Boyd — Not Floyd!
During the mid-eighties, CBS Masterworks suggested I do a pop record. Gleefully noting the impressive sales figures racked up by Andreas Vollenweider’s electric-harp albums, the executives decided I should jump aboard the New Age bandwagon. Always ready for a challenge, I agreed to the experiment. Bernie, whose background had been in the popular side of music, was also keen to get my fingers around “something more hip and contemporary.” In 1985, he introduced me to Bob Ezrin, producer of hit records for Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel, who in turn arranged my introduction to Michael Kamen, with whom he had worked on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Meanwhile, several variety-style television programs had been booked for me in Germany, and Bernie, with his impeccable German, accompanied me. While I was taping the popular Paul Kuhn Show, fellow guest Gilbert Bécaud showered me with his repertoire of Gallic charm. Afterwards, Peter Hofmann, the towering Wagnerian tenor, engaged me in a playful snowball fight in the studio parking lot until I capitulated, afraid of broken nails. With the holiday season in full swing, Bernie and I took time off to sip hot mulled wine and join the festivities of the colourful Christmas market. After savouring steaming pies and Bavarian sausages, Bernie steered me to the shops to buy himself a felt hat, which provided him with an excellent excuse to check his reflection in the mirrors of Munich. “Any hat looks just wonderful on you, Bernie!” I repeatedly assured my good-humoured, irrepressibly narcissistic manager.
Michael Kamen, a bearded man with a quick sense of humour, flew to Munich to meet us and discuss plans. “I’d love to work on a record with you. Do you have any pieces in mind?” he questioned. I volunteered three of my recent compositions: “Sunchild,” “Destiny,” and “Persona.” Michael suggested a haunting Venezuelan folk song, which he transformed into “Sorceress.” He also proposed a Greek melody by Manos Hadjidakis, “Mother and Sister,” which would feature the soulful cello of Yo-Yo Ma, and Bernie cleverly recommended “L’Enfant” by Vangelis, the theme from The Year of Living Dangerously. Back in New York, pleased that Michael would undertake the production, CBS immediately authorized a budget of $100,000. This high number concerned me, as I knew it would all be deducted from my royalties, but everyone insisted the figure was low compared to an average pop budget.
Subsequent meetings with Michael took place in Toronto and New York, and my suggestion to include “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” with string accompaniment met with approval. Michael decided to include Fortin’s “L’Oiseau Triste,” divided into two sections and retitled “Flight of the Phoenix” and “Phoenix Reborn.” My pieces “Destiny,” “Sunchild,” and “Persona” were added to the list, as well as one of his own compositions. The search for New Age repertoire was over. My artist mother set about painting a colourful canvas with images from the titles, which CBS used as a backdrop for the album cover.
“When can I start to learn your piece, Michael?” I asked. “Oh, I haven’t written a note yet,” he said, shrugging offhandedly. “Don’t worry, Liona, I’ll compose it when we’re in the studio.” Michael’s piece, “Labyrinth,” took as much time to record as all of mine put together. He wrote and rewrote the composition, having me stay up late into the night to learn the score only to be told the next morning that he had changed his ideas. It was a frustrating experience for me because I was accustomed to knowing my music well ahead of entering the studio. “Just relax and get into the groove of the music,” Michael repeated. “Liona, you really should smoke some grass. It will help you improvise.” Improvisation has never been a classical artist’s forte, and I wished he had done his homework more efficiently outside the pricey studio. I watched the expensive hours mounting up on my account, but this producer was used to working with Pink Floyd, for whom time and money were irrelevant.
Michael possessed an exceptional faculty for combining unusual sounds, and would go on to write many brilliant movie scores. For this album, to be called Persona, several of his musical buddies were hired as session players — Andy Newark, who had played drums for John Lennon; Dean Garcia, bass player for the Eurythmics; and Roy Emerson, who filled the studio with weird and wonderful gongs, chimes, and rattles. Some of Persona’s percussion was achieved through shaking a jam jar filled with soybeans! David Gilmour, the innovative guitarist from Pink Floyd, agreed to lend his name and talents to our project in the private studio of his fourteenth-century country estate, Hook End Manor. Accommodating and relaxed, a barefooted Gilmour noodled around with strings and guitar knobs for a couple of hours, listening attentively when Michael or I gave him directions. At first his solo seemed to have no connection with the melody, so I persuaded him to echo my theme and improvise around the three-note phrase of “Persona.” The resultant solo was guaranteed to shock my classical listeners. David also added electric guitar lines to “L’Enfant,” all but drowning out my playing. For that number, I strummed a bass chord that the engineer sampled and sequenced for the duration of the piece — a novel way to exploit classical guitar sounds.
Trying to convince Michael that “L’Enfant” was too long, and needed editing to become the single for radio play, was useless. My producer intended his own piece to be chosen — as of course it was, since his friend Eric Clapton was persuaded to contribute some “licks.” The bass lines were created by stuffing Kleenex underneath my guitar strings to give them a dampened, double-bass effect, but some of my intricate riffs were barely detectable. Michael erased most of our London recording, insisting I re-record some arbitrary changes he had made to my guitar part in New York. “Labyrinth” was my least favourite piece; even Richard Fortin, whom I had flown in to help with arrangements, muttered that “it sounded like a jam session.” At such times, I needed a strong, forceful manager to insist on limits and exercise some control. Bernie made an effort, but was somewhat in awe of “such a genius” and did not dare to offend. Meanwhile, Michael, accustomed to calling the shots, resented my questioning his extravagant style. It made for some strained discussions.
Rather than book hotel rooms, I had rented a small apartment in Kensington, inviting Bernie and Richard to use the extra bedrooms. If I had taken my producer’s hotel suggestions, we could have easily blown another ten thousand dollars. As it was, we ran twenty thousand dollars over budget, which gave CBS an excuse not to pay my normal contracted fee. If only Michael had realized I was Boyd — not Floyd!
Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics, who had agreed to play the flute on “Mother and Sister,” developed throat problems that caused her to be hospitalized for a minor operation at the time of our sessions. Gheorghe Zamfir promised to contribute his pan flute to the album, but after we flew our producer and engineer to New York, a cold sore prevented him from playing. Those were two minor disappointments, but why did we need more competing sounds and guest artists? Was this album not supposed to feature my guitar? Any real classical guitar presence was limited to the music Richard and I had written. All in all, however, the resulting project created an interesting fusion of sounds and styles. Persona was going to raise eyebrows and send shock waves around my classical career.
Inside the studio control room, I found it painful to breathe as a toxic cocktail of various kinds of smoke clawed at my throat and stung my eyes. Never had I witnessed so much drug use — hashish, marijuana, and cocaine all routinely laid out on the sound console for anyone to partake of — chemical-induced highs in the name of art. This album was certainly being produced in a very different manner from all of my previous recordings!
Joel and our friend Sheldon Chumir, who came to England toward the end of the sessions, were dispatched to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of French wine for David Gilmour. It had been hinted that cocaine would make a better token of gratitude, but the only white lines I had ever seen in my life were in our control room, and I certainly was not about to start hustling for illegal substances in the back streets of London!
When the editing and mixing drew to a close, I headed off with Joel and Sheldon for a much-needed holiday. How wonderful to breathe the rain-rinsed air of the English countryside after being imprisoned in that blue studio haze. We stayed with Mary O’Hara, my Irish friend who sang and played the harp. Having been a nun for ten years, she was now engaged to a former priest. The delightful couple possessed an infectious Irish sense of humour, and we collapsed into fits of laughter as we shared such backstage trials and tribulations as our resourceful use of milk cartons and Evian bottles in certain theatres where performers have no bathroom access during intermission! They inhabited a quaint thatched-roof cottage in Watership Down, nestled in the verdant hills of Hampshire. Wandering along pebbly country lanes, I remembered some names from the books of pressed wildflowers I had made during my English childhood: wood sorrel, harebell, foxglove, and scarlet pimpernel.
Two country inns, Sharrow Bay and Miller Howe, in northern England’s Lake District, welcomed us with quilted eiderdowns, cozy fireplaces, and British cuisine at its best. Under drizzling skies we walked the dewy, green hills to the home of Wordsworth. Remembering “far from our home by Grasmere’s quiet lake,” we sloshed through farmers’ fields, climbed over wooden stiles, and sampled juicy blackberries from the hedgerows. Here was the England I remembered from my youth. It still had a special place in my heart, yet I was pleased that my parents’ vision had led them to a life in North America.
After I had suffered weeks of sedentary studio life and cramped accommodation, motoring around Britain provided a welcome change. Across the sweeping Yorkshire moors, the Persona rough mixes played over and over on the rental car’s tape deck and looped relentlessly inside my head. Suddenly, the pastoral strains of “Greensleeves” had been replaced by the hard-driving rhythms of “Destiny.” Where would this unusual new project take me and my guitar? What would be the repercussions of this radical change of style? I had chosen the cards for one of my career’s strangest episodes.
As 1986 progressed, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision to leave CAMI and sign with Gurtman and Murtha, the New York agency I had expected would advance my U.S. career. Their three solo bookings — Toledo, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City — could hardly be considered a U.S. tour! Scanning the empty pages of my once-crammed calendar, I realized that many of my U.S. and European engagements had resulted from personal contacts, without any agent’s involvement. Where were those international orchestras they had promised? Apparently it was time to begin another search south of the border.
“If anyone can find you a good U.S. agent, Bruce Allen can,” assured my friend Sam “the Record Man” Sniderman. I had briefly met Bruce in connection with David Foster’s African famine-relief project. He was the strong, no-nonsense manager who had launched the careers of BTO, Loverboy, and Bryan Adams. With a reputation for being brash and short-tempered, he was considered one of the most powerful managers in North America. At first I hesitated to phone, presuming he would not be in touch with classical or crossover agents, as his speciality was the world of rock music. But with few other leads, I eventually decided to consult him about U.S. representation. “Isn’t Fiedler handling you?” he questioned. “Yes, but mostly in Canada, and I need help finding someone in the U.S.,” I explained. There was a long silence. “How would you like me to manage your career?” he asked. This was not what I had in mind. I reiterated my need for a new U.S. agent, not a personal manager. “I bet I could make you a huge international star,” he continued. “There are no other guitarists with your marketability and potential to capture large audiences, especially with this new pop record of yours. Without strong management, Persona will be lost among the flood of New Age albums.”
I asked Bruce how, with the rocker Bryan Adams as an artist, he would even entertain the idea of managing a classical guitarist. While I played for audiences averaging five hundred a night, Bryan was selling out stadiums around the world. It seemed that Bruce, encouraged by his wife, viewed me as a unique challenge to add a new facet to his career. “Honey, I’ll call in all the favours,” he assured me, “We’ll have you playing in every major city in the U.S.A. You’ll be on the covers of dozens of magazines in no time.” I was dumbfounded by this vision of instant fame. “I’ll think about it and call you back,” I said, stunned, and hung up, wondering what Pandora’s box I might be opening.
Joel and Sniderman were astonished by Bruce’s suggestion, but concluded that I could not refuse this “offer of a lifetime.” What to tell poor Bernie? He had been the one responsible for the planning and recording of Persona, and now Bruce was coming along to steal his act. I spent a couple of troubled nights wondering if entrusting my career to Bruce was really a wise move. If I had harboured concerns about Bernie’s ability to deal with the classical department at CBS, how would Bruce Allen, rock-star creator, go over?
I called Bruce back to say I was interested in his proposal. Suddenly, my career had assumed unimaginable new dimensions. Here was one of the music business’s moguls about to mastermind my rise to international superstardom! CBS would be amazed that I had bagged a manager of Bruce’s calibre. Bernie’s efforts paled in comparison with what I dreamed my new manager could accomplish. Persona would have the benefit of pop marketing, a promotional video, and international tour support. Bruce even promised he could arrange to have me share the billing with a superstar act such as Paul Simon. Suddenly, everything seemed within my grasp, and he set my hopes soaring with rashly stated promises. Of course, I believed him: the man had so many associates in the music business and knew promoters across the continent.
A week later, Bruce Allen, in the company of Bryan Adams, invited me to tea at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto, where he proposed taking over my career immediately. “I’ll keep fifteen percent of fees and you’ll cover office expenses. I’ll have my staff contact you this week so you can get to know them. Sort out the stuff with Fiedler and let’s get your act on the road.” His forceful personality gave me the feeling that from then on, I would not be involved in the day-to-day business affairs of management, as I had been with Bernie. Perhaps this would free up more time to concentrate on playing and writing. Confident that I was making the right decision, I resolved to break the news to Bernie as gently as possible.
A few days after my Toronto meeting with Bruce, I received a succinct letter from him. “I have decided to take a pass on your career,” he stated bluntly. I was flabbergasted. What had made him change his mind just when I had accustomed myself to the idea? No explanation was given. How could he have seemed so enthusiastic one moment, yet so offhandedly negative the next? In my mind, his beguiling promises had almost become reality, and the thought of returning to a situation where I had poor international management and the distinct chance to lose momentum around Persona’s release was too disappointing to contemplate. “Perhaps I should go to Vancouver to talk with Bruce and find out what happened,” I told an equally dumbfounded Sniderman. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” he agreed, embarrassed by this turn of events.
The following day I flew to Vancouver and showed up at Bruce’s office. “Liona Boyd for you,’’ his secretary called over the intercom. “Tell her I’ll ring her back later,” was Bruce’s reply, thinking I was merely at the end of a phone line, not sitting a few feet away from him in the lobby. “Jesus f—— Christ! You came two thousand miles to see me?” he exclaimed. Bruce informed me that he had decided to write the letter after talking to a couple of his buddies in the record companies who alleged I had a reputation for being difficult to manage. “What do they mean by that exactly?” I queried. Bernie had always told me that of all the artists he knew, I was the most co-operative. “They say your mother runs your career, and I hate having to deal with mothers,” he retorted. Bruce, I later discovered, had a mother complex. I assured him he would never have to utter two words to my mother if he so wished. I explained that she managed my business affairs and advised me personally, but was not involved directly in concert or record company decisions. “Well, if that’s true, I guess I’ll manage you, Liona,” he stated, doing another about-turn. “I like women with the balls to go after something they want. If you want me as your manager, you’ve got it. Now get your ass outta here and go home!”
I would have liked to take advantage of being in his office to meet his staff and familiarize them with my career, but Bruce refused. Like a chastised child, I thought I had better follow his peremptory orders. Why was I not centred enough to realize this was not my style or way of doing things? Until then, had I not always protected my freedom to make my own decisions? But I had been led toward the mountain top, and was sorely tempted by the shimmering possibilities that lay ahead.
My immediate challenge was to form a band to realize the Persona album onstage. Richard Fortin agreed to be my assistant for musical arrangements, and his classical, electric, and steel-string guitar abilities were invaluable. I required a minimum of two synthesizer players and extensive sequencing in order to replicate the multilayered effect Michael Kamen had achieved in the studio. After chasing leads through studio references, and consulting Graham Shaw at Bernie’s suggestion, I hired two keyboard players, Rick Tait and Anthony Panacci, and for drums and percussion, Steve Mitchell, the jester of the group, who kept us amused when the trials of the road began to wear us down.
Rehearsals commenced in the spacious lower level of Fallingbrook in August 1986. Learning how to hold an electric classical guitar presented a major challenge for someone who up until then had used only the Segovia position. It required considerable adjustment for me to play standing upright, with a leather strap around my neck and a new angle for the left-hand wrist. I learned by trial and error; Richard coached me on how to communicate with the band by pointing the guitar neck down while twisting at the hips. With this signal, hopefully, we would all land in unison on the last chord! I pranced around Fallingbrook at night doing my best to get the hang of moving like a rocker while watching my reflection in the large glass windowpanes. Was I really going to be able to pull off this pop persona? Joan Jett I certainly was not!
“Samba-Chôro for Liona,” dedicated to me by Laurindo Almeida, worked well as a duet; Richard Fortin arranged a Beatles medley for an encore, transformed “Carnival” into a duet, and added keyboard parts to our joint composition, “Fugato” (later renamed “A Canon for Christmas”), which several reviewers subsequently mistook for J.S. Bach — quite a compliment! For the rest of the repertoire, our challenge was to sound like the Persona album. To duplicate the complex recording engineering, in which Kamen had layered and mixed sounds, my small group’s capabilities were stretched, but we eventually achieved a sound close to the original. Richard did his best imitation of Eric Clapton and David Gilmour during the electric-guitar solos, while Steve handled drums, guiros, wind chimes, and cymbals.
It was fun to be making music with four young guys instead of all alone, as I had done for many years. We enjoyed pooling our musical talents and shared expectations of being on the brink of an exciting career breakthrough. Bruce Allen flew into town at the end of August to introduce himself to the band. “Yesterday I booked you four dates within five minutes,” he bragged. Boy, had I been lucky to find such a manager! He took me to hear the electric harpist Andreas Vollenweider at the O’Keefe Centre and expressed confidence that Persona would soon help me sell out similar venues around the world. He also promised Richard a new custom-built guitar from Vancouver, which put my trusting guitarist on cloud nine for weeks, but the guitar never arrived.
Overnight, my relatively calm days were replaced by the frantic whirlwinds of fashion shoots. Bruce had decided to remake my image, and claimed I would become “the sex symbol of the eighties.” How would I like to wear a crewcut or shave my head for a new look? When I refused point-blank, I was whisked downtown to Toronto’s “hairdresser to the stars,” who needed twenty minutes of meditation before trimming, layering, and screwing mousse into my long tresses. What a ridiculous fuss everyone was making over three inches of hair, I thought, shaking my head in front of the bathroom mirror.
In Montreal, after recording with the Quebec superstar André Gagnon a piece he had dedicated to me called “Chanson pour Liona,” I was taken to the Montreal Gazette for the most insulting fashion shoot of my life. No more delicate draped clothes for Liona Boyd. The Gazette was out to destroy the romantic image that had been mine, and replace it with the heavy leathers and unfeminine punk designs of the eighties. The fashion editor, Iona Monahan, dressed me in black leather jodhpurs. “Sit on that stool and spread your legs farther apart. We’re after an open-crotch shot,” she instructed. I couldn’t believe the type of clothes and poses I was being asked to go along with, but kept remembering Bruce’s emphatic admonitions that I must co-operate and not challenge their expertise in the area of fashion. For one shot, my hair was scraped back into a ridiculous chignon, so that it looked as though I was wearing a bellhop cap; in another, it was crimped so tightly with curling irons that I could have been mistaken for a show poodle rather than a classical guitarist. “We’ll use beige foundation to disguise those awful veins in your hands, and what about some nail polish?” the makeup girl suggested. “Your hair is too golden, your lipstick too pink, and that antique gold jewellery you’re wearing doesn’t make a strong enough statement.” It seemed that everything about me offended the fatuous world of fashion. Sunken brown cheeks and exaggerated eyebrows completed the total destruction of what I had naturally been for the previous twenty years. Even Bruce Allen was horrified when he saw the shots. “Holy shit, Liona, why did you let them do that to you?” he exploded.
I rushed back to my hotel, grateful that Joel had flown in to meet me. Once my hair had been repaired and layers of makeup scraped off, we taxied to Pine Avenue to have drinks with Pierre Trudeau. I told him how shabbily the Gazette had treated me. “It doesn’t surprise me, Liona. Just look what they’ve written about me this week!” he said with a wry smile and commiserative shrug. “I’ve always loved your hair and clothes. Why do they want to change you?” It was all far too complicated to explain, so I sat back in his art deco living room nursing a glass of wine and listened while my past and present lovers discussed international politics.
Bruce had made me hire an image consultant, who happily ran around the Toronto clothing stores with my credit card, grabbing expensive hip outfits to match my new persona. Bruce’s assistants offered hair and wardrobe advice. Rock photographer Dimo Safari was dispatched to shoot images of my new look while I posed in leather pants and dark sunglasses. Before I knew it, my peaceful lakeside home had been invaded by the world of rock music.
For Vancouver magazine’s cover, the hair and makeup took four and a half hours. In a black leather miniskirt, red leather jacket, and stiletto high heels, I felt ready to strike a pose on Hollywood Boulevard. “Everyone at the office thinks this new image is working great!” Bruce reported. “Toronto Life magazine also wants you on its cover.” I groaned at the thought of more fashion shoots, and wondered how my poor hair would ever recover from the constant abuse. I was spending more time perched on makeup stools than behind my guitar. Would all this image stuff really propel my career to new heights? I wondered. Yet who was I to question proven star-builder Bruce Allen? It was not easy for me, but since I had agreed to venture down this path, I determined to make every effort to co-operate.
“The new Liona Boyd” had her debut at the televised Toronto Arts Foundation Awards, where my band and I played the title cut from the Persona album. Metallic tights and a gold-sequined jacket with exaggerated shoulder pads made me feel like a cross between Liberace and a goalie for the Maple Leafs. The Toronto arts establishment must have done a double take on seeing their classical darling transformed into a pop rocker. My parents were horrified; Andrés Segovia would have rolled over in his grave.
Bernie, who had reluctantly accepted my decision to go with Bruce Allen, kept in touch, as he had already started to book some of the dates for my Persona tour. Bruce was busy rescheduling and delaying the concerts by six weeks. “Don’t forget about Thunder Bay,” Bernie cautioned me, “you’re due to play there in three weeks, and the promoter tells me you’re almost sold out. There’s no question of rescheduling.” Bernie had booked this engagement months before and forgotten to tell me. I anxiously called Bruce and finally got him on the line. He assured me that the tour had been delayed and everything booked by Bernie had been cancelled. “Don’t worry, Liona, we’ve taken care of Thunder Bay. You definitely don’t play there until later in the season. Just relax.” This identical conversation was repeated three subsequent times, as a nervous Bernie insisted the promoter was still counting on my concert. I was at my wit’s end. The date was only two weeks away and Bruce was furious at me for believing Bernie, whom he continually denigrated. With so many new pieces to learn, the band desperately needed another month of rehearsal before stepping out onstage.
Finally, Bernie called a week before the supposed concert date to warn me for the last time about the situation. The only thing to do was to phone the promoter myself. He confirmed my worst fears. The concert was on, the house sold out, and as two artists had already cancelled from his ’86 series, he was not about to let me off the hook. “But it will be a disaster!” I warned. “Please let me reschedule.” “Liona, I’m begging you not to cancel,” he pleaded. How furious it made me to remember the number of times Bruce had assured me not to worry; now I had it straight from the horse’s mouth. The concert was most definitely on.
“Don’t worry, kiddo, just fly up and do a solo concert,” he said comfortingly. Small comfort! I had neglected my solo repertoire for several months in order to concentrate on the pop material. Summoning the band, I told them we were beginning full-time rehearsals as we had a sold-out show the next week. Feeling panicked, I hired a road manager, Bruce Anderson, to make the arrangements. There was so much equipment to take — five thousand pounds of gear! My lighting and sound crew drove up in a truck, while the band flew Air Canada along with several guitars and a stack of emulator keyboards. I joined them in Thunder Bay after three exhausting days of wall-to-wall press interviews in Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, which Bruce’s office had insisted on.
Before curtain time, our nerves were like frayed guitar strings about to snap. We flung ourselves into “Destiny,” trying to pull confidence from each other and ignore the palpitations in our hearts. The lighting cues were perplexing; one minute my hands were dazzling purple, the next crisscrossed by blue and green shadows. During Concerto Baroquissimo we found ourselves out of sync. Richard and I were trying to keep together, Rick and Anthony had lost each other totally, and for ten unbearable seconds, a red-faced Anthony was left playing an unscheduled solo! Our sound engineer had mixed up the monitor cues, so none of us could hear the others. In a band, you are at the mercy of the sound man, and without certain instruments in the monitor, keeping together is a nightmare. Instead of a cohesive Concerto Baroquissimo, it deteriorated into an avant-garde cacophony. I quickly launched into “Sea of Tranquility,” hoping the audience would think the previous piece a contemporary takeoff on the baroque style! “Morning Sundance,” a Villa-Lobos prelude, “Chinatown,” “Samsara,” “Aranjuez,” “Conquistadores,” and “Sunchild” came across well. Most effective of all was the addition of dry-ice clouds and bird sounds to “Danza Inca,” which I played on a handmade small guitar, or requinto.
During “Persona,” waiting for Richard’s electric-guitar solo, I noticed a glazed, catatonic expression on his face. “Pssst,” I frantically signalled to snap him from his trance. After the show, he admitted that he had been sitting there wishing he had become a doctor instead of a musician! I empathized with his feelings but implored him to please choose a better time to contemplate his destiny.
Finally, it was time for my debut on the electric guitar. As Steve hit the first beats of “L’Enfant,” I confidently started to play the melody. No sound came out of the speakers. I saw horrified looks on the faces of Anthony and Steve, probably reflecting my own expression of panic. Bruce Anderson bounded onstage with connecting cables and, for what seemed an eternity, proceeded to rewire monitors, guitars, and amplifiers. It was the Denver Coliseum all over again! Trying to make light of the situation, I explained to the audience that as this was my first concert with a band, these technical malfunctions were to be expected. At that moment, I would have preferred to be a beggar on the streets of Calcutta than a guitarist standing helplessly at centre stage. Incredibly, the concert was warmly received by my appreciative, generous audience. Even the reviews, which I expected to tear me to shreds, were moderately favourable. Personally, however, I felt sick about the entire experience. Our Persona performance had been unprofessional; I had let down my public.
A few months later, a circular that was being sent to all the concert halls and colleges across North America came to my attention. A report by the Thunder Bay presenter claimed I had been “uncooperative and unprepared.” The latter was indisputable, but after risking my name and reputation to save his series, I felt betrayed and angry that my good turn had been used against me. This bad critique sabotaged several concert bookings for the next season.
The real Persona tour began with a “warm-up date” on October 12, 1986, in Labrador City, a remote, icy town where I had never performed before. After we arrived, I spent the afternoon trying to borrow some hip clothing, as my suitcase and my disorganized tour manager had parted company in Newfoundland. In spite of some minor technical hitches, we pulled off a passable performance cheered on by an enthusiastic audience. St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton, Ottawa, Kingston, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Kamloops, Victoria, Vancouver, London, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, and Hamilton were just some of the thirty cities strung across Canada where our Persona caravan plugged in for performances.
Bruce, who caught a couple of the concerts, seemed wowed by the crowd’s response. My band combined flights and bus trips, while the road manager and I flew between cities until blizzard conditions forced us all to endure the bus. I yelled repeatedly at the sound and lights men for choking up the air with marijuana smoke, furious that they chose to ignore the requests of the person who was footing all their bills. As I listened from my bunk bed to the sounds of the bus’s grinding gears and my inebriated snoring musicians, who made the most each night of our Molson Brewery sponsorship, I thought how smart Segovia had been to remain a soloist. Compounding my stress, Bernie had decided to demand his percentage of the tour profits up front and was threatening a lawsuit. After the long drive from Fort McMurray to Calgary, where a sold-out Jack Singer Concert Hall awaited us, I collapsed on the green-room carpet for two hours and had dreams of losing my way on icy roads. Thank goodness for adrenalin — that amazing natural energizer enabled me to prance onstage with panache.
We became accustomed to standing ovations and complimentary reviews. Billboard magazine praised the Persona album and People magazine also gave it a favourable write-up. The Montreal Gazette, however, had been handed on a platter the perfect excuse to attack my entire career. Their classical music critic, Arthur Kaptainis, relishing the opportunity, devoted a full page to his mission of destroying my reputation. This confirmed member of the “Boydbusters organization,” was out to prove that “Liona Boyd cannot play the guitar to save her life.” He reported that an unnamed concert promoter called me “a blot on the good name of Canadian musicianship,” and quoted an invidious comment that my albums were “a criminal waste of vinyl!” Referring gratuitously to “my conga line of boyfriends,” he reprinted the ghastly Gazette fashion shoot to add fuel to his argument that my career had become the laughingstock of Canada.
Oh, the “slings and arrows” one has to endure at the hands of music writers! How frustrated they must be to see a woman succeed in a field where they themselves never stood a chance. To misquote George Bernard Shaw, “He who can, plays. He who cannot becomes a critic.” One of my favourites was, “She has a dreadful mid-Atlantic accent that sounds like an airline stewardess demonstrating an oxygen mask.” The Canadian writer then proceeded to criticize my hair, the onstage plant, and the colour of the chair upon which I sat! Had I taken to heart some of these vituperative personal attacks, I probably would have abandoned my career years ago. But even the greatest performers and composers have come under fire since the time of Beethoven. That all-time musical genius suffered such reviews as: “Beethoven produces music so impenetrably obscure in design and so full of unaccountable and often repulsive harmonies that he puzzles the critic as much as he perplexes the performer….” “The effect which the writings of Beethoven have had on the art must, I fear, be considered as ‘injurious’….” “Beethoven is deficient in esthetic imagery and lacking a sense of beauty.” When one realizes that every major artist has, at one time or another, been lambasted by vitriolic criticism, one learns to accept the detractions along with the praise. Having had my fair share of both, I like to remember the old Arabic quote used by Truman Capote that we printed on the Persona cover: “Dogs bark but the caravan moves on.” In between concerts, I squeezed in television and radio shows, in-store album promotions, newspaper interviews, a telethon, and more tedious fashion shoots for magazines.
After a much-needed Christmas holiday in North Africa, I decided to upgrade my band, hiring a new keyboard player and a new percussionist. Bruce Allen had promised that the U.S. tour would begin in February, so I wanted to be fully prepared for all the major cities he was lining up. Each day we rehearsed, fine-tuning the arrangements and polishing our performance. We were really going to impress those American audiences.
Joining forces with Rik Emmett, the rock guitarist from Triumph, Alex Lifeson, the guitarist from Rush, and the jazz player Ed Bickert, I recorded “Beyond Borders” for Guitar Player magazine, which featured the Canadian Guitar Summit on their cover and included a CD of the piece in each copy. Once again the new image demanded tight leather pants and frizzed hair. My new band teamed up with rockers Steve Howe and Rik Emmett at the Diamond Club fundraiser “Night of a Thousand Guitars,” whose footage was later used in the documentary Guitar Festival. At last I was starting to feel in control of the band, the body language, and the new electric-classical guitar Yamaha had made for me. Everything seemed in place for the tour ahead.
Apart from our own dates, Bruce was apparently negotiating for us to open for Supertramp and Bruce Hornsby and the Range. The dates had been postponed until March, which soon dissolved into April and then into May. These delays were becoming very costly, and Bruce seemed to be avoiding my calls. The people at CBS New York, informing me that Bruce never returned their calls, repeatedly asked when and where the U.S. tour was starting. “Will you just get off my damn back about the tour dates, Liona!” he barked, “I’ve already told you we have Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati in place. You’ll know the minute we’re set to go.”
In late May, I flew to New York to meet with Terry Rhodes, the ICM agent who was supposedly putting the tour together. “Oh, Liona,” he admonished, “Bruce is too preoccupied these days with Bryan Adams. All we are discussing for you are some bookings with a New Age violinist next October.” I was speechless. Bruce had not been giving me the attention I needed. I had even agreed to turn down a fourth appearance on The Tonight Show; Bruce had suggested I wait until his tour itinerary was finalized. In doing so, I forfeited a wonderful promotional opportunity, as by then Persona was no longer considered a new release. It was clear to me that Bruce was absorbed with Bryan Adams, but no excuses could justify the havoc he had wreaked on my career. In despair and anger, I told him it was all over. I had had enough of the “bullshit” — to use his language.
In July, with no management, I flew to Vancouver for CBS’s inter-national convention, at which president Al Teller surprised me by having a ballroom full of music-industry heavyweights sing me “Happy Birthday.” Was I still part of their family of recording stars, or was this their vocal version of a golden handshake? As I watched Cyndi Lauper prance around onstage to her hit, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” I wondered if I could ever rescue my classical career. The future of Persona looked pretty dismal without good management. At my suggestion, Bernie Fiedler had become heavily involved with the Canadian Brass and was no longer an option. In talking to Irwin Katz, the A&R (artists and repertoire) man for CBS Masterworks, I was given the distinct impression that even my record company had a perfunctory attitude. With no manager, no U.S. dates, no international bookings, and no clear direction, why should I expect their support? “All I can suggest, Liona, is that we send you down to Mexico to make a low-budget mariachi album there.” He looked uninterested, avoiding eye contact. To no avail, I tried to convince him that I had been composing some good original music. I began to think perhaps he would prefer to be rid of me altogether, and my senses eventually proved correct. In October, Irwin indicated that I could walk away from CBS and my five-record contract if I so wished. The company that had helped build me up was now ready to dump me, so foolishly I signed a release, confident that a new and more supportive record company would soon snap me up.
Desperate to revive my evanescent career, I initiated talks with other possible managers in New York, including my Carnegie Hall impresario, Joseph Pastore. No one seemed to understand my music. I was too classical for the pop scene and too pop for the classical. After doing the rounds of managers in L.A., I finally decided to work with Rick Hansen, José Feliciano’s sanguine former manager. He claimed to know my guitar market, but after several months we called it quits. Apart from a role on Fox TV’s sitcom Throb, where I had to switch from classical to electric guitar sporting a feather earring and pink boa, nothing was achieved.
Back in Canada in 1987, I made a couple of inane appearances on the Super Dave show and joined the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir to record a piece I had composed for the Calgary Olympics called “Hands of Man,” which was released by a small label that soon faded into oblivion like yesterday’s news. “My brilliant career” seemed to be following suit. For many years, I had taken its future for granted, never realizing there would be a price for straying off the traditional classical path and swimming against the mainstream. My mother, who had been negative from the start about my pop experiment, repeated with irritating regularity, “I knew all along this was a mistake.”
Frustrating trips to Los Angeles and New York continued, as I met with more record companies and agents. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” started to have a hollow ring. Persona had contaminated my classical reputation and now my pop career had been aborted — so much for CBS’s ingenious idea of making me the latest, greatest crossover artist! In the company of my good friend Dale, in March and September 1988, I flew twice to Seoul, Korea, for TV shows and Olympic Arts Festival concerts, then took off for Mardi Gras in New Orleans, staying with two African-American women friends. We stuffed ourselves with sugary beignets, danced to jazz bands, and hung out with the Neville Brothers at Tipitina’s. A few days of decadence in “the city that time forgot” were a welcome distraction from the vicissitudes of the music business. As my favourite writer, Lawrence Durrell, once wrote, “Life is too short not to be taken lightly.”
Finally, after discussions in New York, Dick Asher of PolyGram, whom I had known from his former position as deputy president of CBS, offered me a two-album contract for Canada and the U.S. Relieved, I returned to New York to shake hands and seal the deal, anxious to re-enter the womb-like security of a recording studio. Unfortunately, the legal paperwork would take at least a month. “Are you guaranteeing my Christmas album will be released by PolyGram next December?” I persisted. “Liona, you have my word,” he replied, his hand firmly in mine. He was amazed that I had flown back the same day just to shake his hand. More fool I for not insisting on a written contract.
A month later, on the verge of recording, an apologetic Dick Asher told me he was “taking a pass,” as PolyGram lacked the promotional staff. Realistically, I knew that even a written deal would have been worthless. Musicians have little chance of enforcing a contract with a major recording company without enormous negative repercussions, and without support and publicity a recording is doomed to failure. The bad feelings that would inevitably be engendered by any confrontation could contaminate a career and blacklist a name. There was nothing to do but accept Asher’s apology. I kicked myself for having walked away from my five-album CBS deal, which most classical guitarists could only dream of. In many ways, it was one of the biggest blunders of my career.
Eventually, Joe Summers, the president of A&M Records Canada, offered a distribution contract and initiated a good, long-term relationship. I nevertheless continued the rounds of agents, most of whom insisted, “You jus’ gotta learn to sing, babe,” and discouraged me from moving back in a classical direction. “You wanna play guitar societies and church basements or have a hit like Kenny G? By the way, are you free for dinner? How about coming to Connecticut with me for the weekend? My wife’s out of town, and we can discuss your musical ideas.” These career frustrations were compounded by Joel’s aggravating lawsuit with the CDIC. He moped around his office despondently shuffling old files or flicking aimlessly through television channels. The drive and enthusiasm that had attracted me had evaporated, and our two careers seemed to be fizzling out with each passing day.
Within a short time, CBS Records was acquired by the Japanese giant Sony, and their classical division transferred to Europe. In the process, most of the people I had been dealing with were fired; there would be no going back. Not surprisingly, this takeover had played a role in Masterworks’ indifference; when jobs are in jeopardy, commitments become difficult. After soaring to gold, Persona’s sales plummeted due to lack of promotion. The royalty statements, however, showed that my old catalogue of classical music continued to sell steadily.
Realizing that my uniqueness as a guitarist was in part due to an original and varied repertoire, I decided to record a new album, to include some of my own compositions and transcriptions: “Latin Suite”; “Shadows of the Wind”; “Fallingbrook Suite”; a prelude, nocturne, and waltz by Chopin; and Puccini’s “O Mio Bambino Caro,” recorded in the fine natural acoustics of Toronto’s Church of Saint Timothy. Solo guitar was my real strength. The past frustrations with Bruce Allen and the resulting negativity from record companies would be pushed aside by the resurgent demiurge I reharnessed for Encore, the first of several albums I produced under my own label, Moston Records. In another inspired moment, I composed a frolicking flotilla of notes — “Kitty on the Keys,” which the nimble fingers of the pianist Frank Mills promptly recorded. Mila Mulroney, the wife of the Canadian prime minister, asked me to perform at a dinner for the spouses of the G7 representatives at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. After the last encore she blew me kisses, thanked me for speaking out for the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association, and invited me to join her, Nancy Reagan, and Mrs. Helmut Kohl for a Lake Ontario cruise on the Oriole. The days when Pierre booked me to play for their husbands had long since passed.
Feeling the urge to “hit the road” again, I hired Sally Heit, a bouncy blond soprano, as my special guest on a tour whose program included Villa-Lobos’s “Bachianas Brazileiras” and “Ave Maria,” then shared a Christmas show with Jim Nabors and a TV special with Chet Atkins. Once again, I was back on track as a classical guitarist. On hearing that tickets to my concerts were being scalped outside the theatres, I felt a rush of gratitude toward my loyal followers, who had tolerated the Persona experiment and must have breathed a sigh of relief that their ears would no longer be assaulted by drums and electric guitar. However, my forays into the jungle of pop music had won hundreds of new aficionados for the classical guitar; from Los Angeles to Fredericton, kids who idolized Metallica and Van Halen were now coming to hear Bach, Albéniz, and Schubert.
The following season, in October 1988, I decided to do a series of concerts using a private tour bus. If Waylon Jennings and Loretta Lynn could bus across the continent, why not a classical guitarist? My bus came equipped with beds, a TV, a kitchen, and a shiny green bathtub — quite a contrast to the vehicle I had used on my Persona tour! The road manager and driver, who had expected a prima donna, were apparently taken aback by my down-to-earth attitude. It felt more like a camping trip with two young friends than a concert tour! Every night after performances, while burning up the asphalt miles, my good-natured road manager and I sprawled on the couches gobbling junk food while watching old James Bond movies or laughing ourselves silly over This Is Spinal Tap. No more schlepping suitcases into hotel rooms — classical artistes have no idea what fun they are missing.
Finally, I recorded my second album of familiar carols. For the pieces “Christmas Dreams” and “Song of Peace,” for which I had composed both lyrics and music, my producer, Eric Robertson, enlisted the Orpheus Choir of Toronto and the Toronto Children’s Chorus. Through countless phone calls, I persuaded Gheorghe Zamfir, with whom I had played Concerto Baroquissimo at a number of symphony concerts, to lend his haunting pan flute to three cuts, including “Ave Maria,” and the charming balladeer Roger Whittaker to add his voice to my guitar tracks. After taking the odd singing lesson, on the advice of those New York agents, I decided to test my vocal chords on “Christmas Dreams” on the condition that Whittaker did most of the work! As it turned out, we took three hours in Reno, Nevada, to record his voice and were left only fifteen minutes to record mine. Having been thrown out of a nursery-class choir for “growling,” I felt vindicated by this modest accomplishment, although my voice still sounded like that of an English schoolgirl. “Christmas Dreams” became the single that propelled the album to gold.
In the middle of my thirty-two-city cross-Canada tour, I was invited to play at the new Paris Opera House at La Bastille, and fought off jet lag to give the very first performance in the still-unfinished hall. A New York WQXR concert of flute and guitar duets with Doriot Anthony Dwyer was followed by performances in Athens, Ankara, and Istanbul. Perusing a program for the Istanbul International Music Festival, I was highly amused by the bizarre notes that some imaginative writer had composed for the Atatürk Cultural Centre concert. “Miss Boyd will be playing “Parranda,” one of her original works inspired by a dance performed while hunting alligators!” In spite of the hundred-degree temperature in the concert hall, the Turkish audience was effervescent, particularly applauding my arrangement of a Turkish folk dance. The next day was spent filming an hour-long TV special; a video copy of the show was offered in lieu of fee. To this day, it has not arrived.
The festival organizers informed me that, as a great honour, I had been selected to perform a private concert at the home of Nejat, “the Rockefeller of Turkey.” Counting on that last free day to lose myself among the perfumes and bric-a-brac of the Grand Bazaar, I was not overly thrilled by this unexpected “honour.” “Don’t worry, Miss Boyd, he will give you a wonderful present,” I was assured by “Typhoon,” my highly strung Turkish assistant. After sacrificing the better part of the day to prepare for the concert, then playing my heart out to a gathering of cigar-smoking, sherry-toting, upper-crust Turks, I was ceremoniously handed a small box. Visions of filigreed gems swam before my eyes as I profusely thanked the old tycoon, bidding him goodnight. When I opened the “treasure” back in my hotel room, I could hardly believe my eyes. How readily the wealthy presume that artists should be happy to perform “for the honour.” There, in all their sugary, solitary splendour lay a few paltry pieces of Turkish delight!