Kenny MacLean; He found success in Platinum Blonde and then steadily built a solo career
Hyfler/Rosner
He found success in Platinum Blonde and then steadily built
a solo career
Guitarist from Scotland got his start in a Glasgow talent
contest and joined the Toronto group for a career 'that most
young bands only dream about.' When times were slow, he went
back to cutting hair
JEANIE MACFARLANE
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 17, 2008
As bassist for the mid-eighties band Platinum Blonde, Kenny
MacLean was among the first Canadian musicians to connect
with fans using a seductive new medium called video. With
their heartthrob looks and chart-friendly sound, he and his
band mates were seen frequently on then newly launched
MuchMusic.
Once Canadian music fans could see as well as hear their
favourite bands - the early crop of video stars also
included Bryan Adams, Corey Hart, Honeymoon Suite and
Loverboy - new artists could become instantly recognizable.
With videos nurturing the fan base, "a national star can now
be created in as little as a year," wrote The Globe's Liam
Lacey in 1985.
By that summer, MuchMusic was about to mark its one-year
anniversary. Mr. MacLean had just joined Platinum Blonde for
what became its most successful album, Alien Shores, which
went quadruple-platinum (400,000 in sales.) Crying Over You,
one of three singles from the album, hit No. 1 on the
Canadian music charts and would win a Gemini Award for best
video that year. Meanwhile, Platinum Blonde went on a
36-city Canadian tour and played to wildly enthusiastic
fans.
One Toronto-area stop on that tour became the sort of show
"that most young bands only dream about," Mr. Lacey noted in
a review. Some 12,000 concert-goers, mainly young and
female, went wild and tried to rush the stage.
"The fan phenomenon is as genuine as such things can be,"
Mr. Lacey wrote. "No record company could create a reaction
like this."
Kenny MacLean grew up in Glasgow, where his father,
Alastair, was a police officer who moonlighted as a singer
of traditional Scottish songs. His mother, Margaret, worked
in fashion and appliance shops. Young Kenny was the third of
four children who, after their parents divorced, relocated
with their mother to Malaysia. Their mother had married a
Royal Navy submariner, and they lived there for three years,
followed by a brief period in Singapore.
When he was 11, Kenny switched his boyhood passions from
soccer to music, and got a guitar. The following Christmas,
he sweetly campaigned for an electric guitar, recalled his
brother Donald. His reluctant mother bought the thing, only
to learn that there was something the budding musician
hadn't mentioned.
"You see," Donald said, "my mother thought that you just
plug it into the wall socket like a kettle and it should
work."
What it needed was an amplifier. "He got his amp; it cost
four times more than the guitar. Kenny used all his charm to
get it but he was placed on notice [that] if he failed to
make it work ... he would be wearing it."
By 16, Kenny and his family had returned to Scotland. It was
time, he figured, to leave school and he followed another
piece of his mother's advice: get a trade in case music
failed to pay the bills. He chose hairdressing. "When he
serenaded the female customers," Donald noted, "he got a
bigger tip."
Meanwhile, he kept polishing his musical talents, taking
first prize in a major Glasgow talent contest when he was
17, but had plans to leave for Canada. As a boy, he had
visited relatives in Toronto and he wanted to go back. A
week after his talent-show triumph (the runner-up was singer
Sheena Easton, who later found fame with the hit single
Morning Train and the James Bond movie theme, For Your Eyes
Only), he was on his way.
He landed his first gig two weeks after his arrival. (His
mother and siblings were to follow him to Canada, Donald
said, a few at a time - "in dribs and drabs.") He became
part of Toronto's late-seventies punk-rock scene, playing
guitar and synthesizers with The Suspects. The group soon
changed its name to The Deserters, adopted a more New Wave
sound, recorded an album in 1981 and toured North America
and Britain.
Toronto lawyer Greg Stephens, who played with The Deserters,
said that the first thing that struck him about Mr. MacLean
was his outlook. "Rather than being competitive, as the
bands were back then, and vying for position ... he was very
gracious and very warm."
After The Deserters drifted apart, Mr. MacLean joined
Platinum Blonde - lead singer Mark Holmes, guitarist Sergio
Galli and drummer Chris Steffler. Perhaps encouraged by the
new arrival in their lineup, they soon sported what was to
become their trademark bleached and teased look. "No one
could blow-dry the Blondes' hair the way Kenny did,"
recalled Donald.
In July, 1985, the group hit the big time with Alien Shores.
It impressed everyone, including Mr. Lacey.
"This second album from the bestselling brat band is a
marked improvement from last year's monstrously successful
debut album: The choruses hook, and the rhythm section has
some snap," he wrote in The Globe. "If you can get around
Mark Holmes's petulant vocal yawp, and the mismatch of
phrases that pass for lyrics, it's not bad. The addition of
Kenny McLean (from The Deserters, to whom Platinum Blonde
owe other musical debts) seems to have helped considerably
on this well- produced radio fodder.
"Side two, in a similar musical vein, consists of a suite of
songs 'inspired' by Eric von Daniken's bestseller, Chariots
Of The Gods, a book that was unaccountably placed on the
non-fiction shelves, which argues that alien beings may have
built the pyramids. Beam me up, Scottie, and flip the record
over again while you're at it."
All things considered, the band was well on its way. "We'd
gone from clubs to larger clubs to seated venues to arenas
to stadiums," Mr. Holmes said, recalling the band's
progression. "It was pretty overwhelming. ... "We were
always the bad boys, partying and fighting and jet-setting
and doing all the things you want a rock star to be making
news about."
For his part, Mr. MacLean "loved being a part of this great
big mirage," his brother Donald said. And it was fun having
a pop star in the family. "My sisters absolutely loved it
... they couldn't wait to be up there dancing."
In 1987, Platinum Blonde changed direction and adopted a
more soulful, urban sound and a tougher look for their next
album, Contact. "We were really sick of that pretty-boy
image," Mr. MacLean told Canadian Musician magazine that
year, because it was "getting in the way of what we wanted
to do musically."
In an album review, Mr. Lacey noted that the new approach
was "a move calculated to finally break the band in the
United States." The album went platinum, but fans began to
drift away. A few months later, poor ticket sales forced the
band to cancel concerts.
In 1990, Mr. MacLean released his first solo album, which
bore the evocative title of Don't Look Back and won an award
from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers
of Canada. The band, by then known as The Blondes, broke up
a year later.
In 1996, he brought out his second solo album, Clear He also
served as backup for other artists, and played
rock-and-classics gigs with symphonies in Edmonton and
London, Ont. At corporate and charity functions, he
performed a show he had put together called Rock Through the
Ages.
"When the music business was slow," his brother said, "he
would cut hair" in salons in Toronto's Yorkville and
Danforth neighbourhoods.
One of his regular clients over the years was Dave Betts, a
drummer for the rock band Honeymoon Suite. By all accounts,
he loved the social side of the salons. "Your hair would get
dry and he would wet it down again" and keep chatting, Mr.
Betts recalled.
Music, however, was still in the picture. In recent months,
Mr. MacLean recorded a new album called Completely, and had
launched a music production and training program with
several other musicians. He and his former band mates were
planning a Platinum Blonde reunion tour; he was finally
"re-focused," his brother said.
On Nov. 24, he launched his new release at The Mod Club in
Toronto, a venue owned by his friend Mr. Holmes, who joined
him onstage during what was described as an electrifying
performance. Afterward, he went home alone to his Toronto
apartment, where he was later found dead.
KENNY MACLEAN
Kenneth Irving MacLean was born Jan. 9, 1956 in Glasgow,
Scotland. He died Nov. 24, 2008, of a heart attack in
Toronto. He was 52. He is survived by his son, Devlin
Anderson, and by his mother, Margaret MacLean. He also
leaves his brother, Donald, and sisters Morag and Pamela.