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Authors: Neil Young
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guitar. We were thinking of him becoming a Squire and had even taken some pictures together. I decided to drive Terry to Sault Ste. Marie in Mort. We jumped in the hearse and left. Just like that. Ken was back at the YMCA, so he missed the trip and was left behind. Bob Clark and the Bonnevilles came along with us. We took Terry’s motorbike with us in the back of Mort.
We were about halfway there, near a town called Blind River, when we broke down. Mort’s transmission was toast. We got towed to Bill’s Garage, a harrowing experience with the hearse being towed backward, the rear tires in the air and me steering in reverse. After holding on for dear life at a high speed and terrified, we finally got to Bill’s Garage in Blind River, Ontario. Bill said he could find us a part to fix the hearse and get us going. Several days later, we were still there and running out of money; we were living on roasted potatoes from the market. We hung out in an old junkyard/dump near the edge of town.
A graveyard was just across the gravel road from that dump. We were a funky lot. The Bonnevilles hitched back to Fort William for a gig they had that weekend. Bob went with them. Realizing that Mort was gone, I thought being in Fort William without the hearse would be nowhere. It was a feeling. The hearse was part of the whole thing. The picture. The image. There is an intangible to a group and a persona. You can’t lose that. If you do, you have to start again. I felt that Mort was a large part of my identity, so I took off with Terry to North Bay to see his dad and try to get some cash. I don’t remember what happened to Terry’s gig in Sault Ste. Marie, but I do remember that when we got to North Bay, we saw a lounge band, the Mandala, with a great guitarist named Domenic Troiano and George Olliver, a fantastic vocalist. Wow! Those guys were really cool; very slick and professional R&B. I eventually went back to North Bay later on to do a folk club as a solo, working out of Toronto, just before I met Bruce Palmer and Rick James and joined the Mynah Birds.
But anyway, back in North Bay, Terry’s father, who was a policeman, had no cash for us. We were offered Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Scotch in the morning, though, followed by a Coke. That was how Terry started his day, with Coca-Cola. His dad was enjoying the Corn Flakes. There was no milk. That was something new to me, Coke in the morning, and I tried it for a while.
Eventually we headed south to Toronto to get some help from my dad. We were treated well, but it was a little stiff and uncomfortable around there and we didn’t stay too long. I felt like we were in the way. My father had remarried, and I met my little sister, Astrid, and her mother (by the same name) there for the first time. Little Astrid was very young then, three or four years old, taking oboe lessons. I started exploring the Yorkville music scene, the Canadian equivalent of New York’s Greenwich Village. I called Ken and Bob, and after some apologizing for blowing off our last gig in Fort William, I convinced them to come out and give Toronto a try.
That was really the end of the Squires, though. Ken, Bob, and I tried to put together something in Toronto, but it was not that easy to get a gig there. We rehearsed in the lobby of an old theater that my dad was able to arrange for us. He was supporting us, and that made me feel like he was behind us. I think when he saw me up close in Toronto he realized how serious I was.
There was not a lot of room for us to break in in Yorkville. It was nothing like Fort William, and times were tough. There were many bands, and the competition for gigs was great. A manager I had met, Marty Onrot, brought people by to listen to us, but no one really bit. We had Jim Ackroyd in the band for a while, and he was really good. He had played with the Galaxies, the number-two group back in Winnipeg, and we filled out a lot with Jim playing guitar. We did a song called “Casting Me
We were about halfway there, near a town called Blind River, when we broke down. Mort’s transmission was toast. We got towed to Bill’s Garage, a harrowing experience with the hearse being towed backward, the rear tires in the air and me steering in reverse. After holding on for dear life at a high speed and terrified, we finally got to Bill’s Garage in Blind River, Ontario. Bill said he could find us a part to fix the hearse and get us going. Several days later, we were still there and running out of money; we were living on roasted potatoes from the market. We hung out in an old junkyard/dump near the edge of town.
A graveyard was just across the gravel road from that dump. We were a funky lot. The Bonnevilles hitched back to Fort William for a gig they had that weekend. Bob went with them. Realizing that Mort was gone, I thought being in Fort William without the hearse would be nowhere. It was a feeling. The hearse was part of the whole thing. The picture. The image. There is an intangible to a group and a persona. You can’t lose that. If you do, you have to start again. I felt that Mort was a large part of my identity, so I took off with Terry to North Bay to see his dad and try to get some cash. I don’t remember what happened to Terry’s gig in Sault Ste. Marie, but I do remember that when we got to North Bay, we saw a lounge band, the Mandala, with a great guitarist named Domenic Troiano and George Olliver, a fantastic vocalist. Wow! Those guys were really cool; very slick and professional R&B. I eventually went back to North Bay later on to do a folk club as a solo, working out of Toronto, just before I met Bruce Palmer and Rick James and joined the Mynah Birds.
But anyway, back in North Bay, Terry’s father, who was a policeman, had no cash for us. We were offered Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Scotch in the morning, though, followed by a Coke. That was how Terry started his day, with Coca-Cola. His dad was enjoying the Corn Flakes. There was no milk. That was something new to me, Coke in the morning, and I tried it for a while.
Eventually we headed south to Toronto to get some help from my dad. We were treated well, but it was a little stiff and uncomfortable around there and we didn’t stay too long. I felt like we were in the way. My father had remarried, and I met my little sister, Astrid, and her mother (by the same name) there for the first time. Little Astrid was very young then, three or four years old, taking oboe lessons. I started exploring the Yorkville music scene, the Canadian equivalent of New York’s Greenwich Village. I called Ken and Bob, and after some apologizing for blowing off our last gig in Fort William, I convinced them to come out and give Toronto a try.
That was really the end of the Squires, though. Ken, Bob, and I tried to put together something in Toronto, but it was not that easy to get a gig there. We rehearsed in the lobby of an old theater that my dad was able to arrange for us. He was supporting us, and that made me feel like he was behind us. I think when he saw me up close in Toronto he realized how serious I was.
There was not a lot of room for us to break in in Yorkville. It was nothing like Fort William, and times were tough. There were many bands, and the competition for gigs was great. A manager I had met, Marty Onrot, brought people by to listen to us, but no one really bit. We had Jim Ackroyd in the band for a while, and he was really good. He had played with the Galaxies, the number-two group back in Winnipeg, and we filled out a lot with Jim playing guitar. We did a song called “Casting Me
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