EPISODE 8: Christopher Ward
Erica gets personal with Christopher Ward about the zany early days at MuchMusic, why his time at Second City was so important to him, and how being a successful songwriter ended his career at Much.
Christopher shares his behind the scenes stories of some of his most memorable interviews, and sets the record straight about how his best buddy Mike Myers tried out his now famous character of Wayne on MuchMusic.
An award winning songwriter, Christopher shares the story behind writing hits for Alannah Myles, why his experience working with Diana Ross was a huge disappointment and the one artist who stole his heart when he interviewed her on Much.
Show Transcript
Speaker 1:
We've got some good rock and roll.
Speaker 2:
The guys from Kiss have arrived. They snuck in the backdoor.
Speaker 3:
You spend your whole life doing the first few albums and then suddenly everybody needs your attention.
Speaker 4:
Erica Ehm's-
Erica Ehm:
Thanks MuchMusic.
Speaker 4:
Reinvention of the VJ. A flashback on the career that made them who they are today. On this episode...
Christopher Ward:
Christopher Ward. Thanks here very much for watching today. I want to remind you to catch City Limits. We'll have an all cover show on Limits coming up at 12:00. There was a there was actually a moment in time which I can describe precisely when I knew we had a hit record and I knew that it'd be okay for me to leave. So we got a couple of videos back to back for you. I'll Be Loving You (Forever) and You've Got It, the right stuff from RSVP.
Speaker 4:
This is Erica Ehm's Reinvention of VJ. Now here's Erica Ehm.
Erica Ehm:
Hi there. I'm Eric Ehm and thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Reinvention of the VJ. I'm so excited for today's conversation. My guest is the original VJ, no hyperbole, no exaggeration. He was the VJ even before there was anything called MuchMusic. He also literally wrote the book on MuchMusic. Seriously, if you're interested in the history of MuchMusic, his book, Is This Live, is a must read. We'll talk about it. Speaking of writing, he's also a novelist and a prolific and highly respected songwriter. Plus Mike Myers is his BFF. That's kind of cool. So now you know why I'm so excited to chat with today's guest, Christopher ward.
Erica Ehm:
Now before we jump in our interview, if this is your first time tuning into my podcast, let me give you a just a bit of background. Reinvention of the VJ is basically my passion project. The premise is simple, up close and personal conversations with talented and much loved personalities on air from MuchMusic that you may have grown up watching. Well, our personalities and approaches were often very different. There is one thing that we do all have in common. Each of us played a small part in Canada's most influential pop culture platform, and then we left.
Erica Ehm:
At different times for different reasons, each of us set off on our own next adventures. It's that story of what happens after Much the reinvention, the resilience, the creativity, struggles and of course, the perspective. That's what intrigues me. And you know what's really important about the show? You. Yes, you who's listening right now. I'm making this show for you for a couple of reasons.
Erica Ehm:
Okay. First, it's going to be a trip down memory lane. But I'm also hoping that you listen through the lens of gleaning some interesting tidbits or insights into what it takes for you to get the life that you want, to reinvent. I know a lot of us are going through that right now. We are dealing with tough times. How do you get through those? Maybe even redefine what success is. Hopefully you'll find ideas that will inspire you to look at your life just a little bit differently. By the way, at the end of the show, I'm going to tell you how you can be part of this podcast. Now, it's time to introduce my multi-talented understated friend on Reinvention of VJ. Please welcome Christopher Ward. Christopher. This is so awesome.
Christopher Ward:
E squared, how are you?
Erica Ehm:
I'm so happy to talk to you.
Christopher Ward:
Thank you.
Erica Ehm:
It's funny because during our time at Much, we never really hung out. But it was after Much ended that we reconnected and you were the giver of all my baby clothes. You and your wife had gave me your daughter Rachel's clothes for my daughter, Jesse, to wear for years.
Christopher Ward:
Well, I'm awfully glad to hear that. Yeah, I think of us as really good friends and that's the first and most important thing.
Erica Ehm:
Yeah. I'm going to admit something. Part of the reason that I'm doing this podcast is because of the book you wrote, Is This Live. Yeah, because I don't know if I told you this, but when I read it, I literally was crying. I get sort of choked up thinking about it. It was kind of like... Christopher, I'm getting choked up. It was kind of like my biography. It struck me how there's you and just a few people who lived through such a huge time in my life and a critical cultural time in Canada. It just really struck my heart. What was that experience like for you hearing everyone's story because you lived it yourself?
Christopher Ward:
Well, going back to write the book was a fantastic experience. First and foremost, just reconnecting with all these people that I really cared about, and as you say, people that I shared a common experience with. We did go through a lot together. I think a lot of us, we didn't really talk about it at the time, because it was just going so fast. It was just like being on in the express train the whole time and you never had time to kind of look out the window and see what you were actually going past. Which is fine. Because there's always time to reflect and recollect and that's what that book was.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah, I guess the book did reveal things to the writer, as a book will about yourself and the story that you've told. I think it also told me what MuchMusic represented culturally in Canada, something else you just referred to. Again, I didn't think about that at the time. But I realize how many artists we gave an exposure to, an incredibly important one and whose careers exploded overnight. And a number of artists who said to me, "One day, I was kind of slugging it out in the clubs and the next day, I couldn't go to the grocery store without being mobbed." It was nuts. That was sort of a hint as to how much of an effect we had on the music scene in Canada at the time.
Erica Ehm:
You said that it revealed something about the writer, yourself. What did going through this process reveal about you, to you?
Christopher Ward:
Well, most of these things are hard to put into words, I think. It was an affirmation of some things. I looked back and although there were lots of embarrassing moments, things I looked at and wished, "Oh, man! I'd love to have a redo on that one." I still thought no, it affirmed that I utilized some of my greatest skills in the moment, which are curiosity and creativity and just approaching each day like it's a fresh one. You know what I mean? Because let's face it. It's like being a relief pitcher who gets his ass handed to him in the ninth inning of the game in which he blows up and lead. You do a bad interview and that's how you feel, right? And then the next day you come in, you got to start over. So we did.
Erica Ehm:
What about when you spoke to all the different VJs or honored personalities, were there any commonalities that each of us told you perhaps in different words, but similar emotions or fears or things that we were proud of or stuff that we had dealt with, through interviews, anything that you found, like a common theme between all of us?
Christopher Ward:
Through most of us, people's reflection was that this had been the time of their lives. They didn't necessarily know it at the time, but in reflection, they saw that it was and that's how it struck me as well.
Erica Ehm:
When you were putting together the book, as one does, when one writes a book, there usually is a theme. There's a through-line that goes through the book. So of course, this is a chronology of what happened through the years of Much. But I wonder, was there an actual sort of storyline or something dramatic that you ended up with some sort of a thesis at the end? I know you said that about the musicians, but the musicians, part of the book was actually quite a small piece of it at the end of the book.
Christopher Ward:
You're asking me tough questions today. This isn't fair.
Erica Ehm:
You're welcome.
Christopher Ward:
I think maybe and this is another affirmation if you like, and I had come before being an on air person from doing Second City, working in the Second City touring company. The skills that I developed there proved to be probably the most useful set of skills that I was able to bring to bear in my job as a VJ. Because I'm kind of a buttoned down person in many, many ways. I like to have things ordered. I would research interviews like crazy because I just had to feel confident that I was on stable ground with these amazing artists that came in the door every single day. To accommodate to the randomness of MuchMusic, just the wild hair up the ass kind of quality that MuchMusic represented, you had to give yourself over to the moment.
Christopher Ward:
You had to just walk up the edge and go, "Well, I think I can fly." And off you went. Once you've had a few successes doing that and things work out okay, and you're still alive the next day to tell the tale and you haven't been fired, you gain a little more kind of confidence in that approach. But that's not how television is normally made. It's not made see to the pants style. It's not just wacky, your boss says, "Do what you want," kind of job. It's not like that. But this was, as you well know. I think we all grew from that. I think the audience benefited from that as well because they kind of went on the adventure with us. It's like going to an improv show, where you know that people are going to fall on their face and that's your favorite part of the show. The question is, how are they going to get up and do it again? That's the entertaining part of it.
Erica Ehm:
Actually, that makes so much sense to me because I know that having been on MuchMusic, if there's something that it taught me was that I can handle anything. Because I also understand that people forgive you when you make a mistake, if you can keep going.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
That's a great secret to have in your back pocket, because other people get flustered or they feel badly about themselves. And I'm like, "Fuck it, let's just keep on going. Whatever, it doesn't matter." I think it served me really well.
Christopher Ward:
Well, I would venture that you more than anyone who worked there both benefited from that ability to look upon it that way. But also, we're kind of forced to because of the rough ride you were given when you first got that gig. I look back and I just think, I don't think I could have survived that kind of treatment that you received. You've talked about this before. We talked about it in the book. It's a tribute to your incredible durability and belief in yourself, things that you're able to bring obviously into the work that you do now.
Erica Ehm:
Do you think that that was a personality type that was hired at Much, this sort of indelible, I am who I am type person? In some ways, unmoldable?
Christopher Ward:
Well, I think there was a kind of an iconic clastic quality to the people that were hired there. Let's remember who did the hiring. For the most part, it was the late John Martin. And John... We all know his story. Or maybe people don't know his story, but he was kind of like an absentee landlord in some respects. He would just... I think I even said it in the credit at the beginning of the book. I said, "This book's for John, who would wind us up and let us go." And he did. He kind of just... It was beautiful casting and that's something that Moses I think, was a master of as well, was looking at his on air people as a cast.
Christopher Ward:
But John had that ability to really zero in on people who would just get up and do it by themselves, who didn't need somebody to say, "Well, now here's what I want you to do. Who beat..." It wasn't like we had somebody sitting at the end of every day or every week watching back air checks with us going, "Now, I think you could have handled this one a little bit differently." I'm like, "No." That never happened. Nobody ever said anything ever to us about our performance on national television. It was ridiculous.
Erica Ehm:
I'm on the floor laughing here because people have no idea, the craziness, the fact that we were given a crew, a camera, a microphone and for me anyway, four hours of live TV, unscripted, say and do whatever you want. That's insane. That's crazy. That's actually not right because bad shit could have really happened. It did actually. It did.
Christopher Ward:
It did. Yeah. It did. Well, I remember when John went to hire me for the all night video show that came before Much called City Limits. I actually wasn't sure I wanted the gig because I had just left the Second City touring company and I had every plan to just rededicate myself to writing music, which was my passion in life, as you know. I was about to say no, and a couple of my friends said, "Are you out of your fucking mind? You will take this gig and you will go back to him-"
Erica Ehm:
But what were you offered? What was it that you were offered?
Christopher Ward:
Well, I'll tell you. I was offered in two stages. John came to see me do my last show at Second City. At that show, I received an Elvis Bust, a pie in the face and an invitation from John Martin which went, "Come to my office on Monday. I've got something for you." Which as you know from John, that was loquacious. I went to his office on Monday. And he's like, "Well, yeah. We're doing this thing. It's an all evening show." And I'm like, "I don't know, man. I don't want it. I'm really working on my music now." And he looks at me, he gives me that really look. And he says, "Well, you need the money, don't you?" "Well, yeah." He says, "And you can do anything you want." That was it. That was like the ultimate invitation to create more television.
Erica Ehm:
He gave you the key to City Limits, but was there a mandate? Is it just, "Go and do it." Was there any direction? Was there any sort of format? Anything? Hello?
Christopher Ward:
No.
Erica Ehm:
Nothing? Nothing.
Christopher Ward:
Well, we had a library and there were some videos in it. This was in the spring of 1983. Yeah. The fall of '83. There weren't too many videos so we kind of just played what we wanted. I actually invented our first format. It was because it just seemed necessary. Because I had worked in radio when I was going to college. I was going to train in the University in Peterborough and I was working at CKBT, the Chung station there. So I knew what a format was. And I knew that rather than being a hindrance and rather than it being something that you're forced and confined by, it in fact freed you up, because it made sure that the best loved videos of the moment were all going to get a reasonable amount of play and that you provided an opportunity to stuff that was on its way up, in particular Canadian artists.
Erica Ehm:
Well, you also were giving it structure and within the structure, you can create like a song. Every song has structure.
Christopher Ward:
Nicely done!
Erica Ehm:
You're welcome. But it's true though, because otherwise, if there's so much creativity and there's no boundaries, then it's really hard to create something. So you built a format, which was what? There was a certain number of times you would play certain videos, or what was-
Christopher Ward:
Kind of yeah. It was just a basic ABC format. And the ones in the A list were the ones that got played the most. So if it's like Beat It or Rebel Yell or Sweet Dreams or whatever were the big videos of the moment, those would be maximum airplay and then you work your way down from there. Pretty basic.
Erica Ehm:
Was the strategy from John Martin's perspective to start city limits within eye to MuchMusic or was MuchMusic not even a glint in his eye yet?
Christopher Ward:
Well, Much was very much a glint in Moses Znaimer's eye and a whole bunch of other people, including John and they wanted to create a prototype for MuchMusic that they could take to the CRTC when it was time for handing out of a music license. I think it was a major part of why they got the license because they could in effect, say to the CRTC, unlike some of their very sort of heavily funded competition, they could go, "Look, we're already doing it."
Erica Ehm:
Right.
Christopher Ward:
Whatever it was.
Erica Ehm:
You and I worked in the same office at that time at 99, Queen Street East. I worked during the day and you worked during the night, doing the shows. If I remember correctly, the crew at that time, so that would have been Anne, Michael, Simon and Morgan, Sherry, were they all part of... Was that your crew? The overnight City Limits crew?
Christopher Ward:
Yeah. The last three that you mentioned, Morgan, Simon and Sherry, they were all volunteers from the Centennial College broadcast program.
Erica Ehm:
Yes, we all started same day. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Christopher Ward:
Only they just didn't get paid.
Erica Ehm:
But they did eventually. Eventually. I barely got paid.
Christopher Ward:
Eventually. Yes. Eventually came fairly quickly, actually mercifully, because when Much came, it was like, they were sort of cast for, "Well, we need some producers." It was like, "Well, who could we get really cheap, who kind of know what they're doing already?" So these kids at age 21 and 22 suddenly became the MuchMusic producers. Although Michael Hayden and Anne Howard were the sort of supervising producers, they had a lot of responsibilities. Michaels responsibilities encompassed the look of the network. A huge I think, not unrecorded contribution, but one that's not acknowledged very often.
Erica Ehm:
So you were building what would become MuchMusic. Can you describe to me the day that you and J.D. jumped through that piece of paper and it became officially MuchMusic?
Christopher Ward:
Well, it was done in typical City TV Much style. They just had this absolute wacky wild, totally out of control party going on in the studio. What better atmosphere to try to do a television show, where you have to be able to take cues and communicate with floor directors and responsibly hit your moments on at camera and interview a whole bunch of artists who were half plastered for the most part? Perfect setting, right?
Erica Ehm:
Yeah.
Christopher Ward:
And then J.D. and I were, for the longest, I'm standing behind this great, huge green screen sheet going, "Okay. You go... Okay, I'll go. Yeah, you go for... Okay, here we go. Ready?" And then they cut a little slit in the green screen, because I think they were afraid that we wouldn't be able to get out. It would look like we were shadowboxing back there with the thing coming out. We kind of dove through the thing and it was just... It was a little disorienting to be honest with you. I'm claustrophobic, so I wasn't really having a good time behind the screen. Sorry. Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
That was such a crazy time. Well, it was amazing being there at that moment, because it really signaled a new era, in the music business and a new era, a new type of television was being built really or invented or created. When I interviewed [inaudible 00:22:01] for this podcast, I've spoken to George Stroumboulopoulos, lots of people, but Rick Campanelli, Bill Wieliczka, amongst many others and each of them at some point sort of bowed down to you and to J.D. to Mike Williams, a little bit to me, of course, I'm hosting they have to.
Erica Ehm:
When they talk about, they always say that you were the trailblazers. When you think about it, you didn't have anyone that you could look to for specifically the job of a VJ in a crazy busy office on live TV for four hours a day. Where did you get your inspiration to do the things that you did? How did you... What did you base your job description on?
Christopher Ward:
Well, when we started, there were only two of us. There was J.D., John Roberts and myself. They hadn't hired Mike yet and hadn't hired you yet. We did seven days a week for, I think it was a couple of months. Weirdly, I don't ever remember feeling tired or thinking, "This is ridiculous." It was just like, "Woo-hoo! We're going back to work again today." But you got to remember and I know you know this, working with J.D. Roberts is working with the ultimate consummate professional. For those of you who don't know him in his current incarnation, he is the Whitehouse correspondent for Fox News.
Christopher Ward:
So you can see him. He's always in the front row. He's got a little notebook. He's got the silver hair and he always asks the pointed question. This guy is the definition of pro. And I was just like, the wild-eyed younger brother compared to him in terms of having his gig together. Remember, he'd been working on the show the new music for what, three or four years before Much was launched. Working with him always made you feel like okay, this isn't going to fall apart because J.D. Robert is across the room. In many ways, I modeled after him.
Erica Ehm:
Interesting. Because he was as you know, my mentor, and the one thing he taught me, always do your research, always do your work. He wasn't about fun. Although, kind of look like a party dude. Because he would do a lot of rock stuff. But he was all about do the work. Absolutely.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah. J.D. was a very serious guy and he knew everything. He knew how to run a camera. He knew how to edit. He literally could have been a one-man network, I think. He wasn't going to be as wacky as some of us, but I think made for a better balance.
Erica Ehm:
We all had to conduct countless live interviews amidst chaos.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
What do you think makes a memorable interview?
Christopher Ward:
I think when you make a connection with an artist and it's got to be a two-way street, you have to provide the right environment, you have to ask the right questions in the right sequence and the artist has to be open to the idea of making a connection with their audience through you. Those are to me kind of the building blocks.
Christopher Ward:
There's a lot of ways to get there. My way, I guess, J.D.'s way and eventually, certainly your way was that you research like crazy and you know as Much as you possibly can about that artist, every time you step into the ring or else you're going to get flattened. Because a lot of artists have seen it all and they got no time for somebody who's not prepared, as we saw, in certain circumstances with certain unnamed individuals.
Erica Ehm:
You were about to do it. I saw you.
Christopher Ward:
No, I wouldn't do that. And then I think you have to draw something out of them that just kind of feels like it's happening for the first time, without falling into that trap of trying to ask the trick question that no one has ever asked before. But it is like anything else, it's about connection. You really have to be extremely tuned in. I looked at some of the interviewers that I admired the most growing up and they were people who it was effortless, artless almost like Dick Cavett. He would have all these rock stars on and stuff, as well as like literary figures and political people and all this. He just kind of looked like your cool uncle sitting there in his corduroy pants just asking whatever came to mind.
Erica Ehm:
Kind of like [inaudible 00:27:17].
Christopher Ward:
Well, I hadn't thought of that. But he kind of rode the wave of an interview. You know how an interview quickly develops its own momentum? If you interview the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it's going to be a different set of waves than if you're interviewing Janet Jackson. I did both. You've got to ride it. You've got to be in the moment for sure.
Erica Ehm:
Can you ever be over researched? Does it get in the way?
Christopher Ward:
If you let it. Only if you let it. Only if you don't trust yourself and don't remain open to the artist and feel like you're just going to do this recitation of facts, all these things that you've learned or researched. That makes for drabness. I'm sure I occasionally fell into that situation.
Erica Ehm:
I have invited people who listen to this podcast, ask questions. So I have one for you.
Christopher Ward:
Cool.
Erica Ehm:
It's all about the audience, which is what we learned at Much, right? It was all about the audience. So this show, hopefully, I want the audience I want our listeners to be a part of it. So we have a question here from Louis Pollachie or Pollachie and he asked this on Twitter, he wrote, "What are Christopher's top three interviews and why?"
Christopher Ward:
Wow. Well, there's a lot. It's impossible, not to mention the George Harrison interview. Because when a Beatle walked in for an hour of live television and these were gods in my world and in many others people's obviously, it was incomparable as an experience and as a feeling. It's like, I remember one of our directors, Sylvie said, when he walked in the room, it became a cathedral. I thought that was a very cool way of looking at it.
Christopher Ward:
They say, "Don't meet your heroes, because they'll disappoint you." But that did not happen. In this case, he was as gracious and kind and he also maybe because he wasn't interviewed as Much as the others, he was in the moment with you. He listened to the questions really, really carefully. He was very patient. He gave some very spontaneous answers, including one which has now gone viral and has been shown...
Christopher Ward:
There's two and a half million YouTube views of this one excerpt from the interview. Well, what had happened was that the week before, I'd seen this story in the news about McCartney doing an album of songs that he did not write including songs by John Lennon like Imagine and Beautiful Boy and so on. And so I thought, "Oh, I'll just mention that George and see if he's heard about it." And I told him that and he went, "Paul, no. Maybe doesn't have any good ones of his own then." I was kind of like gobsmacked at the moment. I went, "Wow. I guess we have that on tape now." Right. And he looked at me and went, "That's true." It was just that classic understated Beatle thing. But you can see that moment for all its glory.
Erica Ehm:
Okay. That's one of them. All right. We have two more.
Christopher Ward:
I'm going to tell you about one that's obscure if I may.
Erica Ehm:
You may.
Christopher Ward:
This was one that I did, it was one of the very last interviews I did at Much in the year 1989. And it was just toWard the end of my tenure there. I did it with one of the greatest songwriters who's ever lived, a man named Willie Dixon. Willie Dixon was really the kind of the grandfather of the Chicago blues scene. He produced Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf. Famously, he produced Wolf who was illiterate and when he had to sing his songs, Willie Dixon would whisper the lyrics in his ear.
Christopher Ward:
But Willie also wrote all of these great blues songs like Back Door Man, I Just Want to Make Love With You, Seventh Sun, Little Red Rooster, all these songs that people like. The Doors and the Rolling Stones, and all these people did. And famously, he wrote a song called You Need Love, better known as a Whole Lot of Love.
Erica Ehm:
Wow.
Christopher Ward:
Except that the aforementioned band did not credit Willie Dixon with it.
Erica Ehm:
Ever?
Christopher Ward:
Eventually a court case was averted and they reached an out-of-court settlement in 1985.
Erica Ehm:
Talking about Led Zeppelin, by the way, for those who haven't [inaudible 00:32:02].
Christopher Ward:
Yeah. Yeah. So Willie Dixon was a hero to me. And we went to his place in Glendale, California. It was the middle of the summer. We came up to the door, and there was a screen door and the door was open. We could see his gigantic legs on this little thing. And he gets up, and lumbers to his feeding system giant of a man, and so sweet and so gentle. And so he patiently went through this whole thing with me. I asked like a million questions, because I had a million questions that he didn't tell me to stop and there was nobody else there to tell me that I had to quit. Finally, at the end I said, because he had a piano in there, I said, "Would you just play a little bit for us and I'll get my camera and shoot?" And he's like, "Oh, sure."
Christopher Ward:
So he goes to the door, and he calls his grandson in who's playing touch football on the lawn. And the two of them move this piano so that we can shoot it. And they proceeded to sit down and do a duet of Seventh Son, which was one of the songs and it was just... I kind of still can't believe that I was there for that moment and captured that. He died just a couple of years after that. But that one was... Privately personally, that was a huge, huge interview for me.
Erica Ehm:
Yeah, definitely one of the perks of the job to be able to be in the presence and have deep conversations with people who mean something to you. Who's your third?
Christopher Ward:
Let me see. Tina Turner. Nobody walked into that room and exuded more pure raw star power than Tina Turner. She walked in the room and she smiled and the sun came out. It was just unbelievably powerful, her presence. She did it with such grace. She was like royalty when she walked in there. She was at the top of her game career-wise. But she'd been through so Much. If you've read her autobiography, then you know or if you know her story. Just horrific stories of her time with her late husband, Ike Turner.
Christopher Ward:
But she triumphed. It's like she carried that triumph around with her everywhere. And she shared it with you and she shared with the people who loved her. I think it was that more than the actual content of the interview. Oh, I'll tell you one other thing about... The crew who normally were pretty blaze about having [inaudible 00:34:45] asked specifically if they could get their photograph taken with Tina Turner. And so I asked her and she said, "Yeah, sure." So they instantly immediately assembled. She had got like 20 people, all standing shoulder to shoulder and Tina's sitting in the front of all of them with a smile that's as big as [inaudible 00:35:02] all outdoors and that photograph stayed framed in the crew area for years.
Erica Ehm:
I interviewed her.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
And I remember asking her-
Christopher Ward:
How was it?
Erica Ehm:
She was amazing. She to me, embodies feminism. So I was really excited to talk to her and I asked her... I don't remember Much. You know that you and I have talked about this. I don't have a lot of memories of my specific interviews with people because I was so in the moment. Anyway with her, I remembered this question, which is, "Why is it that strong women are attracted to bad men?"
Christopher Ward:
Oh.
Erica Ehm:
All I remember is her looking at me like, "That's a really hard thing to answer." I think she might have even said that. And I kind of felt bad because I didn't want to bring up old wounds. But I do think that it's a thing where amazing women are attracted to the bad boy. Why? Anyway, you have to go and find it on YouTube or something to see what she says as the answer. But I loved her.
Christopher Ward:
Great question. Fantastic question. I don't know that it's one that a man should ask.
Erica Ehm:
You're always very elegant and kind and gracious as far as I know. You could be a total bastard around other people, but to me, you're like that. Okay, on that note, let's talk humor. Let's talk humor Christopher. You're funny and yet understated. How would you describe your sense of humor?
Christopher Ward:
Absurd. That's it.
Erica Ehm:
I need more, I need more. Because I actually have this... I sometimes don't understand comedy. I don't know how to... Why did I laugh? But then I go, "Why did that make me laugh?" But because you study at Second City, you are known for being funny and you do funny skits. That's part of what makes Christopher Ward is your humor. Help me understand what makes you funny or how you do funny?
Christopher Ward:
Well, I think as sense of humor is as unique as your fingerprint or your DNA. You could say someone is similar to someone else where they got it from their parents or whatever. But ultimately, it goes a long way toWard defining who each of us are, what we think is funny and what we do that is comedic by its nature. When I say absurd, it's partly the era that I grew up in. The first comedy that really interested me was The Goon Show with Peter Sellers and Monty Python and that kind of stuff. And some of the early Saturday Night Live. Those were absurd situations. But they bore enough of a resemblance to reality, that that's where the comedy laid. I'm not Much of a theorist, you have to ask Mike Myers. He has so many theories about comedy.
Erica Ehm:
So he's your BFF. Tell me about how he, and you, I'm guessing, came up with Wayne's World, or Wayne, the character of Wayne in City Limits? What's the real story?
Christopher Ward:
Well, it's entirely Mike's character, I had nothing to do with it. He and I were in the Second City Touring Company at the same time, and we used to do scenes that Wayne would appear in. And so he was kind of working on Wayne. But as he told me that the reason that he developed the Wayne character was to make girls laugh at parties. That was entirely it. I think it succeeded from what I can tell. Lots of girls laughed at parties.
Christopher Ward:
When I did the All Night Show, Mike came down and because we'd been having so much fun together in the Touring Company, I said, "Oh, you got to come and do this all night video show with me." And we came up with this idea that he would be my cousin, as the reason why I would put up with him just sort of barreling into the show and interrupting everything. Man, I remember there'd be like a guitar player being interviewed and Wayne would just all of a sudden burst in the scene and go, "I love that guitar part man, show me how you do that (singing thing."
Christopher Ward:
And the guy would be, "Okay." Sort of caught between absurdity and reality and forced to kind of conform to whatever the tie rope is between the two. He would teach him the guitar part and he was like, "Hooray, party on man." And it was just... He's one of the funniest people on the planet. Having improvised with him, I was not an improviser compared to him. It'd be like me sitting beside Eric Clapton playing guitar going, "Yeah. Well, I'm a guitar player too." Yeah, but not really.
Erica Ehm:
Did you have any idea that character Wayne would become such a representative of Canada, sort of? He kind of represented Scarborough Basements for the whole world and... Did you know that this would be something big?
Christopher Ward:
Well, no. You never really know that for sure. I certainly had a lot of faith in Mike. He's an exceptionally talented individual. So it's no surprise to me. I have to say that he... But he's unbelievably hard working. I was hanging around with him when he was doing research for the Austin Powers movies. He was watching all of these shows. I'm trying to the names of the... What was the... To the man and the woman in it, the Avengers. Like watching all these shows and making notes and just jamming things out. We did some gigs actually in clubs. We played the Viper Room, the band that was in the Austin Powers movies.
Christopher Ward:
He would start improvising sort of off the audience. But he would be gathering material at the same time while he did that. Incredibly disciplined. Just a tireless writer and re-writer and has incredibly high standards, which I know drives some people nuts. But that's the way it always is. The people that are the most demanding, get the best results pretty much I would say.
Erica Ehm:
Speaking of which, you were in the studio while you were working at MuchMusic with very high standards, writing Alannah Miles album, and producing it. Tell me about that time, because you and I were sitting across from each other, our desks were facing each other and you would come in with a big smile on your face. You had just come from the studio and you were really excited about what you were doing. So tell me about that time, working full time at Much and working on this album. It took you a long time.
Christopher Ward:
Well, I had been developing Alannah's career for a number of years, we've been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time. As it happens, we broke up during the making of the record, just to add a little twist of fate in there. But we were friends, so we maintained the friendship and I think, should sure would agree, we retained the most important part of our relationship and that is the creative one.
Christopher Ward:
I finally got her a deal with Atlantic Records in 1987. So it was like the last couple years that I was at Much. Yeah, it was a lot of work, a lot of demos, a lot of people said, "No." The classic story. And then finally, we got her a record deal. And then we found that sort of the perfect third partner in Dave Tyson, who became a producer and who co-wrote a lot of the songs. I wondered what I looked like. I wonder what you saw from your chair in those days if I just look completely whipped because I was exhausted. In the studio every night writing and trying to create songs, and then recording them and all of that and trying to handle the business end of her career as well while I was on Much. It was stressful but in a good way. It was like my marathon.
Erica Ehm:
When that album came out, it exploded and that would be an understatement, especially Black Velvet. Is that why you left Much? Because we were all very sad when you said you were going to go. Or did you get fired by Moses? How dare you have a successful album when you should be working only for me?
Christopher Ward:
I left because we had a hit record. Now, the odd thing is that Black Velvet was not the first single on that record, a song called Love Is was. There was a there was actually a moment in time, which I can describe precisely when I knew that we had a hit record and I knew that it'd be okay for me to leave. And it was in the spring of '89, when Love Is was the first single. I had just came out of an editing booth at about 2:00 in the morning from working all night doing stuff. I was standing on the corner of Queen and John and bars were just getting out and this drunk was rolling down the street singing at the top of his lungs. And as he got closer to me, I realized he was singing Love Is. It was just like, "Kapow!" That was that moment that I just went, "Okay, now strangers know our music and they're singing them on the street when they're drunk. That's a good thing, isn't it?"
Christopher Ward:
And then when Black Velvet came out, particularly when it started to take off in the States, It's like the door to opportunity opened. I had the two choices you always have, which is you go rushing through that door not knowing how long it's going to stay open or you don't go through it, and you stay behind and you pursue whatever you want to pursue. So when that happened, I asked John and Nancy to come with me to John's second office down the street. And I said, "Okay, stop paying me." And then I went.
Christopher Ward:
Okay, so that was it. And they wanted to have the big on air, goodbye thing. And I said, "No." I said, "I'm not doing it." We did it for J.D. and it took us a while to recover from it and it just... It seemed backward looking. And I said, "No, I'm just not going to show up anymore." And that's what happened. I just didn't come back. I know that may seem like a coward's way out, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. It felt like the right thing to do for me at the time. I used to come back and host the Cheese Show every year. I maintained my Much connections.
Erica Ehm:
So I have another question from a listener. Jack, the Garbage Man asked, "So how did life," it's true, "How did life change after Black Velvet?"
Christopher Ward:
Well, I got a whole lot of respect as a songwriter that I'd never gotten before. But there's also just one of those iconic songs that people took note of, and there were opportunities that came to me and I signed a big publishing deal. They put me together with all these different artists and stuff. Because it's like, when you write a song that's that well known, people treat you like you've figured that out, like you've got the keys to the kingdom. But you don't. You just wrote a song, and it happened to be a hit and there's an awful lot of things that have to go right for a hit song to happen. It has to be the right artist, it has to be the right song, it has to be the right production. You've got to have the right management, the label has to be excited about it.
Christopher Ward:
There has to be a spot on radio for that song, [inaudible 00:47:37] it has to grow naturally. It's like a viral entity today. We were lucky. It all locked into place for us on that particular song. Yeah, life just got different and it kind of hasn't gone back.
Erica Ehm:
I have to be honest, I might have mentioned this to you. When you were interviewing me for your book, that when I left Much, I resented people who only wanted to talk to me about being that girl on MuchMusic because it was frustrating because I felt like God I'm I do more than just that, I am more than that girl who's on TV.
Erica Ehm:
I kind of wanted to wipe and I tried to wipe MuchMusic for my resume for years and here I am doing this podcast years later. But did you experience that? Was MuchMusic a point of pride for you or did you also try and play it down?
Christopher Ward:
I was always proud of the time that I spent at MuchMusic. But remember, Much didn't define me in the public eye. At least I don't think so, because I'd already been a recording artist, I'd been signed to Warner Brothers. I'd had a band and I toured. I'd worked with Second City. I had a lot of experiences in entertainer before Much so I think I was more fully formed as an entertainer if you like.
Christopher Ward:
That gives you a certain point of security from which to launch your career. Then when Black Velvet happened, it was just so big all at once that it kind of pushed my accomplishments at Much to the side in some ways. People treated it like, "Former VJ now songwriter." It's like as if the day I left Much, I picked up a guitar. Okay.
Erica Ehm:
You're an overnight success, which took 35 years. I had no idea that you wrote songs with Stephen Stone. Stephen Stone being the executive producer of Degrassi. You wrote with him way before. Tell me about that. I didn't even know that he was a songwriter. I thought he was a lawyer.
Christopher Ward:
He's a lawyer. He's a songwriter. Yeah, he's a lot of things. He's exceptionally talented and a brilliant man and then my oldest friend. Yeah. Well, when Stephen and I were in college together, we started writing songs at Trent University. And then we did the thing of [inaudible 00:50:26] with guitars and a VW bus traveling all over Europe for about a year. We wrote a lot of songs and it was really kind of like, going to school for me, because he'd already been writing songs with bands when he was in high school, so he kind of had a leg up on this thing. Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
That's so cool. One of the things that's like, in my research, I found that out, and I was like what? And now here you are, writing... Well, you've written another album and your last one was like in 1987 or something, for you. What are you doing?
Christopher Ward:
It's a few years ago, isn't it? Yeah. Erica, I can't explain the creative impulses that I have. But I do know enough at this point in my life to just follow them and not ask why. Early part of last year, I started writing songs, because normally I would sort of bank song ideas and use them in collaboration with artists and other situations. But in this case, I started writing songs and I went, "Nobody is going to record this." So I just would start finishing the songs and then move on to another one and I realized that I was creating work that was really in my own voice for the first time in decades because I'd been working for so long in the service of helping others find their voice, tell their story, develop their careers.
Christopher Ward:
It was an amazing feeling. I was talking to a friend of mine, named Aaron Chaturbate, who's an exceptionally talented writer/producer. He's like, "Yeah, what are you doing these days?" I'm like, "Well, Aaron. I think I want to make an album." I sort of expected that, "Really?" And he went, "I love it. What can I do?" So immediately I conscripted him and then we built outWard from there. We brought in Luke McMaster, who was a partner of Aaron's who I'd been writing songs with forever.
Christopher Ward:
The three of us talked about how we're going to make this record. And then COVID happened in March. But we kept the idea alive and I kept writing and I just had this creative outburst, this outpouring of songs, such as I hadn't had, I can't even remember the last time. Probably like the 1980s, around the time of writing for Alannah when the songs just flowed out of me and I had to kind of race to the notebook and to the guitar every day to get them out, get them down. I have no idea what anybody's going to think about it. I've got to tell you. But I didn't care. I had to do it. I had to do this work. I'm really proud of what we've done.
Erica Ehm:
Yeah. I mean, you can't write something or not write something because someone may not like it. We learned that on Much, didn't we? It's like, you just have to do what you do and hopefully people will get you.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah. I just don't have any idea how this will be received. Is there a genre for the least anticipated album of the year?
Erica Ehm:
So you have had so many successes in your life and so many achievements. I haven't even mentioned you have two novels that you wrote, you have a podcast that you've been doing for several years now with iHeart Radio called Famous Lost Words. How has your definition of success evolved over the years? It's almost like, as you have a success, that you sort of... The goalpost moves ahead a few steps in a way.
Christopher Ward:
Well, I have to kind of view it from one framework or another. Let's choose songwriting. For so many years, I did not get recognition for the work I did as a songwriter. In order to fortify myself, I had to treat each song as its own accomplishment and if I wrote that song, to the furthest point I could take it, to the best of my abilities and I was proud of it, when I was done, that was success. That was the meaning of success.
Christopher Ward:
When Alannah came along, she came at a time when I'd gone a long time without doing any recording or anything of my own. I hadn't had a band for a while and she was like my biggest champion. She would literally every single day, I swear to God, Erica, she would say to me, "You're going to write me a hit song. I know it." That sounded a little bit like a threat. I didn't mean to sound like that. But it was just more, "Okay. Okay, I got this. Yeah, I got this." And I'd go back to the guitar and every time I came up with some, it could be some little fragment, it could be something that I'd done two years earlier. She'd go, "Hey, remember that little bit you did that went like this?" I'm like, "No." She says, "Oh, yeah. Go back to your notes."
Christopher Ward:
It's like she had this ability to pluck out the very best of what I did and make sure that I stayed on the path with it. As we built her career and her sound and everything else with those songs as the foundation, that was a different kind of success because I knew that what we were doing was good and that's why I stayed at it for as long. It took us like seven years to get her a record deal. But we stayed at it for that length of time.
Erica Ehm:
Seven years?
Christopher Ward:
Yeah. So I know about waiting and I know about letting things kind of bubble under and percolate for a while before they take form. It's the same now. It's like, my record hasn't come out yet this new one. But it's already a success to me.
Erica Ehm:
Why?
Christopher Ward:
Because I did what I wanted to do. I said what I wanted to say and I did it in the most eloquent terms that I am capable of.
Erica Ehm:
Okay. I'm going to turn the tables.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
We all, every single person who I talk to in our sort of gang of people who worked at Much have had our fair share of disappointments or failures, call them whatever you want. You could tell me what some of yours have been or you don't have to. But what I want to know most importantly, is how do you deal with it?
Christopher Ward:
Don't put all your eggs in one basket, I guess. Although I suppose I did that with Alannah. When I was at Much, I literally took everything that I made at Much and imported it to her career. I guess I have to take those words back and change my answer.
Erica Ehm:
And also, that was not a failure.
Christopher Ward:
No, it wasn't. But at the time, I'm talking about the principle of putting everything in one basket. For example, I was working with Diana Ross and what should have been just an unbelievable opportunity. Her business manager was my business manager at the time and he just one day called me up and said, "Hey, do you want to meet Diana?" I'm like, "Ross?" He's like, "Yeah." I knew who he met. So he said, "Well, I'm going to put it together." That day, I was at the gym and my then wife called me up at the gym and went, "Diana Ross just called." I'm like, "What?" I had to go over to her place and... Do you want to hear this story? This is pretty wacky.
Erica Ehm:
Of course I do.
Christopher Ward:
I get there. And I'm thinking there's going to be this coterie of handlers and followers and guards and all this stuff. There's nobody, there's just a gardener. He opens the door and she's up in the next level. And she leans over, she goes, "Hi, come on up." I'm like, "Okay." And at the door, she's got three little backpacks that she prepared for her children then, because they were going to camp that day. It was just not what I thought... I was expecting the diva of all time and that wasn't it.
Christopher Ward:
I sat down and I was having this really nice conversation with her and she was talking about what she wanted to do and the music that she was loving and all the things you kind of do to kind of sort where that artist is going to go next. And then she said, "Oh, do you have anything to play for me?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah, sure. I brought a couple of songs along." She said, "Maybe you could just go pop it in the player over there." And there's this wall of equipment. I am not technologically inclined, so I'm starting to sweat.
Christopher Ward:
So I get over there and I'm just looking at all these things, trying to figure out where to put this disc and she started sort of chirping away in the background at me. And so finally, I'm like, I think I found the machine. It's like the mother machine where all the sound's going to come from. I'm down on my knees and I get the disc in but then there's no sound. There's no audio happening. The song's playing and I'm just thinking [inaudible 01:00:01]. This is not happening. I'm pushing every button and saying, and next thing you know, she's on her knees beside me right and she's pushing all the buttons that I'm pushing.
Christopher Ward:
She's got... She was in her sweats and stuff, but she still had to do, the Ross do, what's happening like full on. It was pressed into the side of my head because she was like leaning down with me looking at this is here. And I had one of those moments when you leave your body, and you go up above your body and you look down and go, "Okay, there I am. I'm on my knees in Diana Ross's house trying to get her stereo to work and that's the Ross do pressing into the side of my head. Okay, okay. Get a hold of yourself."
Christopher Ward:
I finally got the thing to work. I played her the song and she loved them. So I was so relieved and she wanted to write songs together. So we started working together. And we wrote like five songs together. She was really excited about making this album and Motown we're going to give her this huge budget. It was going to be her comeback record and all of this. For me, it was the thrill of working with one of the voices of my childhood and with somebody I just respect so hugely, the opportunity was just magnificent, matching up the hill type of stuff.
Christopher Ward:
And then, right at the end, right before the record came out, she just totally changed streams and then started on a Supremes reunion thing, which eventually became this massive tour. But then that didn't go well for her either, because they charged too Much money and she didn't hire some of the original Supremes. And anyway, that's another story. But as a result, Motown then lost interest, because she lost interest and the whole thing just... I just watched it kind of go up in smoke, and it was just like-
Erica Ehm:
How do you deal with it? In those shittier times?
Christopher Ward:
Well, I got some great stories out of it.
Erica Ehm:
You certainly do.
Christopher Ward:
That's all you can ask.
Erica Ehm:
Sure. Okay.
Christopher Ward:
Seriously.
Erica Ehm:
Last question.
Christopher Ward:
Yeah.
Erica Ehm:
You have done a lot. When I say done, a lot of you've created a lot, you've experienced a lot you've been in many interesting places. You are having quite an, what's the word, a life that many would like to emulate. What are you most proud of?
Christopher Ward:
I think I'm proud of the fact that I'm able to be creative every day. It's a mantra for me. It's a mission statement, whatever you want to call it and I've stuck to it. I just try to do something original however small every day. Whether I'm just messing around and processing photographs or whether I'm writing poems, or whether I'm working on a guitar riff or just anything at all, just to try to create something that wasn't there yesterday, something different, something new. Maybe it'll be usable, maybe it won't. It kind of doesn't matter. I think that's the answer.
Erica Ehm:
I get that. I relate to that big time. I love making something from nothing and I don't... They're different than what you make, but it's the art of creating that really lights me up for sure. Christopher, a lot of people... Actually one person, Mike and Oakville, he asked, "Who is going to interview you, Erica for this podcast series?" And I was like, "No one," because it's my show and I don't need to be interviewed. But then I thought it would be fun to ask each person who I'm interviewing, who obviously is a professional in the business to ask me just one question. Is there a burning question Christopher Ward that you would like to know or that you think the listeners might want to know about me?
Christopher Ward:
I was interested and almost saddened a little bit when you said earlier in our interview that as you left Much, you wanted to obliterate that from your resume. You had your reasons, and I understand what they are. But I'm wondering, with hindsight, what's the most important thing that you took away from that gig?
Erica Ehm:
Well, I think it is that I'm a superwoman, that I am able to go through the fire and survive and that I'm capable of more than I ever thought and that I am able to parlay many things into many more opportunities. Also, that I asked amazing feminist questions to so many people. I was the same then as I am now and it showed up when I look back at a lot of my interviews. I pat myself on the back and I go, good girl, you ask the right questions.
Christopher Ward:
Nice.
Erica Ehm:
There you go. Yeah. Thank you, Christopher. How nice. Thank you so Much for answering all my questions and sharing all your stories with me. I got to know you just that Much more. And for those of you who are still listening to our conversation, number one, if you haven't picked up Christopher's book, which came out, I think, in 2016, Is This Live, it is such a fantastic read.
Erica Ehm:
It really takes you on the journey of the evolution of MuchMusic from so many different perspectives and you wrote it with such tenderness. I don't know if the readers or listeners will weep, but it certainly made me cry. Your podcast is on iHeartRadio and your album is coming out when?
Christopher Ward:
I don't have a release date. I literally just finished it, but I would say in the early spring.
Erica Ehm:
One of the things that that you mentioned when I talked about, you spoke about earlier also was that all of us who worked at MuchMusic failed publicly over and over again, because we were on MuchMusic live TV making mistakes and people forgave us. I hope that for those people who are listening, if you make a mistake, to just own it, have a laugh, and move on.
Erica Ehm:
So thanks again, Christopher. For those of you who are listening and want to participate in the show, we actually set up a phone line where you can call in and leave a message. The number is 833-972-7272. I'll give you that number again and you can call in and you could maybe share an anecdote that you remember from MuchMusic. If there's somebody that was on the air at Much that you would like to see me interview, you could definitely suggest someone. If you have questions that you would like me to ask anyone who has been on the air Much or/and feedback on the show. Are you liking it? Are you not liking it? What could I do to improve?
Erica Ehm:
Here's the number again 833-972-7272. Thanks again to Christopher Ward for such a great conversation and I hopefully will see you all next week with another episode of Reinvention of the VJ. Here's to living a life filled with music, meaning and many reinventions.
Speaker 4:
Thanks for listening, follow Eric Ehm's Reinvention of the VJ podcast. Subscribe and follow more episodes. Click to reinventionofthevj.com. Podcast produced in collaboration with Steve Anthony Productions. Editing and coordination, [inaudible 01:08:26] Communications, Inc. Copyright 2020.