White Heat

White Heat was the name Hypno-Gogo grew into. After moving from Regina to Winnipeg and playing hundreds of shows across Western Canada, singer and guitarist Jim Galloway and keyboard player Wayne Young caught the attention of Toronto management company Chart Toppers, and the band remade itself as a melodic hard rock act. Allen Hunnie joined on guitar, Russ Goozee on bass and Alec Friesen on drums.

Their only album, We Never Heard of You Either, came out on CBS Associated Records in 1989, with Neill Dixon as executive producer and funding from FACTOR and Manitoba’s Cultural Industries Development Office. The band recorded at Metalworks and Phase One in Toronto and at The Broc in New Jersey, and co-produced the record with Mark S. Berry, who mixed it at Atlantic Studios in New York. Berry had engineered Carly Simon’s No Secrets and mixed singles for Billy Idol and David Bowie.

The band wrote nine of the ten songs, most of them with Berry and Steve Rimland. ‘Got To Win Your Love’ began as ‘Come Back (Feels Like I’m Fallin’)’, a song Hypno-Gogo recorded in 1987, reworked for the album and credited to Galloway, Gerald O’Brien, Hunnie, Gary Rottger and Berry. The title track came from American writers Jack Conrad, Jason Blume and Todd Cerney, and Triumph’s Gil Moore produced it and added drums, with Terry Brown mixing and Rick Santers on extra guitars and vocals. Billy Idol bassist Steve Webster co-produced ‘Listen Closely’, with Peter Fredette singing backup. ‘Crazy For You’, written by Galloway, Hunnie, Young and Berry, went to radio as a single, and the title track turned up on the Indie-Can ’89 Sampler alongside Crash Test Dummies and The Watchmen.

CBS led with ‘Rollin’ With The Thunder’, advertising it in RPM in September 1989 as the first track from the coming album. The song entered RPM’s national singles chart in late October and climbed to No. 69 in late November.

Winnipeg photographer Gary Morrison shot the band for the sleeve, and the thank-you list ends with the band’s home town fans. There was no second album. Goozee moved to Toronto in 1990 and became a cinematographer with more than 60 film and television credits. Hunnie built a career in Winnipeg as a mastering and mix engineer, working with Loverboy, Streetheart and Harlequin and serving as a Juno judge. Galloway went home to Saskatchewan, settled in Oxbow, and returned in 2014 with his solo album These Are the Good Times.

-Robert Williston

Musicians
Jim Galloway: lead vocals, guitar
Allen Hunnie: guitar, vocals
Russ Goozee: bass, vocals
Alec Friesen: drums
Wayne Young: keyboards, vocals

Rick Santers: guitars, vocals
Gil Moore: drums
Connie: vocals
Joclyn: vocals
Peter Fredette: vocals