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Globe and Mail
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Viletones founder helped kick start a punk rock movement in Toronto
On May 4, 1977, Toronto punk rock pioneers the Viletones played the Colonial Underground, a basement club on Yonge Street. Singer and group founder Steven Leckie had previously typed up a manifesto criticizing the city's rock music elite as being antiquated. 'The war must start,' wrote the 19-year-old who controversially called himself Nazi Dog. 'The new order is the Viletones.' Wearing a sneer, black eyeliner, and gaffer's tape around his bare torso, Mr. Leckie sang Heinrich Himmler Was My Dad, slashed himself with the jagged edge of a broken beer glass and otherwise abandoned all decorum. Fans shouted, 'No more Beatles, no more Stones, we just want the Viletones,' but not everyone was on board. A week later, The Globe and Mail's weekly Fanfare section featured a photo of Mr. Leckie on the cover page accompanied by just two words: 'Ugly music.' Music writer Paul McGrath reported on the concert (which included another punk band, the Poles) with a tone of pearl-clutching and contempt reflected in the over-the-top headline: 'Not them! Not here!' Deeming the bands to be 'unnecessary,' Mr. McGrath described the Viletones as a spectacle, not musicians. 'The music is just background, a foil for a performance that is aesthetically, morally and politically as reactionary as a roller derby match,' he wrote. The Huns, in leather and safety pins, were at the border. It was the band's second ever show, and although the article was decidedly negative, Mr. Leckie saw the coverage as a sign the punk revolution had arrived in Toronto and that the Viletones were at the bleeding edge of the spear. 'We were number one in Toronto,' the singer would later say in Liz Worth's book on the city's punk beginnings, Treat Me Like Dirt. Mr. Leckie died on June 12. Lung cancer diagnosed in 2023 had spread to his liver. He was 67 and had been living with multiple sclerosis. The Torontonian was a leading figure in the city's first-wave punk scene sparked by the arrival of the U.S. stars the Ramones at the New Yorker Theatre in 1976. Bands such as the Viletones, the Diodes, the Mods and Hamilton's Teenage Head were inspired by the landmark concert. 'It was a race for Toronto punk bands to start doing shows,' said Toronto producer/musician and photographer Don Pyle. None of the other acts had a front man as charismatic and dramatic as Mr. Leckie, more an aggressive performance artist than a singer. Appearances by the Viletones suggested danger and incited violence. Mr. Lecke's intense two-chord anthem Screaming Fist was a rally call for an outsiders' community that excited some and frightened others. 'The Viletones pushed boundaries in a way you didn't see the other band's doing, and Steven took things to a whole different level,' Ms. Worth told The Globe. 'Punk was about making people feel uncomfortable. Steven did that, and I think he did it really well.' Juliette Powell, former Miss Canada and MuchMusic host turned tech critic, remembered for challenging biases Holocaust survivor David Schaffer shared his harrowing story in a graphic novel Mr. Leckie was the son of a businessman who seemingly inherited his father's marketing savvy. Founding the Viletones in 1976, he put guitarist Freddie Pompeii, drummer Mike Anderson and bassist Jackie Death in leather jackets emblazoned with the band's name immediately. 'They were putting it out there before they even played a note,' said musician Chris Haight, who replaced Mr. Death after just one show to form the classic, if short-lived, Viletones lineup. 'It created interest.' In 1977, the Viletones released the 7-inch single Screaming Fist, one of the first Canadian punk records. 'They were a perfect band for the burgeoning teenage angst of a 16- to 18-year old, and a great reason to go out on a Monday when you had school the next day,' said Mr. Pyle, who saw the original Viletones more than 70 times as a teenager. 'Screaming Fist set the template for the level of intensity outside the U.K. or the United States. There was nothing like the Viletones in Canada." In the summer of 1977, Mr. Leckie arranged a Canadian showcase at New York's punk mecca CBGB. He later explained that the Viletones had an 'American attitude' that set them apart from their Toronto counterparts: 'We didn't think, 'Oh, let's get a gig in Peterborough.'' The CBGB poster advertised a weekend of shows with California rockers the Cramps hosting 'three outrageous punk bands from Toronto, Canada,' the Viletones, the Diodes and Hamilton's Teenage Head. The 'Canadian invasion' drew notice from mainstream media including Variety magazine. Noted rock critic Lester Bangs would later write in The Village Voice that Mr. Leckie 'hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore.' Mr. Leckie was an image-conscious artist who courted the press and was given to self-mythologizing. About the trip to New York, he told one journalist that he had robbed gas stations on the way down to cover expenses. He was committed to chaos, prone to self-sabotage, and burned career bridges with an arsonist's enthusiasm. A typical antic was spending the advance money for a recording session before the band could get into the studio. 'He would do something to create some kind of falling out with the band or create some kind of drama that would cause things to go sideways,' Ms. Worth said. 'I don't know if he was afraid of success or if he was afraid of the vulnerability and the closeness it requires to work with people for a long period of time.' In 1978, Mr. Leckie's bandmates left him to form their own group, the Secrets. 'It just got to a point where it was a constant difficulty to work with the guy,' Mr. Haight said. 'But the three of us also wanted to expand musically. We didn't see ourselves playing Screaming Fist in five years." That same year, the Viletones released the five-song EP Look Back in Anger on its own label, Vile Records. Included was the song Swastika Girl. In a 2010 interview with Vice, Mr. Leckie explained that he was neither antisemitic nor pro-Nazi, and that in an era which saw punk rockers calling themselves Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Rat Scabies, he was simply upping the ante. 'I wanted to say to the '70s as a decade, tease them and say, 'Are you really liberal? Can you really take this?'' Mr. Leckie and a revamped Viletones played the famous Last Pogo concert at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern in 1978. Documented in two films by Colin Brunton, the show was something of a last hurrah for a punk movement that came fast and furious but soon fizzled. 'Steven tried to play hardball with me, asking for money that I didn't have,' Mr. Brunton recalled. 'He got over it, though. His ego would not allow him to not participate in what was being billed as the last punk show.' It was not until 1983 that the Viletones released their first full-length album, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, recorded live at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto. By that time, punk had fallen out of fashion in favour of new wave music. 'Steven planted his flag on that punk music hill and stayed there,' Mr. Brunton said. 'Others left. He did not.' In 1992, with the Viletones no longer active, Mr. Leckie and girlfriend Helene Maksoud opened Fleurs du Mal, a clothing boutique and gallery on Queen Street East named after an 1857 volume of verse by French poet Charles Baudelaire. The Viletones reunited occasionally, performing publicly as late as 2016. On his own, Mr. Leckie dabbled in rockabilly and art rock. He was preoccupied with his legacy from the beginning. 'All I wanted in '77 was to be thought of in the future,' he said in 2010. His wish was realized. The Viletones' Screaming Fist was referenced in William Gibson's dystopic sci-fi novel Neuromancer, and a computer virus was also named after the song. Some will remember Mr. Leckie as a complicated presence with a ferocious front who stirred up good trouble and bad. He frustrated those who believed his full potential wasn't realized. Concert promoter and film presenter Gary Topp knew Mr. Leckie as a teenager who came to see a Christmas afternoon screening of Marcel Carné's 1945 French romantic epic Children of Paradise at the New Yorker. 'He loved that film,' said Mr. Topp. 'He talked about it every time we spoke.' Mr. Topp views Mr. Leckie as a one-of-kind performer who enabled the punk genre in Canada to 'not only survive but grow,' and as an artist was constantly aware of his reputation. 'He wanted to be a rebel, and he wanted to be a legend, and he went full tilt to be that.' He was born at Scarborough General Hospital on Sept. 19, 1957. Though his birth certificate established him as Stephen Mitchell Leckie, he later insisted on the 'Steven' spelling. His father, David Leckie, was an executive with Benson & Hedges cigarettes in Montreal and an event producer in Toronto. His mother, the former Beverly Brewer, was a social worker with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and a pair of Toronto hospitals. He suffered from spinal meningitis at a young age. The divorce of his parents later was another blow for him and his brother and sister. 'We all had a tough time, as kids do, but we stuck together,' said Susan Leckie-Ponting, his sister. As a style-obsessed teen, he was enamored with David Bowie. 'People remember seeing Steven at glam shows with a Diamond Dogs-era haircut before he was in the Viletones,' Mr. Pyle said. 'He was very compelling.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' He began drinking alcohol before he was 15 and later participated in 12-step programs. He did not drink for at least 10 years before he died, according to his sister. Mr. Leckie served time in Mimico Correctional Centre and the Don Jail for petty theft. 'Both times I went to the jail with our father, who sat with him and read from the Bible,' his sister said. After Mr. Leckie's father died of COVID-19 in 2020, he became reclusive. His own health deteriorated. The twice-married musician had no children. He leaves his mother, Beverly McKnight; and siblings, Scott Leckie and Susan Leckie-Ponting. You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here. To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@
The Independent
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Sly Stone, revolutionary funk rock musician, dies at 82
Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and '70s and beyond with such hits as 'Everyday People,' 'Stand!' and 'Family Affair,' died Monday at age 82. Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Stone died in Los Angeles surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments. Formed in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible — riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk. Stone's group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly's brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album 'A Whole New Thing' and earned the title with their breakthrough single, 'Dance to the Music.' It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time. Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. 'Everyday People,' 'I Wanna Take You Higher' and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as 'different strokes for different folks.' The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting No. 1, and three million-selling albums: 'Stand!', 'There's a Riot Goin' On' and 'Greatest Hits.' Sly's influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and the Black-Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots. A dream dies, a career burns away By the early '70s, Stone himself was beginning a descent from which he never recovered, driven by the pressures of fame and the added burden of Black fame. His record company was anxious for more hits, while the Black Panthers were pressing him to drop the white members from his group. After moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 1970, he became increasingly hooked on cocaine and erratic in his behavior. On 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),' Stone had warned: 'Dying young is hard to take/selling out is harder.' Late in 1971, he released 'There's a Riot Going On,' one of the grimmest, most uncompromising records ever to top the album charts. The sound was dense and murky (Sly was among the first musicians to use drum machines), the mood reflective ('Family Affair'), fearful ('Runnin' Away') and despairing: 'Time, they say, is the answer — but I don't believe it,' Sly sings on 'Time.' The fast, funky pace of the original 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' was slowed, stretched and retitled 'Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa.' By the end of the decade, Sly and the Family Stone had broken up and Sly was releasing solo records with such unmet promises as 'Heard You Missed Me, Well I'm Back' and 'Back On the Right Track.' Most of the news he made over the following decades was of drug busts, financial troubles and mishaps on stage. Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll of Fame in 1993 and honored in 2006 at the Grammy Awards, but Sly released just one album after the early '80s, 'I'm Back! Family & Friends,' much of it updated recordings of his old hits. A born musician, a born uniter He was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in Vallejo, California, the second of five children in a close, religious family. Sylvester became 'Sly' by accident, when a teacher mistakenly spelled his name 'Slyvester.' He loved performing so much that his mother alleged he would cry if the congregation in church didn't respond when he sang before it. He was so gifted and ambitious that by age 4 he had sung on stage at a Sam Cooke show and by age 11 had mastered several instruments and recorded a gospel song with his siblings. He was so committed to the races working together that in his teens and early 20s he was playing in local bands that included Black and white members and was becoming known around the Bay Area as a deejay equally willing to play the Beatles and rhythm and blues acts. 'A Whole New Thing' came out in 1967, soon followed by the single 'Dance to the Music,' in which each member was granted a moment of introduction as the song rightly proclaimed a 'brand new beat.' In December 1968, the group appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and performed a medley that included 'Dance to the Music' and 'Everyday People.' Before the set began, Sly turned to the audience and recited a brief passage from his song 'Are You Ready': 'Don't hate the Black, don't hate the white, if you get bitten, just hate the bite.'
