POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Pye Dubois, Canadian Wordsmith
By Dan Brown Not many people know the name Pye Dubois. But odds are, you’ve heard his lyrics. Dubois – who died at his home in London on September 15 at age 77 – helped create the soundtrack for my generation of music fans in Canada. After growing up in Sarnia, he wrote lyrics for 1970s rockers Max Webster, then paired with band frontman Kim Mitchell when the long-haired singer launched his solo career in the 1980s. When I think of Dubois, I think of being in the cafeteria of the old Strathroy District Collegiate Institute listening to the crunching guitar of Go For Soda or driving the backroads with the gentle nostalgia of Patio Lanterns playing. How big of a part did Dubois’s work play in Canadian culture? Patio Lanterns was used by Tim Hortons in one of its TV commercials back in the day. He captured that youthful patio magic we all have stored in our summer memories. And where does he rank in the pantheon of homegrown songwriters? I would argue his contributions as part of a songwriting duo with Mitchell rank up there with Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman, or Jim Vallance and Bryan Adams. But he didn’t write exclusively with Mitchell. Max Webster’s A Million Vacations, with its sardonic chorus of “You can only drive down Main Street so many times,” was co-created with the band’s drummer, Gary McCracken. Dubois – who never appeared on stage as a performer but was considered a full member of Max Webster – was a standout talent in a group that had no weak links. Keyboardist Terry Watkinson penned the number that is arguably Max Webster’s signature song, Let Go The Line, including this immortal observation. “Life has been likened to a poker deal, or a poor, brief candle, or a karmic wheel.” Imagine trying to compete with poetry like that! The Canadian music world being as small as it is, Dubois also collaborated with prog rockers Rush back in the day. The FM radio classic Tom Sawyer started out as a poem by Dubois. “His original lyrics were kind of a portrait of a modern-day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and man in myself, and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be,” Neil Peart once told a Rush fanzine. Dubois deserves deep thanks from Canadians for that one legendary tune alone. I’ve interviewed Mitchell twice, but was unable to get any insights out of him into his work with Dubois. The music business being what it is, they had a falling out that ended their partnership in 1995. What a loss. Dubois lived his life off-stage. He wasn’t a presence on the public scene, but he can go to his reward knowing his words are imprinted on the minds of a generation of Canadians who grew up in the 1970s and came of age in the 1980s Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
