Barenaked Ladies
IT'S ALL BEEN DONE
IT’S BEEN 30 YEARS SINCE SCARBOROUGH NATIVES Steven Page and Ed Robertson teamed up, and out of desperation, named their project Barenaked Ladies. Not in their wildest dreams did they imagine sparking a Toronto-wide controversy over their name, selling over a million copies of their debut album in Canada alone, having a #1 hit in the U.S., and continuing to be one of our nation’s most celebrated musical acts. But their lovable, idiosyncratic music has always offered a dependable balance of music and comedy. The road hasn’t been easy: from homegrown backlashes and health scares to Page’s heavily publicized arrest for drugs and consequent departure from the band, more than anything, Barenaked Ladies are survivors of an industry that wanted nothing to do with them. As they enter the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this month, we look back at all of the stunts and spectacles.
1979 to 1987
Steven Jay Page and Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson meet at age nine in Scarborough, ON. As a teenager, Page falls in love with the music of English singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy, a founding member of Duran Duran and frontman for Tin Tin; the two begin a pen pal relationship that will later lead to a songwriting partnership. Robertson and Page connect at music camp; they become inseparable and begin collaborating. Robertson will later tell Paul Myers, author of Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts, Private Stories, “For the first time, I saw a window into the creative end of it that I hadn’t really known before.”
1988 to 1989
Page and Robertson get their first gig at a benefit concert. Forced to come up with a name, they land on Barenaked Ladies. “I remember thinking, ‘Well that’s a cool name, because it’ll keep us alternative and we’ll never hit the mainstream,’” Page will tell Myers. They end up performing between other bands’ sets; since they only know a few songs, they make up the rest on the spot.
Before the end of 1988, Barenaked Ladies release their first tape of four-track demos, called Buck Naked. The next year, they reissue it with three times as many songs, including the earliest versions of “Be My Yoko Ono” and “If I Had $1,000,000.”
At the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, Robertson discovers Windsor-based musical comedy troupe Corky and the Juice Pigs, fronted by Seán Cullen, who ask BNL to open their tour of Canadian universities and colleges.
The tour with the Juice Pigs has its ups and downs, but the duo learn to interact with the audience, which will eventually be their calling card. For their final, hometown gig of 1989, Page and Robertson invite camp friends Andy and Jim Creeggan to perform with them on percussion and bass. “From the first note, Ed and I just looked at each other and said, ‘This is it. This is the band,’” Page will recount on Behind the Music.
1990 to 1991
Now a four-piece, they record a second tape, called Barenaked Lunch, a cheeky reference to William S. Burroughs. According to the band, the 2,000 copies of the tape are mastered incorrectly, making the songs sound faster. An alleged third tape, Barenaked Recess, featuring the earliest version of “Brian Wilson” and covers of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and Madonna’s “Material Girl,” is never released for reasons unknown. Barenaked Ladies unexpectedly win Best Band of the Year at YTV’s Youth Achievement Awards. “The YTV Achievement Award was the first thing that made us think, ‘Wow, somebody actually thinks we’re okay,’” Page will tell CBC in its 2004 documentary, The Barenaked Truth. The band are so unprepared that they end up rapping their acceptance speech.
The band meet drummer Tyler Stewart at the Waterloo Busker Festival; he repeatedly asks to sit in on a Barenaked Ladies practice. They give him a chance and end up hiring him. Stewart assists the band with their recording sessions and makes his first appearance on their next self-titled cassette, which earns the nickname The Yellow Tape. Thanks to the early support of shops like Sam the Record Man, it becomes the first Canadian indie recording to be racked at the front of chain stores, forever changing the Canadian indie music landscape. The band’s impromptu performance of “Be My Yoko Ono” inside Toronto video booth Speaker’s Corner receives heavy rotation as a music video on both CityTV and MuchMusic.
Barenaked Ladies are scheduled to close out the year at a New Year’s concert in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, but city officials deem their name too offensive and issue a ban. “We do have a policy against the objectification of women or any other sector of the community,” events co-ordinator Dawna Proudman tells The Toronto Star. “If your mother or my mother saw a headline saying, ‘City of Toronto presents Barenaked Ladies,’ they’d be concerned.” The ban ends up benefitting the band; it’s a top story on national news, and they sell 18,000 copies of The Yellow Tape over the next month alone.
1992 to 1994
Barenaked Ladies self-finance an album and send it to various labels without success until they find a fan in industry heavyweight Seymour Stein, who discovered Ramones and Madonna; he signs them to Sire Records. Barenaked Ladies release debut, Gordon, in July 1992; it sells more than 80,000 copies in Canada in the first 24 hours. The album eventually sells diamond in Canada (one million units) and gold in the U.S.
Cracks begin to show in the band’s foundation. Page will
tell VH-1, “It became a very difficult process. We just stopped talking to each other.” Page spends six weeks writing with his teenage idol Stephen Duffy, which causes friction within the band. Duffy ends up co-writing five songs for the next album.
They hire k.d. lang’s go-to producer Ben Mink and head to Vancouver to record, this time with a big budget. Robertson will later tell Noisey, “I was just less engaged in general, and I think the band was quite fractured. I think the overnight and runaway success of the first record had put us into a very strange place.”
Barenaked Ladies release Maybe You Should Drive in August 1994. Page tells Myers that the band had considered calling the album Car Rearender (or Career Ender). Andy Creeggan leaves, after fulfilling his commitments, to study music at McGill University in Montreal.
The Art Gallery of Ontario hosts the Barnes Exhibit, which features an assortment of nude female paintings. As a joke, the gallery launches an ad campaign reading “Rarenaked Ladies.” BNL’s manager asks lawyers to issue a cease and desist to the gallery without telling the band and media call them out for not seeing the humour. They clear up any confusion by countering with a T-shirt of their own that reads “The Barnes Exhibit,” featuring three barns.
1995 to 1996
Barenaked Ladies reconnect with Gordon producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda at the Gas Station in Toronto. Page and Robertson also reconnect as a songwriting team. Page tells Impact, “For the first time in five years, Ed and I did most of the writing together.”
Stewart suggests they bring in Rheostatics collaborator Kevin Hearn to take over on keyboards, which they do. Released in March 1996 as an enhanced CD, Born on a Pirate Ship fares worse commercially in Canada than their previous effort. They hire new management, who insist on focusing on the States and suggest a live album to showcase their talents. Eight months after Born on a Pirate Ship, they release Rock Spectacle (pronounced “Rock Speck-tack”), featuring songs recorded in Chicago and Montreal. Using their spirited take on “Brian Wilson” as a single, the live disc becomes an unlikely success, giving them their first radio hit and selling more than 750,000 copies in the U.S.
1997 to 1999
On a flight to San Francisco to shoot publicity photos, a backpack falls on Hearn and cracks his head open. When he checks into Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, he is told he has chronic leukemia. Hearn undergoes chemotherapy and receives a bone marrow transplant from his brother.
The first studio album recorded with Hearn, Stunt, is released in July 1998 and is an immediate smash in the U.S., reaching #3 on the Billboard 200 and selling more than four million copies. Lead single “One Week” becomes the band’s only #1 hit in the U.S.
Hearn doesn’t return to tour until after a full year, in the summer of 1999. Feeling unwell after playing some dates, Hearn returns home and learns his body has rejected the transplant and he needs to undergo further therapy. Two years after his diagnosis, Hearn receives a clean bill of health.
2000 to 2003
The band enter Cello Studios in Los Angeles with Don Was, who introduces them to Brian Wilson. “It was very bizarre to have Brian Wilson play you his version of the song,” Robertson tells Yahoo. “I mean, that song was written in ’88, ’89; we were this tiny band in Toronto and thought that Brian Wilson would never hear our music. He looked up at me afterward and said ‘Is it cool?’ I did not know how to answer him.”
Their fifth album, Maroon, is released in September 2000 and scores a hit with first single “Pinch Me”; it reaches #5 on Billboard.
The band take a much needed break before Everything to Everyone is released in October 2003. It can’t live up to the success of Stunt or Maroon, and is their last with Sire.
2004 to 2007
Steven Page releases a self-titled album with long-time collaborator Stephen Duffy under the moniker the Vanity Project.
Barenaked Ladies self-produce their next album for the first time and end up recording 29 songs; they decide to release it in two parts. The first CD, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, is released in September 2006; digital and USB stick versions also include the second CD, Barenaked Ladies Are Men (a CD release follows five months later).
Barenaked Ladies are asked to write the theme song to CBS’s new sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. Robertson later tells Songwriting magazine, “I had read a book called Big Bang, by a British science writer called Simon Singh. I was doing a show in L. A. and made up a silly song about red-shifting galaxies and dark matter. [ BBT co-creators] Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre happened to be in the audience, so they contacted me and said, ‘You have to write the theme song for our show.’ I wrote the 30-second song in the shower at my cottage, I recorded it in my bathing suit on my laptop on the bed that I’m currently sitting on, emailed it to L. A. and they loved it.”
2008 to 2009
Barenaked Ladies release a children’s album titled Snacktime! in May 2008, along with a companion illustrated book written and designed by Hearn.
Steven Page is arrested on July 11, 2008 in Fayetteville, NY, where he is visiting his girlfriend Christine Benedicto. After the couple are heard fighting, police arrive and discover that Page has two capsules of cocaine. He is charged with fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Charges are eventually reduced to misdemeanour possession, and six months later are dropped.
Barenaked Ladies choose not to celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary, and on February 24, 2009, announce that Steven Page is no longer a member. In an interview with MacLean’s, Page admits, “I’ve always struggled with my identity inside of Barenaked Ladies. The image of the band, it’s not only well-scrubbed, but jovial and so on and that’s not always my personality.”
2010 to 2013
Barenaked Ladies’ ninth album,
All in Good Time, reaches #3 in Canada and #23 in the U.S. In October 2010, Steven Page releases solo album Page One. In an interview with CTV, Page discusses his disappointment in Barenaked Ladies continuing with the name he helped coin. “You know what? Ideally — just because it was my baby — if they wanted to stay together and call themselves something else, I would have been a lot happier.”
Released in June 2013, Grinning Streak becomes their highest charting album on
Billboard in a decade; it’s also the band’s first release on new label Vanguard.
2015 to 2016
In June 2015, Barenaked Ladies release their 11th studio album, Silverball, a reference to Robertson’s love of pinball machines.
Steven Page sues Barenaked Ladies over unpaid royalties for his contribution to the theme song to The Big Bang Theory. In the suit, he claims he is owed more than $1 million. He tells CTV News, “I wish I could say more, but I’m sure my lawyers don’t trust me to say the right thing. I’ll probably be too honest.”
2017 to 2018
They release their 12th full-length album, Fake Nudes, a play on President Donald Trump’s overuse of the term “fake news,” in November 2017. Robertson tells Huffington Post, “It provided the opportunity for us to make the joke about our band name that everybody else has been making for 29 years. On every show, ‘They’re not nude and they’re not women. But our next act, blah blah blah.’”
On March 25, 2018, Barenaked Ladies, along with Steven Page, are inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, marking the first time the band will appear in public with Page since his arrest. “I honestly haven’t been in the same room as the other guys — all the other guys at once — since I left the band,” Page tells the Canadian Press. “It’ll be good to see them all, but it’s going to be odd. It’s not like we’re getting back together.”