in the East Final and Sabres fever was at an extreme high in the area. Here's how it went down according to Buffalo News,
During the song "Fireworks," which starts off by detailing a young man's transition from hockey to girls, Downie paid homage to the Sabres. The original lyrics, "You held my hand and we walked home the long way, you were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr," suddenly and shockingly became, "You held my hand and we walked home the long way, you were loosening my grip on Derek Roy."
I covered practice the next morning and told Roy about the lyric swap. The Sabres center was flabbergasted and honored.
Downie and The Hip took their tribute to Buffalo and the Sabres one step further during the encore. The Sabres' rollicking entrance theme during those days was the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man." The Hip tore into a raucous cover for their penultimate song, and the Buffalo crowd ate up the anthem.
According to SetList.fm, it was the only time the band ever played it.
Lucky for us, footage of Downie switching the lyrics for Derek Roy during that memorable Buffalo concert exists on YouTube.
And then there's the extremely popular song, “Fifty Mission Cap”. The song is about Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Bill Barilko, who mysteriously went missing months after scoring the Stanley Cup winning goal for the Leafs in 1951. His body was later discovered in a plane wreckage and was buried in 1962, the same year the Leafs won their next Cup.
And here's the opening verse of that song.
Bill Barilko disappeared that summer
He was on a fishing trip
The last goal he ever scored
Won the Leafs the cup
They didn't win another till nineteen sixty two
The year he was discovered
I stole this from a hockey card
I keeped tucked up under
Another song, “The Lonely End of the Rink” is about a hockey game through the eyes of a goalie.
In Bob McKenzie's book, Hockey Confidential, he got a chance to talk to Downie about his love for Hockey and all things Canadian. You can read a bunch of those excerpts on TSN.ca. Here's a little taste of what you can find there:
“Gord Downie, the front man and lead singer, as has been duly noted, is a diehard Bruin fan, but even before discovering the Bs, he was a goalie in Amherstview, Ontario.
Guitar players Paul Langlois and Robbie Baker are fervent fans of the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs, respectively. Bass player Gord Sinclair describes himself as a “floater,” a Chicago Blackhawk fan in his youth but now quite content to cheer for any team that is contending for the Cup. Drummer Johnny Fay always liked the Philadelphia Flyers.
They all like hockey; they like watching it; they like playing it— or at least, to varying degrees, they did. In the early or middle years of the band's existence, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the boys in the Hip would go to great lengths while touring to organize hockey games. Sometimes it was just ball hockey in an arena parking lot, but oftentimes it would entail finding ice and equipment to play a real game with the crew.
“I remember when we opened for [Jimmy] Page and [Robert] Plant, we did two legs of America as their opening act,” Downie recalled, “and we had this ferocious three-on-three game on Rollerblades in the parking lot of the [Philadelphia] Spectrum right before we went on. I remember our tour manager coming out and yelling at us, ‘You're on in eight minutes.' When you're opening for someone, there's no pressure. It was like, ‘Okay, backstage, skates off, on stage.' We would do that a lot.”
As Drake did back in May, we’ll offer another bow to a Canadian music legend – your music will outlive us all.
