Lisa McDonald Has Steve Negus Tell His Saga

Lisa McDonald is back with another interview, this time with a man who was a member of  great Canadian band, drummer, writer, Steve Negus. The band?  Saga. Lisa takes us on an informative and entertaining trip in which Steve Negus discusses his past, his present, and his future. Lisa knows what questions to ask, and brokers a lively interview with whoever she has in her sights. Please feel free to add your comments after you read this interview, Lisa will appreciate the feedback.

NEGUS:  from Saga to the Collective: An interview with Steve Negus and George Roche

Hailing from the city of Oakville, Pockets was the original name for the progressive rock band Saga, before they changed it in 1977

With a rhythm section from Fludd – Ian Crichton on guitar and Michael Sadler on lead vocal – Saga began tearing up the charts in the early 80s with hit songs such as Wind Him Up, On the Loose, Don’t Be Late, and Scratching the Surface and with equally successful videos to accompany them

Saga was awarded the 1982 Juno for Most Promising Group of the Year

Steve Negus, a Grimsby native now living in east Hamilton, Ontario not only co-wrote these songs with Saga, but he was their original drummer until announcing his departure in 2003.

Mr Negus, along with his manager George Roche, joins me now to discuss the history and what’s been going on since his retirement

Growing up with Hamilton radio station CKOC, what music were you hearing that led you to form your own band at the age of 12?

I use to collect the CKOC charts, but I got interested way before that.  I was born in 1952 so I would say somewhere around ’60-’62, I started getting into surf music.  My first album was The Beach Boys.  I was also listening to Jan and Dean, The Safaris and the Ventures.  You weren’t considered a drummer unless you could play Wipe-Out.

After high school, you came to Toronto to work at a bank.  Can you tell us what led up to quitting your day job and joining a band called Bananas?

I was working for the Bank of Montreal at Bay and Wellesley and two weeks before I was due to write my accountant exams, I looked around the bank and thought, I don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this.

You mean, you didn’t fit in with the Bay Street crowd (laughs)?

I was playing in a country band six nights a week plus a Saturday matinee at the Winchester Hotel in Cabbagetown.  There were four of us guys living in this mouse-infested apartment just around the corner from the bar.  These days the area is high rent, but back then it was pretty seedy.  One guy worked at a pizza store, one guy was going to George Brown College, and there was a guitar player.  I use to get up in the morning and put a suit on.  At night I’d take it off and go play country music.

And on ten minutes sleep probably?

That’s it.  I could do that then! (laughs).

But now it’s hard isn’t it? Even without the booze. (laughs)

Absolutely.  The guy who worked at Bobby Orr’s Pizza would come home around 4 in the morning with a pizza every night.  We’d stay up and eat it.  But after quitting the bank, I went to Long and McQuade and pulled three numbers off the bulletin board.  One of the three was for a band called Bananas.  After doing the usual audition thing, I got the gig as their drummer.  After a few rehearsals we started performing.  Bananas later became one of the top show bands in Toronto.  We played the El Mocambo, The Jarvis House, and a place called The Generator at Yonge and Eglinton.  These were great gigs and we made great money back then.

What about Le Coq d’or Tavern on Yonge Street. Did you play there?

Bananas didn’t, but I use to hang out there.  It was the only R&B club on the strip.  They’d bring in these American black bands like Tavares and the President’s Band.  I’d go down and sit in with some of them.  They use to call me “blue eyed soul brother” (laughs).  I’d say, “what are ya talking about? I don’t have blue eyes” (laughs).   At that point in my career, I still wasn’t all that serious about playing but I liked the whole thing about you know, meeting women.  But while I was in Bananas, I heard a band called Tower of Power.

Oh, I love them!  I saw them at BB King’s bar in New York last November.

Tower of Power changed my life.  As soon as I heard this band I thought, I gotta play that!  (David) Garibaldi, the drummer, is one of my greatest influences.

A lot of my style comes from the R&B side of things, so that’s why I liked sitting in at the Coq d’or.  I loved playing the funk stuff.  It’s drummer’s music.  So I quit Bananas and started my own R&B band.  We did a whole summer in Wasaga Beach at a place called the Dardanella.

Was this the band called Shelter?

Yes, and it started out as a six-piece R&B band;  two black singers, Betty and Otis; a black guitar player; and three white guys, one on bass, one on keyboards and myself on drums.  We played stuff like Gladys Knight and the Pips and Tower of Power.  But while we’re playing the Dardanella gig, Betty got herself pregnant and left to have an abortion.   My six-piece R&B band went down to five.  Otis Gale, who we used to call Leroy (laughs) gets hemorrhoids, but he tells the doctor he’s constipated instead, and the doctor gives him a laxative!  The next thing you know Leroy’s in the hospital having his hemorrhoids removed and my six-piece R&B band goes down to four.  The only other guy who sings is the guitar player.  One night during the middle of the second set, the guitar player starts falling back and leaning on his amp.  “I can’t play,” he says.  “What’s the matter?” I ask him.  “I did angel dust.”  We take him outside and walk him around, but he’s saying stuff like “why do I exist?” (laughs).   My six-piece R&B band is now three white guys who don’t sing!  Across the street there was another R&B band playing at The Windjammer and we had good camaraderie with their singer, Mighty Pope.  When Mighty Pope heard what was going on, he’d come sit in with our band and then run back and do his own.  Needless to say at the end of the summer, Shelter went their separate ways.

After packing in Shelter, you went on to join Fullerton Dam and then eventually became the drummer for Fludd which led to The Pockets, who became Saga.

Fullerton Dam was an original rock band with Grant Fullerton.  In order to play Grant’s original material, I suddenly had to take my R&B chops and start playing with baseball bats on a big double kick bass drum.  Grant had been with bands like Stitch in Time and Lighthouse and still performs today.  But back then, the band was struggling.  We did one album together on Condor Records, but it was a tough go playing original material.  One night while playing at Larry’s Hideaway (long gone now), the boys from Fludd came in, scouting for a new drummer to replace Ian McCorkle.  McCorkle also played in the progressive rock band Breathless with Jeff Plewman, aka Nash the Slash.  McCorkle really suited the role with his long blonde hair but Fludd fired him because his timing was suspect.  When Brian Pilling said, “we’re shopping for a new drummer and he’s sitting right here.”  I had to go through the decision, “well, should I stay with Grant because I’d been with him for two years?” or “should I take this gig with Fludd?”

Fludd were already an established band at this point?

It was around 1975 and Fludd already had success with Cousin Mary.  I decided to take the gig.  But what happened was, Brian had leukemia.  He had it when I joined the band but it was in remission.  Everything was fine until his remission broke down and the band came to an abrupt halt.  At that point Fludd was Peter Rochon, Jimmy Creighton and myself, and the Pilling brothers.   But when this happened to Brian, we realized we couldn’t continue the band as Fludd.  Together with Jimmy Creighton and his younger brother Ian on guitar, Peter Rochon and Mike, who had sang with Jimmy in a band called Truck, we formed Pockets.  We rented a rehearsal space at the old Phillips building at Leslie and Eglinton and set up shop to work eight to ten hours a day, six days a week.  We ate peanut butter sandwiches to survive.  We did two months out of town, our first being at Tudor Tavern in Cambridge to a room of six people and we did some stuff in Quebec too.  But the first thing we did in Toronto was simulcast on Q107 from Thunder Sound, which I think is gone now too.  It was a Sunday night and we played straight to air, and then the next night The Pockets opened at the Piccadilly Tube, which is also gone.  It seems they’re all gone now.  But we did two weeks at the Piccadilly and packed it every night.

So how did you go from six people to packed rooms every night?

Well Cambridge is a small town.  We were a band they’d never heard of, so why would they go see it?  Fludd were really well known in Toronto and people made the connection to The Pockets.  At that time, we were in Phase One studio too, working with Paul Gross who basically fronted us studio time so we could start the first Pockets album.

Who is Paul Gross?

Paul produced the first three Saga albums with his partner Doug.  Doug also worked with Triumph.  There was a ton of stuff going on at the time.  I think some of the original Honeymoon Suite was done there, and I believe Bryan Adams recorded there as well.  It was THE rock studio.

So between the rehearsal space, Phase One studio, and the Piccadilly Tube, Pockets became Saga?

Once we finished the first album we discovered there was already a band called Pockets so we couldn’t use that name.  It was our manager who came up with the name Saga because of the continuing story aspects of what we were doing lyrically at the time.

Looking back through all this history, when did you first acquire the title Lord of the Drums?

That was actually toward the later days of Saga when I started getting older (laughs).  By being in Saga I had gained notoriety for my style of playing.  My signature was also recognizable when I played on Don’t Pay the Ferryman by Chris DeBurgh.  Lord of the Drums was a name my webmaster came up with and it stuck, but there’s no real story to go with it.

You mentioned Garibaldi, but who are some of the other drummers and percussionists that have influenced you?

Garibaldi is probably my biggest influence and I think every rock drummer is influenced by John Bonham.  I met Led Zeppelin on the tour before Bonham died.  We were performing with Styx in Germany during the Grand Illusion tour (1980) and Led Zeppelin was playing on the same night, so we ended up in a bar with John Paul Jones and Robert Plant.  In Germany, if you’re a resident at a hotel, the bar stays open until you leave.  I stayed in the bar with those guys till 8 in the morning drinking schnapps and beer!  I’ve never been a big jazz guy, but another drummer who’s influenced me is Dave Brubeck’s drummer, Joe Morello.  In 1961, my music teacher gave me a copy of Time Further Out and if you look on Youtube, you’ll find early footage of Take Five and Morello playing around with time signatures, back before no one else ever thought about it.

During your time with Saga, there were sideline projects in the works.  Was it necessary to leave Saga in order to focus on other creative pursuits?

Something I told Jimmy Gilmour when he first joined Saga was, “you’re destined to spend your whole life being somewhat frustrated.  If you’re not frustrated, the creative juices can’t flow.  In other words, if you’ve done everything you can as a musician, then you’re ready to retire.”  Even though Saga was at the pinnacle of success and Worlds Apart the most successful recording, Jimmy Gilmour and I were frustrated.  When Head or Tales was released and didn’t do as well, we all looked at each other wondering why.  There was distension in the ranks, if you like, where Jimmy and I felt some of the issues should have been handled differently.  We were pushed out of the band and I think it had a lot to do with management.  If they cut the pie three ways instead of five, Saga could make more money.

But Saga didn’t go on as a three-piece, did they?

No, they hired side men to replace us.  They left us with no equipment for over a year and we had to get lawyers to settle.  Jimmy and I decided to do our own album.  We hooked up with Robbie Rae, who had a hit with Que Sera Sera.

Que Sera Sera, the Doris Day song?

The dance version.

The Canadian dance version of Que Sera Sera? (laughing).  You learn something new every day!

Robbie thought I was gay.  When Jimmy and I asked him to sing on our stuff, he thought I was trying to pick him up (laughing).  But he did join us and we released an album as GNP.  Shortly after that, Jimmy decided to go to Frankfurt to attend the Namm show (trade shows where new music equipment is presented) and while over there, Jimmy met up with Mike Sadler (the singer from Saga).  Their conversation set the basis for Jimmy and I to reunite with Saga.

But wasn’t the material for GNP already formulating before you were pushed out of Saga?

No.  After the first three Saga records, the band moved to England.  We lived together to write the fourth album while our agents went looking for producers.  Rupert Hines came up and we decided to do the next album with him.  Rupert is a brilliant producer.  We did the album at Farmyard Studios in Little Chalfont.  Rupert and I developed a great relationship and because he liked the sound of my drums in the old farm, he called me in when he produced The Getaway record for Chris DeBurgh.  When I started work on that, DeBurgh handed me a cassette with a synopsis for each song, which I thought was absolutely brilliant.  Chris is a singer songwriter who actually lets you play what you want and to get that kind of freedom is unbelievable.  It was part of what caused the light bulb to go off in my head. Saga always wrote the music first and then jammed the lyrics and melody after the fact.  So what we ended up with was a great piece of music, but not necessarily a great song.  I thought DeBurgh’s way was a better way to write songs but, when I tried to take this back to Saga, they didn’t want any part of it.  This added to my unrest, if you will, that led to my departure.

Were you involved with most of the song writing for Saga?

Saga wrote music mainly as a collective when it came to the actual music side of it.  Michael Sadler and Jimmy would do most of the lyrics and melodies.  I wrote lyrics in the early days, but they never got recorded.

I saw a Youtube clip of a song called Pick Up the Phone.  This is an original song you wrote as a three-piece under the name Negusis.  Can you tell me more about this band?

While with Saga, I had presented an album’s worth of material but they either didn’t like it or they didn’t listen to it, I’m not sure which.  So I ended up sending some of my stuff to Al Langlade.  Langlade is a singer who wanted me to produce him, but I always said no.  I didn’t like his songs.  But when I got my stuff back from Langlade with his vocal on it, I almost fell over.  It was Dare to Dream!  I heard the lyrics and melody with his voice and thought, wow!  The seed had been planted.  Langlade lives in Thunder Bay and I live in Hamilton, so when I was pushed out of Saga, I joined an 8-piece R&B band called Power House, while Langlade and I worked over the internet.  And it was with the bass player and guitar player from Power House that led me to form Negusis.

Are there any similarities between writing with Langlade and writing with Saga?

Yes.  Back in the early days of Saga, there was a lot of me in the songs, especially from the groove stand point.  The thing that made Saga different from other progressive bands was my R&B background.  The grooves are totally different from say, what King Crimson, Yes, Genesis or Rush were playing.  I was actually compared to Neil Peart back then, but apart from the fact we both play drums and grew up five miles from each other, there is no other comparison.  Neil plays from a prog rock angle with a lot more time signatures.  But back in the day, the big three were Rush, Max Webster and Saga, so we did shows at Maple Leaf Gardens and Saga and Rush toured together.  All coming up at the same time, of course there were comparisons.  This was our peer group.  The groove of me is inherent in the early Saga stuff but it wasn’t renewed until I began writing with Langlade.  Now I’m having fun again with a great band.

Continued on Thursday…

About Lisa McDonald: “I’m a city girl. A vegetarian who does Yoga, and pilates, and cycling keep me active but live music is my passion, all things music really. I value a strong work ethic and good manners and what really turns me on…confidence and experience.”