December 11, 2024 • 16 mins
In this episode, we start with Bif Naked as she shares insights into her iconic hit "Spaceman," revealing the inspiration and journey behind the track. Next, we have Gord Deppe from the Spoons, who takes us back to the release of "Nova Heart" and the band's initial reactions to its success. Finally, we feature former Barenaked Ladies member Steven Page, who gives his unique perspective on the band's beloved classic "If I Had A Million Dollars."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Careful clock clock.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Boy, so cool to be playing on to wreck it
off the guitar table.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host, Stu Jetbreeks.
I just want to say we appreciate your ears. Welcome
to the podcast for music lovers.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
This is where you learn a little more about your
favorite artists and their songs. In this episode, former Bare
Naked Ladies member Stephen Page gives his side of the
story for if I had a million dollars at.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
The time, we did a lot of let's do stuff
that we don't know what it means because it's like obsurdist,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Or as nine.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
We'll hear more from Steven in a few minutes. First up,
alternative rock pop punk singer songwriter Biff Naked shed some
light on her biggest hit, Spaceman.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I just sing long to it. Oh my gosh, amazing.
When we wrote Spaceman, I wrote with my manager because
he was so upset with all the guitar players that
I was writing songs with. We were all writing like
death metal, and he was like, you know, no one
(01:22):
can write a pop song with you, Like just you know,
let's try and write something, and so he played the
acoustic guitar and I sang these little lilting melodies, but
I kept singing the tigers whiskers, and I was really
obsessed with the notion of yearning and clutching, grabbing the
(01:43):
tiger's whisters. And he was like, that's terrible. This is
the most terrible song he could ever do. And so
I basically had to be shut in a room until
I could come up with something that he liked better.
And I just thought, oh ugh, if only I could
be abducted right now, this minute, so I wouldn't have
to do this anymore. And that's how, really how it started.
(02:05):
And it was like, Spaceman, come rescue me from this,
and that's really how the chorus started. And it wasn't
until we were in the studio with Glen Rosenstein, our
producer at the time, that he kind of affected this
this more dancy beat to it. It was much faster,
and I was devastated, mortified. I was like, the song
(02:27):
is ruined, this is a this is a ballad, crying
like just so upset. But the truth is, I love
every version of Spaceman that there's ever been. I love
the song I still love performing it. We perform a
every show and it still means the exact same thing
to me. It's it's basically the Calgon take Me Away,
(02:48):
a song about yearning, and I love it. I could.
I could play it every day and if anyone else
wants to sing.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Along, that's great.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's my favorite song. I could listen to it all day. Also,
we did this recording before there was any auto tune,
so the number of times that I had to sing
it perfectly was I don't know, like maybe I don't know.
(03:23):
I'm gonna say probably twenty times. I would have to
sing it again and again and again, even though I
couldn't hear the difference. You know, all the record producers
have dog hearing so they can hear the difference. And
it was just an amazing experience recording this song for
this record, And this is the song that was the
(03:44):
one that caught the ear of Michael Kaplan, who at
the time signed me to a record deal Sony five
fifty in the United States, which was Selene Dion's record
company at the time. She was signed to that record
So I was like, if Selene's signed to it, then
I'll want to do that too, and that's how it
all started. It didn't get released in Canada for another
(04:05):
two years, so we went and toured in Europe where
they released this song as a single and then did
a dance remix in it. It became a dance hit.
I don't know how, but it was a recurrent hit
song in a lot of different countries and then finally
Canada got behind it in ninety six and it was
(04:29):
released and the rest of these days history. And yeah,
it's just a really special song and I think about
it whenever I hear it, whenever I perform it. I
have performed in it crying before when we do a
ballad version, because it's very you know, it's a song
about yearning and wishing and I think everyone can relate
(04:51):
to that.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
FIfF Naked with Spaceman on behind the Vinyl of the podcast,
Thanks for listening. In a moment, former Beannaked Ladies member
Stephen Page reminiscences of about their biggest hit, If I
Had a Million dollars. Before we get there, Gordon Depp
of The Spoons tells us the tale of Nova Heart
and the disbelief the band had when the song was released.
Here's Gordon with Moore.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, here we go. I haven't done this for a
long time. It's kind of like putting this thing on
for the first time. Oh, there we go. This, I
guess was kind of the song that changed everything for us.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You know, we.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Were kind of a punky, raw talking heads, kind of
banned until this point.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But I always thought we could sort of bet something more,
you know, something more sort of grand and sophisticated.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
And I wasn't quite sure what it was until I
went and saw our custom maneuvers in the dark playing
a little barn in Hamilton, Ontario, used to be a
strip joint called the Brass Rail, and this band was play.
I knew a little bit about them through our manager
for a Sneaking way back from Matt Martha and the Muffins,
Carl Finko, because they were both on Virgin, so he
(05:55):
got check out the spam froming and I did, and
that night changed.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Everything for me because I went home wrote this song.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
If you heard the Spoons before this point, and you know,
after a completely different band, and I was really inspired
by how they combined drum machines and live drums and
since and went for a more sort of a classical
sound that because Sandy and I had come from sort
of progressive rock, you know, Genesis type of big epic songs,
and when the eighties came, we kind of dropped that
(06:21):
one kind of punky and raw and and this allowed
us to sort of go back to our roots a
little show that we had some chops and then some
drama or our music. And this is a song that
did it. I remember seeing those guys. I grabbed Rob's
keyboard next morning, I'm not a keyword player, and the
very first thing I did was go.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And Rob. I remember Rob saying, that is so stupid.
I would never have thought of it so simple, you know,
I say.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
Not being a keyboard player, and that would be my mantrap,
and then on to simple and hooky, and that was
kind of.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The beginning of this.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
This song came up before this album, and so it
was kind of the precursor of that which brought out
all those other songs.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
But there were a couple of other songs that I.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Wrote that sort of OMT inspired morning that made it
on here, like like low Away and No Electrons.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, it's funny hearing that.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
It still sounds so so sort of young and naive,
but sort of timeless in a way because we never
thought this would do anything. You know, if you look
at a chart from the time, it was like it
was led Zeppelin, Queen the Who, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
How are we ever gonna get on the radio with
something like this. I never believed in a million years
I would do anything.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
I thought we were just another band that's gonna be
destined to play basements and local high you know, high
school gigs and that kind of thing, because we just
come out of out of high school for at all.
So it was a nice surprise when people liked it.
In our little crazy creation.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
The only thing else that was in the radio was
kind of like it. I guess that.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
Introduced people to drum machines, the sparse keyboards and that
stuff was gets soft cell hint of love.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You know that.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
So American ears are getting a little bit more eclectic
in their tastes. Still, I mean it didn't really sink in.
I think the first time we were at a sany
I was sitting at a.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Light somewhere, and I mean, hearing.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
A song on the radio is one of thing, but
hearing it from the car next year the light like
saying where's it coming from? And we were playing it
in the car and we heard it again so out
of sync next to us, as wow, like that was
you know right when when that happens stuff like that,
it sounds kind of silly, but that's like when you
think anything is possible, like think the world's opening up
for us and we might possibly have a career.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know, this is the first thing I think we
did that. I thought we were.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
Sort of be able to compete with the international stuff
that was out there that we admired, you know, the.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Simple Minds and the Duran Durantz and that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
This this song, it landed in the hands of John Punter,
who happened to be touring I think was with Nazareth
and he had produced bands like Rocks and Music Japan,
and there's I think a similarity between what John did
with us that he did with Japan before he worked
with them. They're very raw and punky. He listened to
adolescent sex and that's that kind of more yelled and
(09:01):
sung and very guitar heavy, and they were going for
that Roxy saund and they worked with him and there's
a lot of similarities between what he did with us.
You know, you're listened to Stick Figure in the Neighborhood,
which is more talking Heads and Lena Luvitch and Debo.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
All of a.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Sudden we've become, you know, sort of a classic synth band.
So that's what John punderbought to it. And he happened
to be on the road in Canada and Larry from
our distributor Quality just said, yeah, listen to these guys.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
But he was sett in his pocket.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
They were down on the road to some gig with
Nazareth that he was producing, and within months it was
set up. You know, it was It's funny how these
things just happened. You know, it's got like one puzzle
piece after another without really working too hard at it.
But that's that song pretty well opened up a lot
of doors for us. I think it's, like I said,
(09:52):
a complete surprise. It wasn't like we're recording and it's going, okay,
this is going to be a big hit single. We
were just thinking, we don't even care Abo gets airplay.
It's so strange and weird, but it's us, you know,
we're happy to go along for the ride but not
expect anything.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And we were sure proven wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Because.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Listen, I'm trying to listen to something that really bugged
me when we're recording this, because when we went into
the studio, Jump Punter had the idea, this should be
the B side symmetry, which is now the B side.
He thought that was the hint, but there was something,
you know, unmistakable, but the chemistry and this thing that
slowly realized that he was wrong. And I kind of
knew it from the beginning. But there's a funny thing.
(10:31):
Sandy had these things called tourist base bass puddles, so
you were left.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Over from our progressive rock genesis kind of days.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
And that's that big drone here at the beginning that
she played those on the way and then Rob played
his drone on his news Styn and there was so
out of tune in my ears.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I wanted nothing to do with the song. From the
beginning of the recording.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
It was like me against the band and fighting with John.
It's I just scrapped this song.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It's it's chunk. Luckily it all sorted itself out and
here we are. I don't hear it. I'm just I
don't it sounds in tune to Me.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
No Bah from the Spoon Score Death on Behind the
Vinyl of the podcast, I'm Steve Jeffries with one of
the founding members of The bar Naked Ladies, Stephen Page.
In the past season we had Ed Robertson and Tyler
Stewart of the band talk about if I Had a
Million Dollars, but we thought it would be cool to
get Steven's take on this song as well. So wait,
no more.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Well, let's put the needle on the record and the
drum boots go like this, Ah, If I Had a
Million Dollars by Barnaked Ladies from the album Gord Although
this version here is the twelve inch single version, so
it's This was a big thing in the eighties, and
luckily we got in just the very end of this
(11:38):
where you can still have your twelve inch singles of
your songs. One of the coolest things in my entire
career was being signed.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
To Sire Records.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
We were signed by seymour Stein, who signed the Talking
Heads and Madonna and the Ramones and you know, an
absolute legend in the business. And I grew up looking
at this label spinning around on my record player for
a ton of the records that I grew up with,
so to be to have my own music on that
label was incredibly exciting. This I don't recall this, this
(12:11):
single artwork. It's inexplicable. It looks to me like this
should have been to be myok Ono artwork with the
Green Apple thing, but it's not. It's if I had
a million dollars. I don't know what that means, but
maybe that was our at the time. We did a
lot of let's do stuff that we don't know what
it means because it's like obsurdist, I guess, or as nine.
(12:37):
This song, it's one of these songs like it was
a huge thing for us, but it was never really
I mean, there was this this one single here which
was released in the UK, but in Canada and the
US it was never actually a single. It wasn't a hit.
But it's the kind of song that just to put
everybody knows and for a long time, cause it's fun.
(13:03):
It was the kind of thing that we tried to
shy away from. You know, we played it in all
the shows, but it wasn't necessarily what we wanted to
be known for. Until later we realized that it was
kind of our greatest success to have a song that
everybody's grandma knows or is the theme song to your
first year of university or your family camping trip.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Or whatever else.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
And you know, it's like writing a campfire song. You
can't just will those they kind of happen. And we
were really really lucky to be able to have a
song like that that's in kind of in the public
mind like that this record, and we've done this song
a bunch of times in the studio, and the song
(13:49):
changed every time we performed it, whether it was in
the studio or on stage. There was lots of banter
and improvisation, and that was a big part of what
Barnaked Ladies was about. On age too and myself trying
to make each other laugh or you know, sparring off
each other. And it's still odd sometimes, like in this
(14:11):
version of the song, that stuff about the pre wrap
bacon and whatever is like, it's.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Just what we said.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
It's not even right like pre I think I meant
individually rapped bacon. But we were just talking and we
just chose We probably did three or four takes and
chose the one we liked the most. I think actually,
our producer, Michael Philip Voyevoda, chose the one he liked
the most and that was the one, and it becomes
(14:38):
ingrained as the kind of the main that's how the
song goes. So there's some of the people who can
kind of sing it our improvs back at us better
than we can't, probably. But then to cap it off,
we went we had recorded the album outside of Montreal
and then came back to Toronto to mix it. And
(14:59):
when getting ready to mix the record, we had tons
of our musical friends from Toronto, including well it's Bobby
Wiseman from Blue Rodeo playing the accordion and singing backup vocals,
and him and Blair Packham and the Rio Statics and
all kinds of people that were friends of ours.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
We got to have a choir of.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
The people who'd helped us get to where we were
along the way. We got to have them come and
sing with us, which was a great feeling. If I
had a million dollars in twenty sixteen dollars, i'd be rich.
I'd be able to maybe buy a house that the
song would end there in Toronto.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Pretty easy to see why Steven Page fit right in
with bare naked ladies. That was if I had a
million dollars. Wrapping up this episode Behind the Vinyl of
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
We appreciate you listening to our podcast and supporting it
with shares. The more people that know about it, they marry.
I'm Stu Jeffries and up of the team. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
This has been Behind the Vinnyl the podcast hosted by
Stu Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse, Derek Welsman
and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listening.
Careful clock clock.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Boy, so cool to be playing on to wreck it
off the guitar table.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host, Stu Jetbreeks.
I just want to say we appreciate your ears. Welcome
to the podcast for music lovers.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
This is where you learn a little more about your
favorite artists and their songs. In this episode, former Bare
Naked Ladies member Stephen Page gives his side of the
story for if I had a million dollars at.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
The time, we did a lot of let's do stuff
that we don't know what it means because it's like obsurdist,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Or as nine.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
We'll hear more from Steven in a few minutes. First up,
alternative rock pop punk singer songwriter Biff Naked shed some
light on her biggest hit, Spaceman.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I just sing long to it. Oh my gosh, amazing.
When we wrote Spaceman, I wrote with my manager because
he was so upset with all the guitar players that
I was writing songs with. We were all writing like
death metal, and he was like, you know, no one
(01:22):
can write a pop song with you, Like just you know,
let's try and write something, and so he played the
acoustic guitar and I sang these little lilting melodies, but
I kept singing the tigers whiskers, and I was really
obsessed with the notion of yearning and clutching, grabbing the
(01:43):
tiger's whisters. And he was like, that's terrible. This is
the most terrible song he could ever do. And so
I basically had to be shut in a room until
I could come up with something that he liked better.
And I just thought, oh ugh, if only I could
be abducted right now, this minute, so I wouldn't have
to do this anymore. And that's how, really how it started.
(02:05):
And it was like, Spaceman, come rescue me from this,
and that's really how the chorus started. And it wasn't
until we were in the studio with Glen Rosenstein, our
producer at the time, that he kind of affected this
this more dancy beat to it. It was much faster,
and I was devastated, mortified. I was like, the song
(02:27):
is ruined, this is a this is a ballad, crying
like just so upset. But the truth is, I love
every version of Spaceman that there's ever been. I love
the song I still love performing it. We perform a
every show and it still means the exact same thing
to me. It's it's basically the Calgon take Me Away,
(02:48):
a song about yearning, and I love it. I could.
I could play it every day and if anyone else
wants to sing.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Along, that's great.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's my favorite song. I could listen to it all day. Also,
we did this recording before there was any auto tune,
so the number of times that I had to sing
it perfectly was I don't know, like maybe I don't know.
(03:23):
I'm gonna say probably twenty times. I would have to
sing it again and again and again, even though I
couldn't hear the difference. You know, all the record producers
have dog hearing so they can hear the difference. And
it was just an amazing experience recording this song for
this record, And this is the song that was the
(03:44):
one that caught the ear of Michael Kaplan, who at
the time signed me to a record deal Sony five
fifty in the United States, which was Selene Dion's record
company at the time. She was signed to that record
So I was like, if Selene's signed to it, then
I'll want to do that too, and that's how it
all started. It didn't get released in Canada for another
(04:05):
two years, so we went and toured in Europe where
they released this song as a single and then did
a dance remix in it. It became a dance hit.
I don't know how, but it was a recurrent hit
song in a lot of different countries and then finally
Canada got behind it in ninety six and it was
(04:29):
released and the rest of these days history. And yeah,
it's just a really special song and I think about
it whenever I hear it, whenever I perform it. I
have performed in it crying before when we do a
ballad version, because it's very you know, it's a song
about yearning and wishing and I think everyone can relate
(04:51):
to that.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
FIfF Naked with Spaceman on behind the Vinyl of the podcast,
Thanks for listening. In a moment, former Beannaked Ladies member
Stephen Page reminiscences of about their biggest hit, If I
Had a Million dollars. Before we get there, Gordon Depp
of The Spoons tells us the tale of Nova Heart
and the disbelief the band had when the song was released.
Here's Gordon with Moore.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, here we go. I haven't done this for a
long time. It's kind of like putting this thing on
for the first time. Oh, there we go. This, I
guess was kind of the song that changed everything for us.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You know, we.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Were kind of a punky, raw talking heads, kind of
banned until this point.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But I always thought we could sort of bet something more,
you know, something more sort of grand and sophisticated.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
And I wasn't quite sure what it was until I
went and saw our custom maneuvers in the dark playing
a little barn in Hamilton, Ontario, used to be a
strip joint called the Brass Rail, and this band was play.
I knew a little bit about them through our manager
for a Sneaking way back from Matt Martha and the Muffins,
Carl Finko, because they were both on Virgin, so he
(05:55):
got check out the spam froming and I did, and
that night changed.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Everything for me because I went home wrote this song.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
If you heard the Spoons before this point, and you know,
after a completely different band, and I was really inspired
by how they combined drum machines and live drums and
since and went for a more sort of a classical
sound that because Sandy and I had come from sort
of progressive rock, you know, Genesis type of big epic songs,
and when the eighties came, we kind of dropped that
(06:21):
one kind of punky and raw and and this allowed
us to sort of go back to our roots a
little show that we had some chops and then some
drama or our music. And this is a song that
did it. I remember seeing those guys. I grabbed Rob's
keyboard next morning, I'm not a keyword player, and the
very first thing I did was go.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And Rob. I remember Rob saying, that is so stupid.
I would never have thought of it so simple, you know,
I say.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
Not being a keyboard player, and that would be my mantrap,
and then on to simple and hooky, and that was
kind of.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The beginning of this.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
This song came up before this album, and so it
was kind of the precursor of that which brought out
all those other songs.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
But there were a couple of other songs that I.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Wrote that sort of OMT inspired morning that made it
on here, like like low Away and No Electrons.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, it's funny hearing that.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
It still sounds so so sort of young and naive,
but sort of timeless in a way because we never
thought this would do anything. You know, if you look
at a chart from the time, it was like it
was led Zeppelin, Queen the Who, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
How are we ever gonna get on the radio with
something like this. I never believed in a million years
I would do anything.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
I thought we were just another band that's gonna be
destined to play basements and local high you know, high
school gigs and that kind of thing, because we just
come out of out of high school for at all.
So it was a nice surprise when people liked it.
In our little crazy creation.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
The only thing else that was in the radio was
kind of like it. I guess that.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
Introduced people to drum machines, the sparse keyboards and that
stuff was gets soft cell hint of love.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You know that.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
So American ears are getting a little bit more eclectic
in their tastes. Still, I mean it didn't really sink in.
I think the first time we were at a sany
I was sitting at a.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Light somewhere, and I mean, hearing.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
A song on the radio is one of thing, but
hearing it from the car next year the light like
saying where's it coming from? And we were playing it
in the car and we heard it again so out
of sync next to us, as wow, like that was
you know right when when that happens stuff like that,
it sounds kind of silly, but that's like when you
think anything is possible, like think the world's opening up
for us and we might possibly have a career.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know, this is the first thing I think we
did that. I thought we were.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
Sort of be able to compete with the international stuff
that was out there that we admired, you know, the.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Simple Minds and the Duran Durantz and that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
This this song, it landed in the hands of John Punter,
who happened to be touring I think was with Nazareth
and he had produced bands like Rocks and Music Japan,
and there's I think a similarity between what John did
with us that he did with Japan before he worked
with them. They're very raw and punky. He listened to
adolescent sex and that's that kind of more yelled and
(09:01):
sung and very guitar heavy, and they were going for
that Roxy saund and they worked with him and there's
a lot of similarities between what he did with us.
You know, you're listened to Stick Figure in the Neighborhood,
which is more talking Heads and Lena Luvitch and Debo.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
All of a.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Sudden we've become, you know, sort of a classic synth band.
So that's what John punderbought to it. And he happened
to be on the road in Canada and Larry from
our distributor Quality just said, yeah, listen to these guys.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
But he was sett in his pocket.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
They were down on the road to some gig with
Nazareth that he was producing, and within months it was
set up. You know, it was It's funny how these
things just happened. You know, it's got like one puzzle
piece after another without really working too hard at it.
But that's that song pretty well opened up a lot
of doors for us. I think it's, like I said,
(09:52):
a complete surprise. It wasn't like we're recording and it's going, okay,
this is going to be a big hit single. We
were just thinking, we don't even care Abo gets airplay.
It's so strange and weird, but it's us, you know,
we're happy to go along for the ride but not
expect anything.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And we were sure proven wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Because.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Listen, I'm trying to listen to something that really bugged
me when we're recording this, because when we went into
the studio, Jump Punter had the idea, this should be
the B side symmetry, which is now the B side.
He thought that was the hint, but there was something,
you know, unmistakable, but the chemistry and this thing that
slowly realized that he was wrong. And I kind of
knew it from the beginning. But there's a funny thing.
(10:31):
Sandy had these things called tourist base bass puddles, so
you were left.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Over from our progressive rock genesis kind of days.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
And that's that big drone here at the beginning that
she played those on the way and then Rob played
his drone on his news Styn and there was so
out of tune in my ears.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I wanted nothing to do with the song. From the
beginning of the recording.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
It was like me against the band and fighting with John.
It's I just scrapped this song.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It's it's chunk. Luckily it all sorted itself out and
here we are. I don't hear it. I'm just I
don't it sounds in tune to Me.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
No Bah from the Spoon Score Death on Behind the
Vinyl of the podcast, I'm Steve Jeffries with one of
the founding members of The bar Naked Ladies, Stephen Page.
In the past season we had Ed Robertson and Tyler
Stewart of the band talk about if I Had a
Million Dollars, but we thought it would be cool to
get Steven's take on this song as well. So wait,
no more.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Well, let's put the needle on the record and the
drum boots go like this, Ah, If I Had a
Million Dollars by Barnaked Ladies from the album Gord Although
this version here is the twelve inch single version, so
it's This was a big thing in the eighties, and
luckily we got in just the very end of this
(11:38):
where you can still have your twelve inch singles of
your songs. One of the coolest things in my entire
career was being signed.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
To Sire Records.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
We were signed by seymour Stein, who signed the Talking
Heads and Madonna and the Ramones and you know, an
absolute legend in the business. And I grew up looking
at this label spinning around on my record player for
a ton of the records that I grew up with,
so to be to have my own music on that
label was incredibly exciting. This I don't recall this, this
(12:11):
single artwork. It's inexplicable. It looks to me like this
should have been to be myok Ono artwork with the
Green Apple thing, but it's not. It's if I had
a million dollars. I don't know what that means, but
maybe that was our at the time. We did a
lot of let's do stuff that we don't know what
it means because it's like obsurdist, I guess, or as nine.
(12:37):
This song, it's one of these songs like it was
a huge thing for us, but it was never really
I mean, there was this this one single here which
was released in the UK, but in Canada and the
US it was never actually a single. It wasn't a hit.
But it's the kind of song that just to put
everybody knows and for a long time, cause it's fun.
(13:03):
It was the kind of thing that we tried to
shy away from. You know, we played it in all
the shows, but it wasn't necessarily what we wanted to
be known for. Until later we realized that it was
kind of our greatest success to have a song that
everybody's grandma knows or is the theme song to your
first year of university or your family camping trip.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Or whatever else.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
And you know, it's like writing a campfire song. You
can't just will those they kind of happen. And we
were really really lucky to be able to have a
song like that that's in kind of in the public
mind like that this record, and we've done this song
a bunch of times in the studio, and the song
(13:49):
changed every time we performed it, whether it was in
the studio or on stage. There was lots of banter
and improvisation, and that was a big part of what
Barnaked Ladies was about. On age too and myself trying
to make each other laugh or you know, sparring off
each other. And it's still odd sometimes, like in this
(14:11):
version of the song, that stuff about the pre wrap
bacon and whatever is like, it's.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Just what we said.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
It's not even right like pre I think I meant
individually rapped bacon. But we were just talking and we
just chose We probably did three or four takes and
chose the one we liked the most. I think actually,
our producer, Michael Philip Voyevoda, chose the one he liked
the most and that was the one, and it becomes
(14:38):
ingrained as the kind of the main that's how the
song goes. So there's some of the people who can
kind of sing it our improvs back at us better
than we can't, probably. But then to cap it off,
we went we had recorded the album outside of Montreal
and then came back to Toronto to mix it. And
(14:59):
when getting ready to mix the record, we had tons
of our musical friends from Toronto, including well it's Bobby
Wiseman from Blue Rodeo playing the accordion and singing backup vocals,
and him and Blair Packham and the Rio Statics and
all kinds of people that were friends of ours.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
We got to have a choir of.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
The people who'd helped us get to where we were
along the way. We got to have them come and
sing with us, which was a great feeling. If I
had a million dollars in twenty sixteen dollars, i'd be rich.
I'd be able to maybe buy a house that the
song would end there in Toronto.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Pretty easy to see why Steven Page fit right in
with bare naked ladies. That was if I had a
million dollars. Wrapping up this episode Behind the Vinyl of
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
We appreciate you listening to our podcast and supporting it
with shares. The more people that know about it, they marry.
I'm Stu Jeffries and up of the team. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
This has been Behind the Vinnyl the podcast hosted by
Stu Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse, Derek Welsman
and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listening.
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