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 Dan Hill's memoir, "I Am My Father's Son" is in bookstores now. (Handout) |
Dan Hill is fifteen-years-old. The sound of his father's footsteps lumber toward his bedroom. Hill has yet to pay much attention to girls. He's more protective of his guitar than a Playboy magazine. Yet his father insists that he give their family doctor a "specimen" - Hill Sr. needs to be certain his genes will carry on. He flings open the door and commands his son to get started on a sample.
The beginning of Hill's new memoir, "I Am My Father's Son," is as much a compelling scene as it is a testament to the undeniably strange and intimate relationship he had with his father. "He had a pathological need to control everybody, and I had a pathological need to resist his control," says Hill, from his home in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood.
The 54-year-old Toronto songwriter, author and avid runner tells both men's life stories, emphasizing the all-too-common theme of a son's urge to rebel, while wanting nothing more than to make his father proud.
Hill and his father's troubles intensified as the ambitious, and admittedly ego-driven, son embraced the pop star lifestyle in the late '70s, selling out Canadian shows with his lovelorn lyrics and butter smooth voice that had female fans lining up backstage.
"In some cases I was very lucky," he laughs. "I did all sorts of crazy stuff. I embraced the rock and roll cliche, and somehow I came out of it alive."
At the same time, Hill's sociologist father rose to public notoriety, first as the director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and then as Ontario's ombudsman, which Hill says made for a strange dynamic at home. On one hand, Hill Sr. championed for equal opportunity, on the other, he wouldn't support his own son's dreams.
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Hill's book is lined with highlights from the Canadian music industry over the past 30 years - from recording with an unknown Celine Dion, to getting love advice from Gordon Lightfoot - but it also tells of Hill's own pop star rise and fall in a starkly honest way. Canoe.ca chatted with Hill about the music industry, his evolving career, and how he finally found peace with his father.
Q. Why did you write this book?
A. When my father died in 2003, for the first time in my life I couldn't write songs. I realized that the reason I had been writing was not to make money or be a star, but to impress my father. Knowing that I had to do something, I went to the Ontario archives to check out my dad's personal and professional papers. What I found in those archives was so stunning and surprising, I realized I had to write a book about my dad and myself.
Q. Who is this book written for?
A. I think it's written for anyone who's had a fascinating and yet difficult relationship within the confines of their family.
Q. Your father gave his approval pretty sparingly, why do you think that was?
A. My father was raised in the '20s in America during the Depression. The only way to overcome racial prejudice, the only chance you had as a black man in America, was to be really, really educated. So when I, at the age of 14, announced that I was going to quit school and become the next Gordon Lightfoot, he felt that it was his job to do everything he could to disabuse me of my rather irrational dream.
Q. In the book you're pretty open about the pop star lifestyle. Did you have any reservations about being so candid?
A. My first drafts were a little bit safer. Then my brother told me, 'If you're going to write a memoir, then be f***ing brave. Write the f***ing memoir.' I thought it was important to give an honest illustration, to show exactly how weird it can be for a kid that comes out of Don Mills - who was pretty well a virgin until he was 18 - to suddenly be confronted with this unbelievable outpouring of female attention at the age of 21. And then how strange it was for it to just disappear when my songs disappeared from the radio.
Even though my family dynamic may seem unusual, in a lot of ways I was just a regular Don Mills kid. I had a paper route, I barely made it through school, I tried to get girls to dance with me at the dance and usually they said 'no'. Then suddenly from the age of 20 years of age on, I was introduced to this unbelievable world where geniuses reigned supreme.
Q. How did your relationship with your father evolve?
A. My relationship with my father was always in transition, but there was one theme that was always there; the need to control. But something did change in the last five years of his life. As he became weakened by his complications connected to diabetes, he became much more human, much more vulnerable, much more loving.
Q. "Sometimes When We Touch" and "Can't We Try" are songs that pretty much everyone recognizes - what's been the best part of having mega-hits?
A. The best part of these songs is not actually the success or the money, it's that I've been so blessed to be exposed to so many brilliant and interesting people. What fortune I've had to have worked with these people and they have accepted my talent.
Q. Like the scene with Tina Turner, when she mentions "Can't We Try" after her concert...
You mean when I'm in her dressing room? It was amazing to hear her say that my song was on the radio when she broke up with Ike, and that she really related to it. It was a very surreal situation. Then for her to turn around and say, 'How come you never wrote any other songs that good?' I felt so bad. I felt so guilty like I had let her down.
Q. What do you think of the music industry today?
A. There are a lot of great artists out there that I really like. In the '60s there were a lot of disposable groups that were created behind the scenes by geniuses. There are groups like that today, we all know who they are, but there are also people that show astonishing talent. I think Coldplay is an incredible band. I think Lil' Wayne is amazing, I love his stuff. I think Zac Brown is an incredible singer-songwriter.
Q. What are you listening to right now?
A. This is going to sound really old fashioned, but I have a Smokey Robinson album I'm listening to in my car stereo right now and I'm absolutely loving it. And that makes me want to put on Sam Cooke, and I'll go from there to Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. I'm really all over the map. Sometimes I love Kanye West, sometimes I hate him. I think Ne-Yo is legitimately talented - but a little slick. I just go for songs that move me. A good song is a good song. I'm happy to write in any genre so long as it's a good story.