TheCycle (Magic Cycle)

Websites:  No
Origin: Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

The Magic Cycle → The Cycle

The story begins in mid-sixties Toronto with a sharp teen R&B/beat outfit called the Canadian Dell-Tones: drummer-writer Paul Clinch, lead guitarist Stan Theriault, and singer-guitarist Al Santalucia. Managed by Paul’s father, Brendan Clinch, they worked high-school gyms, teen clubs, and Yorkville rooms, earning a reputation for tight playing and an unusual emphasis on original tunes. By early 1967—encouraged to step out from covers and commit to their own material—the Dell-Tones re-emerged as The Magic Cycle.

Red Leaf Records issued the first two Magic Cycle singles in 1967, “Let’s Run Away” backed with “Halfway to Heaven,” and “Give Me the Right” backed with “It Was You.” Tuneful and radio-ready, they kept the band visible beyond the GTA. A change in personnel followed: Santalucia departed, while keyboardist Pete Young and guitarist-singer Ken Johnstone came aboard. Late that year the group toughened its sound on Ben McPeek’s GIANT label with the psych-tinted “Doctor Lollipop” backed with “Where Were You When I Needed You,” tracked at Art Snider’s new Sound Canada Studios and giving Paul his first released writer/producer credit.

By the summer of 1969 The Magic Cycle issued their most enduring late-sixties side, “Groovy Things” backed with “It’s a Sunny Day,” through Stan Klees’ Fingerprint imprint via GRT. Initially a regional sleeper around southern Ontario, it became the calling card for a band ready to tighten its name to The Cycle and lean harder into the studio. Around this time the group evolved into a first-call recording unit for producer Greg Hambleton at Sound Canada—cutting uncredited sides for budget LPs, demoing catalog songs, and quietly powering sessions that seeded later projects, including Steel River’s “Ten Pound Note” pipeline and the earliest Gary & Dave recordings.

Reinvention arrived in 1970. Clinch stepped out under the Paul Craig alias with the MOR-leaning “Welcome to My Daydream” backed with “Coat of Colors,” while The Cycle released “Walkin’ Along” backed with “Open Your Eyes” on a revived Tamarac and followed quickly with a self-titled LP (originally floated as Saturday Afternoon Rummage Sale). The album’s centerpiece, “God,” sprawled gloriously for seven minutes—feedback, breaks, and a cautionary lyric about false idols—standing as the band’s boldest studio statement even as sales stayed modest.

In 1971 The Cycle returned with “Wait for the Miracle,” paired with an edited “God,” nudging into the RPM singles chart and drawing enough attention to secure Buddah distribution abroad. A follow-up, “Gimme Some Time” backed with “Sitting Where the Flowers Grow,” kept them on playlists while the musicians doubled as in-demand session players—evidence that, hit or no hit, their parts and arrangements were everywhere.

Guitarist Sebastian Agnello joined in 1972, bringing a sharper, harder edge that cuts through “Coming Back Again” backed with “Hey There, Look at Me.” The band pushed west with touring and chased additional singles such as “All I Really Need Is You” backed with “Looking at Each Other,” but the elusive, across-the-board national breakthrough never quite landed. Still, across every iteration—from Dell-Tones to Magic Cycle to The Cycle—the constants remained: Paul Clinch’s writing and production drive, Stan Theriault’s incisive guitar voice, and a pragmatic embrace of the studio that kept the enterprise moving when charts didn’t.

Today those 45s—especially “Groovy Things”—and the 1970 LP capture a group that evolved with the city around it: original when it could be, union-tight on stage, and quietly essential in the studio. If the big hit never arrived, the body of work—and the fingerprints left on other artists’ records—tell the story of a band that helped make Toronto’s scene run.
-Robert Williston