After The Apostles
The Luke Gibson Interview...


By Rick McGrath
The Grape, June 7, 1972

A couple of weeks ago saw a Vancouver concert given by one of the first influential Canadian blues singers, Luke Gibson. Luke was involved in what what was the neophyte Toronto blues band, Luke and the Apostles, and after seeing that group fold just as it was peaking, he moved on to playing rhythm guitar and singing for the Kensington Market, one of the legendary progressive rock groups to emerge from the early Yorkville scene. The Market, and their sister group, The Paupers, shone on brightly for a couple of years, and their eventual demise seemed to parallel the commercialization of the Yorkville flowering. I met Luke before the CKLG FM concert he did, and I found him at first impression to be a rather quiet, introspective personality. He played well over the air, and after that gig we went back to his hotel room for a few beers and a chance to rap.

LUKE & THE APOSTLES...

Rick: Tell me what you remember about the Yorkville scene.

Luke Gibson: It was fantastic. Really, really fuckin' great. It was so new. The clubs were like old houses and all these funky old buildings. It was just shoulder-to-shoulder jammed with kids every night. And this was just when people were just starting to grow their hair long... it was that whole social thing. And everyone was just getting stoned. When we started playing there we were the only band there, and we used to get lineups down the street every night. We used to play there six nights a week during the summer and make five bucks a man.

Rick: Chicago blues?

Luke: Yeah, we were just thumpin' away.

Rick: You were into harp then, not guitar?

Luke: Yeah, I stood up and sang. One thing, though, was the incredible number of bands. That's when Neil Young was hanging out in an orange raincoat sitting on steps playing and Steppenwolf were the Sparrow... and John Lee & The Checkmates became Rhinocerous, and Bruce Palmer... who else? Everybody was there.

Rick: Was the musical community very close?

Luke: Very tight. There used to be a restaurant where we all hung out.

Rick: Toronto is situated in a bowl of major American musical centres. Was there any influence say, from Chicago or Detroit or New York?

Luke: New York was about the most important place.

Rick: Was it the place that Toronto musicians tried to get to?

Luke: Yeah, that was where you went. We went there with Elektra's Paul Rothchild. You won't believe this, like, we went to New York... we didn't have visas, right, so this is our first time, goin' to New York, and we were just freaked right out. And so we're all dressed up in our band, clothes and our fucking hair and everything and we went to the airport and they caught us because we dido't have visas and they wouldn't let us in, if you can imagine the disappointment, we were due in New York the next day... so we went home and dug around and got all our old suits out from our high school days and grease cuts, and wore these old straight suits. And we went back to the airport, and we looked much more bizarre than we had before, and they caught us again. But then eventually they let us go through, so everything was cool.

ON BEING A CANADIAN...

Rick: Have you ever given any thought to the fact that you're a Canadian musician?

Luke: Oh yeah, I always have thought about that. For one thing, I ain't gonna get drafted. Frankly, I hate the States. I know there's great people there and I've got a lot of friends down there, but the overall trip that goes on there, well, I don'1 want to go near it. I've seen enough of that. It's the most violent country I've ever imagined. It's in the air... you can see it. Canada is really clear; like you can see the difference. When you fly up, as soon as you land and you get off the plane, you just see more, because the air's clearer, and I don't mean pollution, I mean vibes. It really is a lot nicer and it's because Canada isn't on a fuckin' power trip. And I think people in Canada are smart enough and aware enough so that they're not going to do that. The only trouble with getting on a heavy nationalistic trip is the waving flags and the power number. It's good to have a fuckin identity.

Rick: What do you think about the fact that Canada's aiding the US in Vietnam and the fact that English soldiers and tanks are training in Alberta?

Luke: I don't go for that... either of them. I think we should be more like Switzerland. I think Switzerland is as neutral as you can get it. I don't think we should endorse any kind of violence.

Rick: You were involved in a trip over an airport...

Luke: There's an area about thirty miles outside of Toronto, and it's a rural area, and what they wanted to do was extradite the whole trip and build a fuckin' airport there. Not only that, but they'll have to build a freeway out to it. I could see why these people wanted to fight it, because 1 wouldn't want an airport built where I live. People should just slow down a bit. We don't need more airports. We don't have to run around that much, we really don't. They're just driven mad by business and making money and everything. And money's all right, and so is business, but it's just such a fucking dominant thing in everybody's head that it's all they're into: it's like a god.

Rick: I suspect that's why you live the way you do...

Luke: That's it... I don't want no part of it. I have to make money and I don't mind making money for what I do – but I don't make it without reason. Because I don't need it. People think they need so many things and they really don't. People are totally dictated by television. How to think, what to wear, what to spray on, what to shove up their ass. If I can see that, and I'm no smarter than anybody else, as far as I can see, I've got the same brain as everybody else, what freaks me out is why can't people see through that bullshit. It's just bullshit and they're just fuckin' themselves up. And they're turned into fuckin' robots.

Rick: Yeah, but all you have to do is look out those windows (we're on the 7th floor of the Mayfair) and those kind of things don't enter into the minds of people caught in this kind of environment.

Luke: I guess some people just go along with it and think that's what's real. Where I live I don't even have electricity. I shut it off. There it's just a different world. It's like in Black Elk Speaks. Did you ever read that?

Rick: No.

Luke: It's narrated by a Sioux holy man and it was written in the 30s or 40s. This guy went up a mountain in Dakota where this Black Elk was living. And some of his friends were there and they were still alive and they had been at Big Horn and Wounded Knee and they told this story in this book.

Rick: I've tried to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but it's pretty heavy, I'd like to read something about the Canadian Indians.

Luke: The only thing around is a pamphlet put out by the Department of Indian Affairs which is a total fuckup history book. It reads like a Grade Seven history book. It goes like: "So-and-so, Lord Uggabugga, introduced flugabug and encouraged the fur trade, blah blah blah and then we shot them all and blugga blugga and then influences of Catholicism and Protestantism and ugga bugga.... But to get back to that book. They were talking about wanting the gold in the Dakota hills. And Black Elk says, "The white man thinks there is some of the yellow metal in our hills. The yellow metal that they worship and it makes them crazy". They really knew.

BACK TO THE MUSIC...

Rick: What differences are there in your style between the old Luke and what you're into now?

Luke: It's easily equated to the difference in miles between Vancouver and Toronto. It's light years away.

Rick: What do you see the two thing representing?

Luke: Well, music is music, for one thing, and the basic feel of playing music is fairly constant. And the things that I leamed in Luke and The Apostles, from playing the black man's music, I've retained. And so that's still in my songs, even if it sounds like country. From the Apostles I went from just basic, well, music, to the Market with things like melody and dissonance and now it's all sort of come home. To the point that I'm just sitting and playing myself.

McGrath: One thing I've noticed is the fact that you tend to express yourself musically and lyrically within a certain set of images and image patterns. Do you pick up on these from your environment?

Luke: Yeah, some songs are about people and some are about being free and some are about being hung up. A lot are about nature.

Rick: Do you think it's a Canadian artist's trip to first think of expressing himself on environmental imagery?

Luke: Probably, yeah, I think that's always been predominant among Canadan writers.

Rick: Do you see it as part of a Canadian artist's search from some kind of seIf identity?

Luke: No, I just think that's what they get off on. That's another thing... people are so afraid of Nature. If it snows or something, people think something is wrong. People are so fucked up.

McGrath: Nature is usually seen by man as something to overcome.

Luke: People think it's something to fight. That's what's wrong. Because they relate so much to fighting: fight, fight, fight.

AND ON TO THE CANADIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY...

Rick: What do you think about the dramatic increase in Canadian music? Do you see it as having much to do with the CRTC? [Canadian Radio and Television Commission

Luke: It seemed to me to be simultaneous. It seemed that everyone was building good recording studios.

Rick: I find that interesting, because Ritchie Yorke was out here and he tended to let everyone believe that it was the CRTC that instigated all the activity.

Luke: Well, Neil Young and David Briggs built Thunder before that, and then they sold it.

Rick: What do you think of the CRTC?

Luke: Well. the whole way the radio stations operate is a weird trip to mc. You know – playlists and dictatorship and that trip. It's a fucking business or 1 don't know what it is. It's strange to me.

Rick: Yeah, stations play songs that are hits but they're hits because they play them.

Luke: I don't understand it. Because all the smaller radio stations are dictated by the larger ones, and who the fuck says what's played? Who is that guy? It's weird.

Rick: It's the old Canadian problem all over again. I can't understand that. Or you get into the trip where local bands who cut records can't get them played on the local rock stations. One of the criticisms I've heard about the CRTC is that they made the rules to get American bands off the air, and now it's replaced with Canadian bands sounding like American bands. Or Canadians on American labels.

Luke: That's why I believe in small companies.