Here is a short list (or shortlist) of things my mother did not want me to be in 1982:
noisy
ethnic
punk
naked
late
non-white
As you can see, my mother worried about many of the potential ways I might acquit myself when I was fourteen. For example, as I’ve noted, she did not want me to leave the house naked. But I could control that. I could put on a winter coat if I had to. Unfortunately for my mother, I couldn’t control the final item on that list. No matter how many ways my mother tried to deny this reality, I wasn’t white. I’ve always had a brownish tint to my skin. And this was why I was “Blackie” in England. And this was why I couldn’t properly be New Wave. And this was why it was hard to look like Bowie. Bowie almost never had a tan. He was pale. Super pale. So was Wendy. And so were the goths that listened to Bauhaus. And so were the members of Duran Duran.
By the time I was in Grade 9 and had fully embarked on my New Wave transformation, I hated that I was brown and that I had a funny name and that my family was Iranian and that I had a huge nose and that people made terrorist jokes. But I also found it difficult that my mother wanted me to deny all those differences. It was as if my mother never wanted to fully accept the way I appeared. It doubtless came from an instinct to protect. But I was never going to have the complexion she had. I took after my father. He was brown. And I couldn’t change the colour of my skin, even if it would make life easier for me.
Besides, in case I ever forgot I was brown, I’d get reminders of it from other kids. Even if I was no longer being called Blackie, I had to deal with some unsavoury substitutes. I would learn about other names I might be called during my time as a hockey player.
Hockey was a game I always loved playing. It is a sport I still obsessively watch. Being a hockey fan is a constitutional requirement of being a citizen in Canada. Or at least, it should be. It’s like drinking tea in England or eating food that is high in saturated fats in the USA. It is part of who we are. As soon as my family arrived in Canada in the mid-’70s, I became a hockey fan. I got Toronto Maple Leaf Darryl Sittler’s autograph at Ontario Place in 1979. He wore number 27 and he was my favourite. He signed my autograph book, “Darryl Sittler #27.” There was another blond guy that signed my book, too, that day. I didn’t really recognize him, but since other kids were getting him to sign things, I did as well. He turned out to be Wayne Gretzky. Later on, I pretended I had known that all along. I had Gretzky’s autograph just before he really became Gretzky and broke every hockey record and married a blond Hollywood actress and started to do car ads.
I could rhyme off stats about hockey when I was a kid and had no shortage of enthusiasm. But playing hockey on ice didn’t always produce the friendliest of memories for me. Much of that had to do with Jim Muffan. Muffan wasn’t very nice. And in the change room for our Thornhill house league hockey team, Jim Muffan made no bones about identifying me as being different. On a few occasions he called me a Paki. I don’t think he meant it in an affectionate way, either. Not like the way people may now call each other “homie.” It wasn’t exactly a celebratory experience for me. I was quite sure the whole team hated me. Muffan set the standard in the locker room. And it didn’t help that I was a lousy hockey player.
By Grade 9, I had become one of the lousiest players in our Thornhill house league. I’m not being modest. I was truly lousy. I was certainly one of the least talented on my team. And I got worse as I got older. When I was eight, and I started playing hockey after arriving from England, I was in the middle of the pack as far as ability went. I wasn’t bad. But as we got older and other guys got much bigger, the fact that I was an average skater became a liability. I had trouble evading body checks. As competitive as I was, in due time I was getting clobbered on the ice. I was the kid that got confined to the bench for the final three minutes of the game to prevent the other team from scoring. There was nothing more demeaning than knowing you were not getting called out on the ice because the coach thought you weren’t good enough. Even my parents recognized how deficient I was, and they didn’t totally understand the game. My mother once said, “I see they don’t put you on the ice in the third period.” That was a fact. My mother spoke in facts. Mind you, sports weren’t all negative for me. My revenge would come with soccer in the summer. I was a big goal scorer and usually one of the fastest and best players on the team. But that was summer. In wintertime, playing hockey became an albatross. And a couple of kids made it about the colour of my skin. That was another way I understood I was different.
Jim Muffan was one of the bigger players on our team in 1981–1982, and he sometimes wore the coveted C on his chest. That meant he was captain. All the other kids wanted to be respected by Jim Muffan and laughed at his jokes in the locker room. Often they were dirty jokes. He was tall and had short brown hair and a grimace on his face most of the time when he wasn’t telling jokes. He had muscles like a Grade 11 kid, even though he was only a Grade 9 kid. Muffan ruled the roost, and it was apparent early in the season that he’d decided he didn’t like me. On one occasion on the ice, he looked at me after a stoppage in play and said, “You should go back where you fucking came from.” That didn’t seem the kind of thing you were supposed to say to a teammate. And I deduced that he probably didn’t mean he wanted me to return to my house in Thornhill. Or London. Then, after another game where I was less than spectacular on the ice, Muffan looked directly at me across the locker room and said, making sure to speak loud enough for everyone to hear him, “Why are you even playing hockey, Paki? You’re a stupid Paki.”
I knew this had to do with how lousy I was. But it didn’t help that I was an immigrant. And I wasn’t just a Paki, but a stupid one, too. It never made sense that being less than a star at hockey made me stupid. I was a good deal smarter than Muffan in classes at Thornlea. But that didn’t matter. If you looked different, you needed to at least know how to play well. There was another brown guy on the team, but no one called him racist names. His name was Randeep and he had much darker skin. But he was an excellent player who scored lots of goals. He was a team hero. So he was considered acceptable. But I was a Paki. I didn’t ever bother explaining to Muffan that Persians were not from Pakistan. I was ethnic, no matter what my mother said. By the winter of 1982, I had played my final season on the ice.
The truth is, as much as I adored hockey, I knew it wasn’t my future to be a player anyhow. If I were going to star in any sport it would be soccer. I had always been a big fan of Arsenal from the English Premier League. And soccer leagues in Canada were full of immigrant kids, so I was a good player and one that didn’t look out of place. But I was more artsy in general, and I had aspirations to be a rock singer. I wanted to be Bowie. Bowie didn’t mess around with hockey sticks and pucks on ice. No one in New Wave did. And there weren’t any Persian heroes playing hockey. And my dream girl, Wendy, didn’t seem to care that much about athletes. And most important, unlike in hockey, in rock music there was one shining example of an ethnic counterpart I could aspire to: Freddie Mercury.
Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen and he was a killer vocalist. He was one of the greatest rock singers of all time. He was also Iranian. Well, that’s not true. He was Zoroastrian. But Zoroastrianism has its roots in Persia. And the technicalities didn’t ultimately matter, because Iranians claimed Freddie Mercury as their own. Not very many others knew Freddie Mercury was Persian. Even now, most people couldn’t tell you that. They might consider him British. Or European. Or exotic. But we always knew the truth. Iranian. And when I was nine, my cool older cousin Farid, who lived in America, had given me an eight-track tape of the double album Live Killers. It was the first proper album I owned. Farid looked intently into my eyes and delivered an important message upon handing over the eight-track: “You must become a fan of this music. This band is called Queen. The lead singer of this band is Freddie Mercury. He is the best. And he is Persian.”
It was a moment of great pride. And Freddie Mercury would be a hero of mine thereafter.
As I hit my early teens, I began collecting Queen albums and trying to emulate Freddie Mercury. When I turned twelve, I had a birthday party at my house and put the first side of the new Queen album The Game on repeat on my turntable. Toke and Dana Verner and a few other kids attended the party. We pumped our fists to the catchy new song “Another One Bites the Dust.” We had no idea that some Queen purists considered this a sellout “disco pop” turn for the band. We revelled in The Game. And Toke always approved of Freddie Mercury as well. “Dat guy Freddie … ee’s great!”
There were few musical things Queen did that I didn’t love. But 1981 brought an event that would never find its parallel in music history. Not for me. In 1981, Freddie Mercury and Queen released a new song called “Under Pressure.” And if new Queen material wasn’t reason for excitement enough, the song was a duet with Bowie. My fantasy musical worlds collided. Bowie. And Queen. This could not have come closer to a personal paradise. It was as if the song were written and performed for me. Legend has it that Bowie had dropped into a Queen recording session in 1981 with the intention of singing backups on another song, and then they collectively wrote and recorded “Under Pressure.” Many of the vocal parts were improvised, and the whole thing was done in one day. The results were remarkable. It was an avalanche of creative splendour all happening in one simple tune. There was Bowie and Freddie Mercury and amazing hooks and passion and an anthemic refrain. “Under Pressure” became my theme in 1982. It lived on my turntable, but I carried it with me in my head everywhere.
“Under Pressure” has the distinction of being one of the few recordings in music history that no one hates. Trust me on this. It’s too good. No one hates the song “Under Pressure.” Think of the most famous song you can. Think of “She Loves You” by the Beatles or “I Will Always Love You” performed by Whitney Houston. Those songs have millions and millions of fans. But they have detractors, too. For every song, there is someone who for some reason hates that song. But no one hates “Under Pressure.” It is gold. Ask anyone. They may not consider it their favourite. They may not love it the most. But no one hates “Under Pressure.”
I have made a short list (or shortlist) of the six best moments of “Under Pressure” and the times at which they appear in the song:
1. 0.01—The top of the song features the iconic two-note bass line that may have been written by Bowie or by Queen bassist John Deacon. There is disagreement on who wrote it, but it’s unforgettable, and it would later form the basis of a sample by rapper Vanilla Ice that would lead to another, less interesting and slightly ridiculous, hit called “Ice Ice Baby.”
2. 0.57—This moment in the song is the first time Bowie sings his dramatic line about the terror of being aware of what the world is about in the pre-chorus. Few lyrics have been sung with such authority and power. This is Bowie playing Bowie.
3. 1.22—The beginning of the backup oohs that Bowie sings behind Freddie in the second verse. I imagine that Bowie winked at Freddie when he sang this part.
4. 1.30—Freddie’s improvised musical “bee bap” nonsense words heading into the second chorus. Freddie is singing with abandon. It’s so clear that this could not have been planned. It is one of the few moments in any modern rock song that features scatting.
5. 2.22—Freddie’s melodramatic climbing note on the word “why?” with Bowie echoing “love!” in the background. More drama will not be found in most epic films.
6. 2.50–3.32 The final crescendo with Freddie singing “give love” and Bowie pleading into the microphone about this being the last dance. Gold.
“Under Pressure” was a one-off masterpiece. By the spring of 1982, it was number one in the UK and had climbed to number three in Canada. It was also my personal theme song. That’s what I decided. To be fair, I didn’t know at the time that others had personal theme songs. I thought I had discovered the idea. In fact, I didn’t realize anyone else knew about personal theme songs until the emergence of Ally McBeal. You may remember there was a popular TV show in the late 1990s called Ally McBeal. It was the story of a quirky young lawyer and her adventures being very thin. Well, actually, the stories were about other things, but all everyone ever talked about was that she was very thin. So that was really pretty much what the show was about. But anyway, Ally McBeal had a theme song. A song she would have in her head that would get her through the day and shore up her self-confidence. For instance, one of her songs was “Hooked On a Feeling.” That was an upbeat 1968 tune performed by B.J. Thomas. I had a theme song just like Ally McBeal, long before that show even existed. And I was also thin. But my theme song involved Bowie. And Queen. And being “Under Pressure.”
It made sense that “Under Pressure” became my anthem. It was my theme because of the pressures I felt caused by my ethnicity. It featured my idol and a great singer who was Iranian. There was never an official video made for “Under Pressure” that included Bowie and Freddie Mercury. So I always just imagined myself in it. Freddie Mercury could also be androgynous and would sometimes dress in tight outfits and effeminate garb just like Bowie. Jim Muffan would have probably called Freddie Mercury names in the hockey locker room as well. But Freddie was handsome. He didn’t have a particularly large nose. And he was a rock star. He was a role model.
Freddie Mercury seemed to know who he was. I didn’t have that luxury. I was confused in Grade 9. I wanted to be New Wave, but I wasn’t pale. I wanted to be accepted, but I was too different. I was told I was Aryan, but I was reminded I was brown. As I stood at the Police Picnic with my dream Bowie girl, I fought the inclination to believe I didn’t deserve to be there. Wendy had supported me against Forbes the punk. She had agreed to come to the concert with me, and she was showing signs of believing we were a team. But now, after the Joan Jett debacle, I had lost the comfort that came with toting my Adidas bag. I was unsure how I would recover.
5
“STRAIGHT TO HELL” – THE CLASH
The loss of my red-and-blue Adidas bag was traumatic. It certainly wasn’t expected. And it was the speed of its disappearance from my life that made things all the more intense. Within seconds, the deed had been done. My Adidas bag was gone.
Let the record show that in August of 1982 a punk named Forbes threw my Adidas bag containing my new Walkman, my mix tapes, my portable headphones, my hair gel, and my jean jacket onto the Police Picnic stage. And let it further show that after Forbes pelted my Adidas bag at Joan Jett, I never saw it again. It was gone forever. In fact, I knew it was gone forever, because not too long after the incident, Wendy said, “It’s gone forever.” I wouldn’t doubt Wendy.
The thing is, I never really blamed Forbes for the unsolicited appropriation of my bag. His actions were taken, I suppose, in the name of punk rock. He was an angst-ridden young man who needed an outlet for his rage. An outlet might involve beating up another kid or, in this case, throwing a bag. I would later learn that these actions were understood as “cathartic expression.” I didn’t really know it as that at the time. I just knew he was punk rock. And given that Forbes was not a fan of the creative pursuits of Joan Jett, his behaviour was further understandable as “artistic protest.” So, I didn’t blame him, even though it had been my most prized possession. That is, even though my Adidas bag and I had been inseparable since the end of Grade 8.
You might think I should’ve been angry at Forbes—that I might’ve taken some kind of recourse. You might think I was too soft or forgiving. I know you might think that. Jane Decker probably would have started a lawsuit against Forbes. And Toke would have had his older brother, Mitch, turn up and kick Forbes in the teeth. And maybe it would have been wise to be tougher in front of Wendy. But I was developing a sense of the cultural order of things. I really didn’t know Forbes. And more importantly, he was a punk. He was a large punk. Actually, he was a large gorilla punk with a mohawk and combat boots. And he had prominent underarm ha
ir. Basically, he was like … a real punk. And so, he was supposed to do things like steal a neurotic skinny kid’s Adidas bag and angrily throw it at a hit-maker pop star. That was his gig, even if it wasn’t very nice.
And surely I had given Forbes tacit permission to command my property by being foolish enough to stand next to him at a concert. I might as well have offered him the Adidas bag and given him my blessing. “Here you go, Forbes. Throw this!” Who did I think I was to expect any different? And what kind of punk would Forbes have been if he’d returned the bag to me and apologized? Forbes had to live up to his billing. I wondered if I’d be more popular if I were more like Forbes. I wondered if I could ever be a real punk. I knew I’d probably never be a real punk if I was scared of real punks. And I was. This was a dilemma.
Forbes looked like a member of the Clash. Well, no. Wait. Forbes looked like an ugly member of the Clash. Or maybe he looked nothing like a member of the Clash. But he brought them to mind. And the guys in the Clash didn’t exactly have the matinee-idol features of Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill. Or Sting. Sting had a perfect nose and straight blond hair. And Sting had a high voice that could be pious and angelic. Sting had been a schoolteacher. In one of the Police videos, Sting appeared dressed as a schoolteacher. This was to remind us all that he had been a schoolteacher.
The Clash didn’t sing or look that way. The Clash borrowed heavily from classic outlaw imagery to position themselves as rebels. I didn’t know much about the Clash, but I knew that being in the presence of Forbes reminded me of the first time I’d seen them on The NewMusic on Citytv. They were wearing military garb and they looked angry. My mother had been in the room when the Clash appeared on The NewMusic. My mother had made a loud tsk sound and said “Vah-ee” in my direction. In this case, that was shorthand for: “Attention: This is your mother speaking. These shaved-headed political punk gentlemen don’t seem very benevolent. You should not be modelling yourself after them. Please stay away from these types and don’t get any ideas. Oh, yes, and another thing … why can’t you look more like Mark Hamill?”
1982 Page 9