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Edward Bear


Edward Bear - Bearings

Bearings
Capitol - 1969


Michael Panontin
The group responsible for one of the seventies' most saccharine songs, the interminably sappy (though secretly pleasurable) 'Last Song', might have ended up as nothing more than sixties flotsam had it not been for a serendipitous appearance on a local TV program. "We were only discovered and got a music contract with Capitol," explained Edward Bear singer/drummer Larry Evoy, "because Paul White accidentally saw us on a CBC television show...right place, right time, I guess."

Edward Bear - Evoy, along with guitarist Danny Marks and keyboardist Paul Weldon - had been knocking about the Toronto circuit since 1966, where they were the house band for a spell at the Night Owl coffee house in Yorkville. But by the time that White caught them on TV, the trio had forged a reputation for pounding out heavily amped blues rock. "Paul came from a jazz background, and we all loved all kinds of stuff," Marks told CM, "but for my part as a nineteen-year-old blues guitarist, I wanted that sound front and centre in the mix."

By August 1969, Edward Bear found themselves sharing the stage with the mother of all blues-rockers, Led Zeppelin, an almost meteoric rise but one that Marks also attributed to cultural shifts at the time. "Two years ago, our music was too complicated," he told RPM magazine. "Today groups have changed, audiences matured."

Still, having White in their corner hardly hurt their cause. The A&R rep who scooped the Beatles, getting their records issued up here in Canada months before they came out south of the border, was nothing if not persistent. "Paul put his faith in us and enlisted [writer] Ritchie Yorke and [producer] Terry Brown to further the cause," he remembers. "Yorke nagged John Lennon so insistently that the former Beatle finally demanded, 'Who the hell is Edward Bear?'. Ritchie got his quote, and in a strange turn many years later Quentin Tarrantino declared, 'Edward Bear is Canada's Beatles'."

Bearings was Edward Bear's first LP. It was recorded at Toronto's Eastern Sound with the talented Brown at the controls. (Marks: "Terry brought with him a kind of George Martin cool and experience from his work in the UK.") It was also one of the first Canadian rock records for Capitol Canada, who at the time were starting to distance themselves from their more cautious US parent.

Capitol allowed the group to flex their muscle in the studio, so by the time Bearings came out, in November '69, it was pretty well standard issue cool with plenty of au courant heavy rock riffs. This is especially evident on side two, which featured some furious organ and guitar workouts ('Toe Jam', 'Mind Police'), late-sixties popsike (the catchy 'Sinking Ship') and more straight-up blues (their solid cover of Memphis Slim's 'Everyday I Have the Blues').

In other words, the album was a far cry from the teen-angst AM fare the group would later become famous for. It was also, as Marks points out, groundbreaking in other ways. "Bearings," he notes, "was the best selling of any Canadian rock band to date, and it had the most lavish packaging, the first gatefold cover."

But for all the leaden licks, it was the whimsical warmth of 'You, Me and Mexico' that managed to gain some traction on the charts, climbing as high as #3 nationally. That record may have brought in the bucks, but it would also steer them down that dreaded road of adult-contemporary radio. Edward Bear would go on to chart three more top-ten records in as many years, including a #1 slot for 'Last Song'. For Marks, though, whose true love was playing the blues, it was a red line crossed, and the talented guitarist left Edward Bear for good after their 1970 follow-up, Eclipse.
         
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