TRUE NORTH'S STRONG SPIRIT Bernie Finkelstein has championed Canadian music for 40-plus years – and he's about to be recognized for it Alan Niester – Globe and Mail Bernie Finkelstein is back behind his cluttered desk, where he belongs.
His office, and the rooms that surround it in his True North Records complex just off downtown Toronto, are a closet organizer's worst nightmare but a music junkie's dream. In a corner sits a huge box of canisters marked "Bruce Cockburn outtakes." One ancient looking bureau holds stacks and stacks of compact discs set aside for promotional purposes. Concert posters and photographs compete for recognition and every spare bit of flat space, while one complete wall is given over to the Juno Awards (38 of them at last count) and gold and platinum records (39) the company has collected throughout its history.
Thirty-five years of the collected ephemera of the country's oldest and most successful independent record company cram these offices, and all of it is a testament to the 60-year-old dynamo whose very name has been synonymous with the company for all these years.
But for five months or so last year, the familiar and cherubic record-company executive was missing from his post, recuperating from major heart surgery, the need for which seems to have caught everyone, including Finkelstein, by surprise.
"I just started feeling ill one day, last February," he recalls. "I hadn't been in the hospital since I was seven, hadn't seen a doctor in five years. But I started getting the feeling that things weren't right. I remember I'd mentioned to my wife Elizabeth that it seemed they were putting the baggage carousels in the airports a lot farther from the planes these days. I guess that was a warning sign. So I called my doctor, asked if he could see me, and later that same day I was on my way to the hospital."
The result was a quadruple bypass operation combined with a valve replacement, which kept Finkelstein out of the office for about six months. "But of course," he said with a smile, "I kept on the phone from my hospital bed."
That last statement should not be too surprising, given that for the past 40-plus years, Finkelstein has been a constant driving force in the Canadian music industry. A familiar face in Toronto's burgeoning Yorkville music scene in the early sixties, Finkelstein not only founded the country's first major independent record label, he has been deeply involved in artist management and music publishing (True North Publishing Group). He founded the Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA), where he is still a board member, and was also the co-founder and chairman of VideoFACT, a program that provides grants to Canadian artists to assist in making music videos. His considerable contributions to Canada's cultural history have resulted in Finkelstein's being chosen to receive the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) Walt Grealis special-achievement award at this year's Juno presentation.
The son of an Air Force warrant officer posted at suburban Toronto's Downsview Air Base, Finkelstein gravitated to the nascent Yorkville music scene in 1963, taking odd jobs, sleeping where he could, and ultimately dropping out of high school soon thereafter.
It was while "running the espresso machine, washing dishes and cleaning up" at a club called the El Patio that he came into contact with a young rock band called the Paupers.
"They'd be on stage rehearsing, and I'd provide sandwiches for them," Finkelstein recalls. "They were a young band with a lot of questions -- should we wear our hair long? should we have matching suits? -- and I'd always be there with an answer. One day, about three or four months later, they asked me if I'd manage them"
Finkelstein had absolutely no managerial experience, but took the plunge anyway. His method of conducting the band's affairs from a payphone on Yorkville Avenue is the stuff of legend.
With scant opportunities to get the band a recording deal in Canada, Finkelstein approached MGM-Verve Records in New York, already a progressive label with the likes of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band on its roster, and managed to get a record deal signed. He also secured a groundbreaking gig for the band at the Café Au Go Go, opening for the young Jefferson Airplane.
The Paupers made such a splash in their New York debut that they attracted the interest of Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, who approached Finkelstein with an offer to co-manage the band.
He eventually bought out Finkelstein for $20,000, a sum that allowed Finkelstein the opportunity to work with a new signing, Kensington Market, then give up the music business for a short time to become a back-to-the-land hippie on a farm outside Killaloe in Eastern Ontario.
"I stayed on the farm for a year, around 1968 and 69," he recounts. "But then I woke up one morning and realized I was bored to tears and almost broke, so I had to decide what to do next."
He knew that he wanted to continue in the music business, but also knew that the two experiences he had had with major American record companies had been less than satisfactory.
Why, then, not simply start his own company? "That way I figured I could do what I wanted to do, or what my acts wanted to do, without having to get someone's approval in New York or L.A.," he reasoned.
Time spent in Northern Ontario had seen him come to appreciate a more acoustic-based folk-style music, "one that, today, we would call roots music, though that designation wasn't around at the time." On returning to Toronto, he selected a name for the company, True North, and put out the word that he was looking to sign acts.
On the advice of producer Gen Martynec, Finkelstein went down to the Pornographic Onion coffeehouse at Toronto's Ryerson University to watch a young Ottawa Valley musician named Bruce Cockburn. He came away impressed enough to begin negotiations with the then 24-year-old singer-guitarist.
"I remember him saying to me: 'Bernie, I'll only sign with you if you can guarantee to me that I can do the album solo.' I thought, well, this is paradise. I was doing all this with less than $5,000 and I had to book a studio and make album jackets, find distribution, and here was a guy begging me to make a cheap record. Well, okay, let's do it."
Cockburn's association with Finkelstein has lasted to this day, with True North acting as both Cockburn's record and management company. And that initial signing of Cockburn was the beginning of a line that has included such Canadian luminaries as diverse as Rough Trade, Luke and the Apostles, 54-40 and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, among many others. All told, True North Records has released more than 300 albums and CDs, most of them by Canadian acts.
It should come as no surprise that Finkelstein is a huge booster of the Canadian music industry in general, and he comes across as relatively outspoken in its defence. When asked about the concept of the Canadian inferiority complex that was so often referred to in decades past, he said: "I've been trying to fight that all my life. And I'm disappointed that it still exists, although I think less than it used to."
For Finkelstein, Canada stills needs to be more pro-active in encouraging and celebrating its musical luminaries. "We need to learn more. We need to be able to walk into a bookstore and see a hundred books about the Canadian music business, not just one. We need to walk into schools and see posters not just of the Beatles and Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, but the Guess Who as well. Our story needs to be more complete. We need to see less Associated Press stories in our newspapers, and more Canadian Press stories.
"We're way better than we think we are. We have a long history that goes way back before me, and we need to celebrate it a whole lot more."
A special tribute to Bernie Finkelstein will be made in Halifax during the 2006 Juno Gala Dinner and Awards, on Saturday. He will also be honoured during a special segment of the Juno Awards, to air Sunday on CTV. |