Keith Whittaker never really wanted to go to New York City. In fact, he'd visited the Big Apple on several occasions and didn't particularly fancy the place one way or the other.
But, as the singer and lyricist of the Demics' seminal garage-punk classic New York City - named the best Canadian rock song of all time in separate polls conducted by the Toronto Star in 1991, Chart Magazine in 1996, and the Globe & Mail in 2002 where it placed fourth behind Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", Neil Young's "Powderfinger" and Gilles Vigneault's "Gens Du Pays" - he struck a chord with the disaffected youth of south-western Ontario. Stuck in nowhere jobs in dead-end backwaters like London, Ontario, the Demics' hometown, they too dreamed of making it big somewhere - anywhere! - and made the Canuck combo's first single one of the most requested songs on Toronto's CFNY, arguably North America's most influential alternative radio station at the time.
"New York City was one of those songs that managed to capture a moment in Canadian musical history," CFNY's Alan Cross wrote at the time. "It had that special kind of punk grit - equal parts anger, boredom and fuzz - that made thousands of young Canadian punks say, 'That's me! They're singing about me!'"
Of course, the tune's status as the consummate anthem of teenage angst wasn't hindered by a sing-a-long chorus that liberally borrowed its structure from Row-Row-Row Your Boat. Throw in Whittaker's shockingly uncensored sneer of "I'm so fuckin' pissed off" as the song built to its final circular chorus, and it's no wonder why the Demics' New York City is widely considered the most iconic Canadian song of all time.
By the early '80s when New York City was reaching its radio peak, the Demics were long-disbanded, victims of bad business decisions, bad timing and just plain bad luck. Whittaker, after being barred from every watering hole on Queen West including the Legion, had taken to frittering his days away on the patio of a low-rent Portuguese pub in Toronto's Kensington Market. There, every day at 12 just as he was getting stuck into his first of the day' many pints, he'd hear the pub's outdoor boom-box - religiously tuned to CFNY's noontime all-request show - announce that New York City was still the station's most requested song.
"I hate that fuckin' song," he'd gripe to his sidekicks, a roguish group of rounders that included Teenage Head's Frankie Venom, the Battered Wives' Toby Swan, the soon-to-be legendary Handsome Ned, and myself.
It wasn't until years later that I was to understand why he loathed New York City so. By then, NYC had become something of Whittaker's albatross. Every time he heard it played on the radio - as incessantly back in the day as it is today - or was confronted by a gushing fan offering to buy him a drink because New York City was their favourite song in the whole wide universe, he was reminded yet again of his own failures. Like the wannabe but never-will anti-hero of New York City, Keith could have been someone, gone somewhere and done something with his life. If only, if only--
Instead, the fates conspired against him and his fortune slipped away, and all because of a song.
Unlike most punk rockers, Keith Whittaker didn't play the role of an angry young man, he was the real deal. Born in Manchester, England, Keith was in his mid-teens in 1967 when he and his upwardly mobile one-time working class family emigrated to London, Ontario, a sleepy insurance town some 100 miles west of Toronto. With his brash British wit, northern accent and Carnaby Street clobber, to a burgh like London, Keith must have seemed like the Beatles and James Bond all in one. No wonder the girls all loved him and the guys hated his guts.
During a visit over 'ome to the UK in 1975, he caught the very early transition of the British music scene from pub to punk rock. On his return to London, Ontario to ostensibly study history, he formed the Demics with a crew of like-minded friends - guitarist Rob Brent, bassist Iain Atkinson, and drummer Jimmy Weatherstone. Who better to be the singer than wild man Keef?
On stage, he cut a rakish figure. Rail-thin in just T-shirt, sneakers and jeans, he'd throttle the microphone as if he were squeezing the living daylights out of it while growling along to The Demics' textbook takes on the Stooges' and Electric Prunes' songbooks. But it wasn't until they chugged into New York City - Whittaker knocked off the lyrics during a brief bus ride to band practice - that the audience would ignite. By the time the group hit that catchy chorus and fuck-you kiss-off, the crowd would be theirs. Funny that few of them ever noticed that the song's protagonist, like the title character Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar - one of the well-read Whittaker's favourite novels - doesn't have the nerve to actually get on that bus out of Palookaville.
As Keith would quip, "All talk, no trousers."
In the fall of 1978, the Demics recorded five tracks for fledgling Ready Records. Ready's Angus MacKay and Andrew Crosbie were students studying record production at London's Fanshawe College and the Demics were their first project. These recordings were to launch the label and become the Talk's Cheap EP that featured New York City. The one heard on virtually every Canadian rock radio station to this day.
Keith Whittaker lived life one pint at a time. I first met him over one in 1982 on the patio of the Black Bull, then a dive on downtown's skid row in the days before Queen West was Canada's hippest strip. The Demics were in their last days and Keith was fed-up with the non-stop gigs, the rip-off record companies and the constant inter-band squabbling, though truth be told, he instigated of most arguments.
Keith still had dreams. This time he was going to get a band together and do it properly. Fuck the small-time Canadian industry and its narrow-minded accountants. If only he could find a drummer he could get along with.
But after 10 years of listening to Keith's vague ambitions, in the summer of 1991 drinking buddy and past-collaborator Steven Davey (Dishes/Everglades) suggested that they seriously start writing songs together again. Since they were both older and wiser then they were when they last tried to do the same thing - well, older anyway - they'd be able to avoid their previous mistakes. No band, no managers, no record companies. They'd write songs strictly for their own enjoyment and if somebody else wanted to perform or record them, bonus. And if it wasn't fun anymore, they'd stop.
They'd get together every Sunday morning at Steven's small downtown apartment. As the streetcar rattled by, they'd run through their quickly expanding repertoire, recording it on a cheap cassette deck before racing back to the Market for a leisurely afternoon of quaffing ale.
That first day, Keith arrived with a shoebox full of his lyrics, hastily scribbled words on serviettes and matchbooks that even he couldn't decipher. Steven soon realized that Keith wasn't a writer so much as a brilliant talker. His gift was gab, and it became Steven's job to remember his best lines.
12 songs and some live material survive from this period, but cancer took Whittaker's life in 1996 before the potential could be fully realized.
Bullseye Records of Canada, under the supervision of Steven Davey, have put the 12 demo recordings together as a tribute to Keith's tenacity and named it after one of the more biographical of tunes on the set: "Drink To Me".
And Keef would be proud to know that it doesn't contain the song New York City.
