On the record

How Max Webster nearly became Canada’s next big thing

Up until very recently, Kim Mitchell had forgotten that day in Indianapolis in 1981 when he performed “Battle Scar” with his Toronto rock band Max Webster and a man wearing a mask of ex-U.S. president Richard Nixon snuck onstage to join them.

The song had been recorded for Max Webster’s 1980 album, “Universal Juveniles,” as a duet with Toronto label mates Rush, so it didn’t take too long for the crowd to recognize the prankster.

“It was Geddy Lee,” Mitchell, 70, recalled with a chuckle over the phone. “He came on just to do ‘Battle Scar,’ but he didn’t want the audience to know it was him until he started to sing. I remember that moment and that Richard Nixon mask as he blasted through the second verse of the song, but it was one that I had totally forgotten.”

Mitchell’s memory about that incident — and a flood of others — was tweaked a few months ago when author Bob Wegner showed the band’s founder his new, privately published coffee table book “High Class,” an appreciation and compendium of Max Webster.

From 1972 until they disbanded in 1981, the group created five wonderfully idiosyncratic studio albums that borrowed from the Frank Zappa playbook of serious chops, offbeat humour and disciplined musicianship, but imbued it with its own distinctive Max Webster flavour to nearly become Canada’s Next Big Thing. (The band reassembled for a one-off gig in 1990, a short tour between 1995 and ’96, and a final show in 2007.)

Each album — 1976’s “Max Webster,” 1977’s “High Class in Borrowed Shoes,” 1978’s “Mutiny Up My Sleeve,” 1979’s “A Million Vacations” and 1980’s “Universal Juveniles” — sold at least 50,000 copies in Canada alone and the band secured a deal with Rush’s SRO Management, a record contract with the trio’s Anthem label, and supported them on tours throughout North America and the U.K.

Max Webster’s unique appeal also had a secret weapon in Pye Dubois, one of rock music’s more inventive and rare full-time lyricists, and he and Mitchell became a formidable songwriting team, creating such classics as “Hangover,” “Toronto Tontos,” “Diamonds Diamonds,” “Gravity,” “Oh War!” “The Party,” “Waterline,” “Paradise Skies” and “Battle Scar.”

As one might remember from that mid to late ’70s, early ’80s era in music, bands were expected to be prolific both in the studio and on the road. Max Webster toured incessantly — even headlining Maple Leaf Gardens three times within 18 months — churned out albums yearly, but was not the overall label priority because that stature belonged to Rush.

Finally, after a gig in Memphis, the burnout got to Mitchell and he pulled the plug.

“I just got kind of tired,” Mitchell said in an interview. “The writing was on the wall. For our management company, and record company and publisher, which were all under one house, Rush is their thing and we weren’t getting the attention that I think the band needed.

“And that’s OK: we were so happy for Rush. But I thought, ‘I’m out here killing myself, so I think I’m going to get off the road for a year, and go write and reassess, and maybe join another band.’ I fantasized about joining another band and my phone didn’t ring. So I had to start a solo career. That’s kind of how it ended for me.”

Wegner might seem an unlikely Max Webster fan given that he says he was “minus one years old” when the band’s Memphis moment occurred.

“What got me into them?” he asked rhetorically. “When I was young, I heard Max like anyone else: on the radio, or you’d go to people’s houses and their music was playing at parties.”

It wasn’t until he became a dedicated musician himself in his teenage years — he’s now a professional guitarist and was hand-picked by Queen’s Brian May to play during the Canadian run of the musical “We Will Rock You” — that Wegner truly appreciated the magic of Max Webster.

“I started realizing, ‘Oh, this is really good music, so interesting and so well arranged.’ Then I started a website about their concert history.”

But Wegner still felt the group’s legacy was being underserved — despite an earlier Martin Popoff biography called “Live Magnetic Air: The Unlikely Saga of the Superlative Max Webster” — and decided to do something about it.

“High Class” is a comprehensive 400-page coffee table book that contains not only the origin story of Max Webster but a rundown of their professional lives, with many photos submitted by fans who caught wind of Wegner’s project and sent him their memorabilia.

“Martin Popoff’s book is great, but I just wanted to fill in the gaps,” Wegner said. “I wanted to include the itinerary and the whole travelogue thing and just take it further, have all the colour photos and do a pretty comprehensive history. Martin was super supportive of my project.”

There are setlists, the breakdown of the band’s numerous lineups — it began in 1972 as a trio with Mitchell, bass player Mike Tilka and vocalist/drummer Phil Trudell, and ended with Mitchell, drummer Gary McCracken, keyboardist Terry Watkinson, bass player Mike Gingrich and guitarist Steve McMurray — and even includes titles of unreleased songs. Mitchell is suitably impressed. “I looked through the book for a couple of hours at home and I’d say 70 per cent of the pictures I hadn’t seen before, stuff turned in by fans,” said Mitchell.

“It’s very humbling. I didn’t realize the band was thought of in that respect. I thought we were a band that came and went like a fart in a windstorm.”

For Wegner, who crowdfunded part of the project and used some of his own savings to get it done, assembling the book was a labour of love and a huge lesson regarding teamwork.

“There are just hundreds of logistical things that are required to make a project like this happen. It’s been really amazing how an army of people have come to my rescue and helped me with things that I couldn’t do myself.”

Wegner also has Super 8 film of some Max Webster performances and is hoping there will be a documentary someday.

“I’m going deeper into the rabbit hole,” he admitted. “It’s hugely important. They did a documentary on Anvil. They did one on Teenage Head. There needs to be a Max Webster documentary,” he said.

Kim Mitchell is clear about one thing: the band’s playing days are over.

“Terry (Watkinson), the keyboard player, has health issues. Gary (McCracken) is retired. And for me, I’ve been a musician who has been at it the whole time, while they haven’t. To ramp this up would take months of rehearsing and it’s just too much work to bother. The idea of me getting a band to play that material for a night might be fun. But the rest of the guys aren’t active musicians anymore.”

There’s also been, unfortunately, no thawing of the ill will that lyricist Dubois apparently feels for Mitchell, which ended their creative and personal relationship following Mitchell’s 1989 solo album, “Rockland.”

“I don’t really know what happened and some people hold a grudge about something,” Mitchell said. “I don’t even know what the grudge is. I can’t comment on it …

“I was up for continuing that relationship, but one day you get a letter from a lawyer saying, ‘Mr. Dubois wishes no further contact with Mr. Mitchell,’ and I’m like, ‘OK.’

“That’s him; that’s his life and I hope he’s enjoying it.”

Wegner’s book also did me a favour: as a high school student in St. Catharines, I gathered with a bunch of pals to sneak underage into the now defunct Uncle Sam’s in Niagara Falls, Ont., to see Max Webster perform three one-hour sets.

I remember it being a mesmerizing performance and being heartily impressed by Mitchell’s lightning licks on guitar, and attracting a curious Pye Dubois to our table and conversing with him. We ending up meeting the band backstage after the show at Dubois’s invitation.

What failed me was the exact date — April 17, 1978 — and thanks to Wegner’s meticulous research, I can now identify that as the first time I saw this excellent band, which warmed me up for their appearance a few months later sandwiched between Genesis and Brand X at the CNE in Toronto.

For the record, Wegner finally got to witness the band he loved most during one of their final reunions, a show that only strengthened his resolve to celebrate Max Webster’s memory.

“High Class” is that testament. “It was worth it because it had to be done,” Wegner said.

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It’s very humbling. I didn’t realize the band was thought of in that respect. I thought we were a band that came and went like a fart in a windstorm.

KIM MITCHELL FORMER MEMBER OF MAX WEBSTER