The Inevitability of Death

The inevitability of death. Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip sang about it back in the early '90s when the phrase became a song title on their 1994 album Day for Night. I first saw the band play it in 1993 at the Middle East in Cambridge and loved it immediately. Of course, at the time I was 25 and unaware of the impact that death can have on your life. Nearly a year later, Kurt Cobain put a shotgun in his mouth. That death hit an entire generation pretty hard, even though it seemed inevitable for a while. A few years later, my father died and that too, while seriously depressing, did not come as a shock because he was really ill for a while.

Now I'm 50 and death seems like a fairly common occurrence in the world. I mean, it was in '93, too, but it's more real to me now. So when Downie died this week after close to a two-year battle with brain cancer, it wasn't a shock, but it still hit me hard. Certainly, the death has been a major event in Canada, where Downie has become the pre-eminent rock chronicler of Canadiana.

The Hip never broke big in the U.S., where they've had success in bigger cities, especially ones with a lot of Canadians. I'm pretty much American through and through, having moved from Canada when I was 14. But when I heard the song "Blow at High Dough" on Boston's WBCN in 1989, I was hooked. I picked up the album, Up to Here, and enjoyed it thoroughly. A year later, I was visiting Toronto and watched a live Hip concert on MuchMusic (the Canuck MTV), and I was REALLY hooked. The studio stuff is great, but live was where the Hip and Downie were especially captivating. Sweating profusely right off the bat, he would seemingly go into a semi-trance, moving in herky-jerky motions, play-fighting with the mic stand and often going off on tangents. Early on, Downie would go off on epic mid-song rants about killer whale tanks or failed suicide pacts. Later, he would debut snippets of new songs within other ones. No two Hip shows were alike, thanks to Downie's elastic and magnetic personality.

I saw the band for the first time in 1991 at the Paradise in Boston and even though the club was nearly empty, the show was incredible. Downie looked a lot different than he did in recent years: longish hair, thick beard, flannel shirt, jeans and shitkickers. As the years passed, he began to resemble two singers he was often compared to: Michael Stipe and Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil (the shaved head was mainly responsible for that). I saw the Hip pretty much every time they came through Boston, and saw Downie solo on at least three occasions.

Going through the vast catalog he left behind (13 Hip studio albums, 5 solo albums), it really is amazing how much great material Downie left behind. And indeed, there's one more album, Introduce Yerself, that is due out next Friday. And I've got several excellent bootlegs of classic live performances over the years that I've been digging into as well.

Like David Bowie, Downie's response to his cancer diagnosis was to stare death in the face and keep working. But unlike Bowie, Downie not only toured, he used the platform and attention he received to spotlight Canada's need to reconcile with the indigenous people it displaced and abused over the years. That he was able to accomplish so much while struggling with the debilitating effects of glioblastoma (which included memory loss) is goddamn inspirational.

Now we remember his legacy. I've been watching some old videos and documentaries that are up on YouTube. A new documentary about the Hip's final tour is set to go up on Netflix next month, so that will no doubt be an emotional experience.

So yeah, death is inevitable. Make the most of life while you still can. Gord sure as hell did.