3/27/2023 0 Comments Gord downie divorceIt is no exaggeration to say my life was changed by the Hip. “To be taken under the wing of your rock ’n’ roll heroes is to feel an epic quality in your life that I think everyone, especially every teenager, craves. And so many times since, watching them perform outdoor shows, I’ve looked around at the friends, family and fans that they have, and I have pinched myself for how lucky we have all been to see such energy and story pumped through driving rhythms and grooves. He is a generous man,” said Sarah Harmer, who’s been rolling with the Hip since she was a teenager in Kingston just dreaming of forming Weeping Tile. The fact that the Hip - who will release a new album, Man Machine Poem, in June, produced by Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and the Stills’ Dave Hamelin - has always kind of been Canada’s little secret and not a monster global success story has made the news of Downie’s illness hit that much harder, he added. “You don’t know how to come to grips with it because the Hip has always been that kind of band where you’re, like, ‘Well, there’s always gonna be another show, there’s always going to be another tour.’ They’ve been putting out records for so long we can’t actually imagine them stopping playing,” said author Joshua Kloke, whose 2013 memoir Escape Is at Hand is all about his lifelong Tragically Hip fandom. This gives him “a significantly higher chance of long-term survival,” said Perry, but “unfortunately, one day it will come back.” There is no chance of a full recovery. The 52-year-old Downie has been cleared to tour by his physicians the tumour, found in his left temporal lobe, has been greatly reduced in size through radiation and chemotherapy since it was first diagnosed in December. Gord absolutely doesn’t want to go out there unless he can really do his thing and so, I mean, their headspace, his headspace, is ‘We want to blow people’s minds.’” “The question was: ‘Can we do this?’ and ‘Can we do it to the level that (we want)?’ It’s a pro band. “The will to do the tour, that was easy,” co-manager Patrick Sambrook said during a news conference at Sunnybrook Hospital also attended by Downie’s neuro-oncologist, James Perry. And, according to his managers, he fully intends to “blow people’s minds” on this tour, dates for which will be announced later this week. He’s not hosting a pity party he’s hitting the road as he’s always done. It’s heartening to see, too, that even in this awful situation, Downie remains a class act. The thought of a Canada without Downie and the Hip - and, really, there can be no Tragically Hip without Gord Downie - is too much to bear, but at least this way Canada gets to thank the band for the music one last time before the Inconceivable Inevitable. It did, thus, come as some comfort after the shock, sadness and bewilderment afflicting an entire nation’s worth of rock ’n’ roll fans Tuesday to hear that the Tragically Hip will hit the road again this summer in defiance of their lead singer’s terminal brain-cancer diagnosis. Gord Downie is the last human being one expects to go gently into that good night.
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