Terry Watkinson, Renaissance man and uncommon rocker, died of natural causes peacefully in his sleep at 85.Courtesy of family
When Terry Watkinson joined the nascent Toronto rock band Max Webster in early 1974, the group gained a visual artist as well as a keyboardist. The 33-year-old musician and architecture student at the University of Toronto took care of the quartet’s early promotional material and airbrushed the former keyboardist out of a band photo and drew himself in.
New to the picture, the Thunder Bay native quickly established himself as the band’s secret ingredient by adding a cinematic panache and glassy sound to the group’s quirky, progressive rock ‘n’ roll approach. Guitarist Kim Mitchell was the songwriting front man who sang most of the material, but Mr. Watkinson would go on to write and sing Max Webster’s biggest hit, 1979’s radio-friendly Let Go The Line.
He also wrote and lent lead vocals to Rain Child and Charmonium, and penned Blowin’ The Blues Away, Let Your Man Fly and Astonish Me.
The band, which headlined arenas in Canada and had a pop hit in the U.K. with 1980s Paradise Skies, never hit paydirt in the United States. Mr. Watkinson was left without a gig when Mr. Mitchell pulled the chute on Max Webster in 1981.
While Mr. Mitchell achieved solo success in the 1980s with hits such as Go for Soda and Patio Lanterns, Mr. Watkinson took stock of his own situation and looked inward − literally so.
He went back to the University of Toronto to study surgical illustration. He would go on to work in the field and teach the subject at the university’s Biomedical Communications program. Later he painted landscapes as an exhibited artist influenced by Group of Seven member A.J. Casson and American artist Maxfield Parrish.
Mr. Watkinson, Renaissance man and uncommon rocker, died of natural causes peacefully in his sleep, according to his family, on Feb. 28. He was 85.
Max Webster toured the world with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame trio Rush. In fact, the two bands were on the road together so much that Max Webster was considered Rush’s “little brother” in Canadian rock circles.
“Not only was Terry a brilliant and generous musician and artist, but an extremely gentle and lovable character,” Rush singer-bassist Geddy Lee said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. “He has left me with many rich and colourful memories of our time spent together in the late 1970s.”
Max Webster cut a curious path through bars, clubs, arenas and high-school gymnasiums in the lava-lamp decade, exciting its fans with aural candy, provocative lyricism and eccentric stage garb. Canadians called the music their own in an age when the country’s music industry was coming of age.
Left to right: Mike Tilka, Kim Mitchell, Terry Watkinson (behind) and Gary McCracken in 1977.Fin Costello/Getty Images
As an impressionable teen growing up in Oshawa, Ont., music promoter Lou Molinaro was affected by Max Webster’s 1977 record High Class in Borrowed Shoes, one of the band’s six albums certified Gold in Canada between 1976 and 1981.
“The album opened up my mind to hard rock with different soundscapes, and Terry’s keyboard playing added an astral edge,” Mr. Molinaro said. “The music was so different than any of their contemporaries. There was a cool factor to saying you were a Max Webster fan and not a Trooper fan.”
On Feb. 16, 1974, at an Ottawa high school, according to Bob Wegner’s book Max Webster: High Class, Mr. Watkinson made his debut with the band. The first number was Frank Zappa’s Peaches en Regalia, but the show was cut short after two songs because Mr. Mitchell was barely able to stand because of illness.
He recovered. The group headlined Maple Leaf Gardens three times and London’s Marquee Club. Their popularity in the U.K. exploded after a performance of Paradise Skies on Top of the Pops in 1979. They mimed the song to a track recorded at London’s Beatles-famous Abbey Road Studios.
Mr. Watkinson was Max Webster’s longest serving member outside of Mr. Mitchell. He left the group in 1980 because of creative tensions. None of his songs were included on set lists when the band supported Rush on a tour that year. “Terry realized something was going south at that point,” Mr. Wegner said.
The keyboardist was brought back by Mr. Mitchell as a salaried employee for another tour with Rush in 1981. Max Webster’s last show, other than reunions, was as opening act for Rush in Memphis, Tenn., on April 16, 1981.
“I remember pulling into that gig and all the guys were sitting on the grass and they looked so despondent,” Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson later recalled. Mr. Mitchell, tired of playing second fiddle to Rush on Anthem Records and frustrated by the group’s stalled momentum, broke up the band.
Mr. Watkinson hooked up with Klaatu in 1982 (and later painted the picture of a pyramid on a mountain top for the band’s 1993 compilation, Peaks). He lived off royalties and formed spinoff bar bands Express-o and Antlers with former Max Webster musicians but soon devoted himself to medical illustration.
“His post-Max Webster [musical] career was clearly not happening,” Mr. Wegner said. “He knew what time it was, so he went back to school.”
Still, he released three solo albums: Teratology (1995), Ask (2015) and Spin Foam (2020).
Members of the band Max Webster on the red carpet during the 2023 Canada’s Walk of Fame ceremony in Toronto.Andrew Lahodynskyj/The Canadian Press
Versatile and a quick learner, Mr. Watkinson learned to play pedal steel guitar in just weeks for a gig with the Neil Young cover band Powderfinger. He also played saxophone and once cut down a tree with a chainsaw for wood to make a kitchen.
He wasn’t a fan of simple music. After a public poll conducted by Toronto’s Luminato Festival determined that Mr. Young’s Helpless was the Great Canadian Tune, Mr. Watkinson penned a sharply disappointed letter to The Globe.
“The great Canadian tune: a three-note melody, with three chords. Chorus lyrics: ‘Helpless, helpless, helpless.’ Now I truly understand what boring wimps we are.”
On one of his own songs, 2015’s saxophone-dappled Answer the Bell, the multicareered 75-year-old expressed his thoughts on rising, falling and the sweet fight of life. “We get old too soon and smart too late, and the road to hell is too damn straight,” he sang in a weathered voice. “So I fall in love, crawl in pain, climb the mountain and slide down again − and answer the bell.”
James Richard Terry Watkinson was born on Sept. 15, 1940, in Fort William, Ont., now known as Thunder Bay. His father, George Watkinson, was an educator who served as principal there and in Iroquois Falls; his mother, Grace Watkinson (née Cox) was a homemaker.
As a boy, he studied classical piano and listened to Fats Domino. He also took up organ and sax. One of his mentors was musician Vern Russell, who would rest his cigarette on either end of the piano while giving lessons. As Mr. Watkinson told the story, the instructor left a burn mark on every piano he played in and around Timmins, Ont.
Upon moving to Toronto at the peak of Beatlemania in 1964, Mr. Watkinson briefly played with Sonny and the Sequins before joining Dee and the Yeomen a year later. They were famous for a second in 1966 with their hit In a Minute or Two.
He then moved onto Winnipeg, where his first project was a short-lived band that did what many young people did in the era to pass the time, “mostly just hanging out and doing acid,” he said in the book Max Webster: High Class.
Back in Toronto by 1973, Mr. Watkinson entered the U of T architecture program and joined the band Magic. The group went “poof” soon enough, but not before Max Webster’s Mr. Mitchell and bassist Mike Tilka saw them play. Mr. Watkinson soon quit school and joined Max Webster.
His signature contribution, Let Go The Line, was recorded for the band’s most popular album, 1979’s A Million Vacations. The lyrics of the album’s Rascal Houdi, written by the band’s non-playing poet and lyricist Pye Dubois, expressed the escapist sentiments of the teenagers who listened to Max Webster (and Rush, April Wine and others of their ilk): “I’m going home, put my headphones on, wave at my dad. … I’m switching out, I’m out to lunch.”
In 2015, Mr. Watkinson celebrated his 75th birthday at a Toronto art show, where he and singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith collaborated on an impromptu performance of Let Go The Line.
“I loved the song from the first time I heard it,” Mr. Sexsmith said. “I found the lyrics to be really thought provoking, and both the melody and the chord changes I felt were uniquely Terry. I can’t think of another Canadian band that was more original than Max Webster.”
Mr. Watkinson’s two marriages, first to Marilyn Watkinson then to Carla Jenson, both ended in divorce. He leaves his siblings, Paul Watkinson, Tom Watkinson, James Watkinson, Jane Watkinson; and children, Heather Hennings, Brenda Watkinson, Myles Watkinson, Chloe Watkinson.
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