Bob McBride

Bob McBride was the voice that turned Lighthouse from a sprawling concert attraction into a hit machine. In three years at the front of the band he sang 'Hats Off (To the Stranger),' 'One Fine Morning,' 'Take It Slow (Out in the Country),' '1849' and 'Sunny Days,' won a Juno Award of his own, and launched a solo career with a gold album. He could attack a song with real fury and then pull back to a near whisper on the next line, and that range carried across Canadian radio through the early 1970s.

Robert Bruce McBride was born in Toronto and was taking singing lessons as a boy. By the time he reached North Toronto Collegiate Institute he could also handle a guitar, and like many young Toronto musicians of the early sixties he was drawn into the Yorkville scene. After a couple of short-lived groups, he got his real education on the road, spending several years with Ronnie Hawkins. Wanting more from his voice, he went to Los Angeles and studied with Johnny Mathis for about three months. Paul Hoffert later recalled the breathing and vocal-control techniques Mathis taught him, and McBride arrived back in Toronto just as Lighthouse was looking for a new singer.

Lighthouse had been founded in 1969 by drummer Skip Prokop and keyboardist Paul Hoffert, who built a rock rhythm section into a band with jazz horns and classical strings. Three RCA albums with singer Pinky Dauvin had won over critics and festival crowds without producing the radio hit the band wanted. When McBride auditioned in 1970 he was hired on the spot. He was out front when Lighthouse represented Canada at Expo '70 in Osaka, and in August the band played the Isle of Wight Festival on the same bill as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Miles Davis and The Who. On September 20 a free CHUM concert at Toronto City Hall welcomed them home, with Dauvin's new band Mudflat as the opening act.

Producer Jimmy Ienner came aboard, Prokop trimmed the songwriting down to radio length, and the band moved to GRT in Canada and Evolution in the United States. The first single, 'Hats Off (To the Stranger),' which McBride wrote with Prokop and Peter McGraw, reached number 9 in Canada and went gold. 'One Fine Morning' followed in 1971, climbing to number 2 at home and number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. Thoughts of Movin' On came out that December, carrying 'Take It Slow (Out in the Country)' and three more McBride songs: 'I Just Wanna Be Your Friend' and 'Insane,' both written with Prokop, and 'Walk Me Down,' which he wrote alone. In February 1972 the band recorded Lighthouse Live! at Carnegie Hall, and it became the first Canadian album certified platinum in Canada. Sunny Days followed later that year, with its title track reaching number 4 in Canada. Lighthouse toured close to 300 days a year in this stretch, and won the 1972 Juno Award for Outstanding Performance of the Year by a group, the first of three straight group Junos.

In October 1972, while still fronting the band, McBride signed a solo deal with Capitol. Butterfly Days arrived late that year, recorded at Thunder Sound in Toronto with producer Dennis R. Murphy. It traded the horn charts for softer, acoustic pop, with Lighthouse bandmates Ralph Cole and Paul Hoffert sitting in alongside the duo Aarons & Ackley (Chuck Aarons and Jim Ackley). Hoffert co-wrote 'My Beautiful Lady' and Prokop co-wrote 'Back in My Time.' McBride wrote 'Treasure Song' for his daughter Elissa. 'Pretty City Lady' became his biggest solo hit, reaching number 16 in Canada in 1973, and 'Treasure Song' and the title track also charted. The album went gold, and in the spring of 1973 McBride won the Juno for Outstanding Performance of the Year, Male.

By June 1973 he was gone. Prokop and Hoffert announced his permanent departure that month, citing exhaustion, and Billboard reported that Prokop would take over lead vocals. The band's later recollections centre on the Record Plant in New York, where Lighthouse booked sessions for Can You Feel It and McBride never turned up. Prokop and Cole wanted to scrap the sessions, but Ienner insisted they carry on and sing the leads themselves. McBride had been expected to sing 'Pretty Lady'; Prokop sang it instead, and it became a Canadian Top 10 hit. Prokop said years later that McBride "could have done it bigger and better." McBride's song 'Wide-Eyed Lady' still turned up on the 1974 Lighthouse album Good Day.

He went straight back to Thunder Sound and Dennis Murphy for Sea of Dreams, released later in 1973. Aarons & Ackley returned, joined by Gene Martynec and McBride's brother Danny on guitar, and the songs included Doug Rowe's 'Turn Away,' 'Daytime Rider' and 'Mighty Eagle.' 'Do It Right' reached number 48 and earned McBride a BMI Canada Certificate of Honour, but the album sold far below its predecessor and Capitol let him go. In a 1974 Toronto Star photo session he explained that he liked to write perched on the edge of the bathroom sink, because the acoustics were so good in there.

For the next few years McBride played around southern Ontario with a backing band called Magic and built a steady living as a session singer, his voice turning up in commercials across the country. In 1976 the trade papers reported that Blood, Sweat & Tears had approached him to replace David Clayton-Thomas, a story Clayton-Thomas's manager called unfounded.

He returned in March 1978 with Here to Sing on MCA, produced by Jack Richardson at Soundstage Studios. MCA presented him as a clean-cut crooner, and the album leaned on covers, including 'You Send Me,' 'My World Is Empty Without You' and 'Sail On, Sailor,' alongside two of his own, 'Love Is a Four Letter Word' and 'Moonlight Dancer.' The players included Michael and Randy Brecker, Doug Riley, Guido Basso, Lighthouse trombonist Russ Little and brother Danny. RPM ranked him among the best singers in his field, though none of the singles reached the Top 40. Later that year he signed with Aurora Meadows, a Toronto label distributed by London Records, and put together a new band called Expedition. 'Wild Eyes' came out as a single and became a minor hit. On November 18 the band played the RPM industry conference at Toronto's Inn on the Park, where Chris Skene and Rick Capreol recorded the set for the live album Bob McBride. He toured central Canada behind it into the spring of 1979.

By 1980 he had tired of touring and wanted a steadier life. He was hosting and singing nightly at Scotty's Improv, a room downstairs at Toronto's Old Firehall, then home to Second City. With guitarist John Lowry he hoped to build a casual musicians' hangout in the spirit of the old Riverboat in Yorkville. Mike McKenna, Mendelson Joe, Cal Dodd, Peter McGraw and members of Neil Young's band dropped in. He had no record deal, but he was still writing songs and producing music for a friend. Through Tommy Ambrose at Trudell Productions he had become one of the busiest voices in Canadian advertising, singing for Molson, Old Vienna, Yamaha, Suzuki, Cinzano, Colt 45 and Sweet Marie.

McBride had survived a cocaine overdose in 1978, and heroin took hold for more than a decade after it. In September 1982 he rejoined Prokop, Hoffert, Cole and many Lighthouse alumni for four reunion shows over one weekend at Ontario Place, which had opened its stage with Lighthouse ten years earlier. McBride sang a new song, 'Love Is Forever,' which he performed only that weekend and never recorded. The shows drew 33,000 people and were broadcast on CBC, but the musicians went their separate ways afterward. In 1989 McBride joined Prokop, Hoffert and Cole to produce the remixes for the compilation Sunny Days Again. An invitation to play the Calgary Stampede in 1990 got the band talking seriously about a reunion, and in 1992 a ten-piece Lighthouse went back on the road with McBride singing. His performances grew erratic, and before the year was out the band reluctantly let him go. Dan Clancy took over the microphone.

In 1994 McBride was sentenced to 90 days for twice robbing an Ottawa drugstore for morphine, and as part of the sentence he organized two benefit concerts warning about the dangers of drugs. He did eventually beat his addiction, but his health was badly damaged, and he lived with diabetes and hepatitis B. In 1996 he was charged with a jewellery theft dating from 1992; illness delayed the trial, a mistrial was declared in December 1997, and he was due back in court in March 1998. Around the same period he suffered serious head injuries fighting off intruders during a break-in at the suburban home of his parents, Robert and Marjorie McBride. Friends believed the beating hastened his decline. To the end he talked about a comeback.

Bob McBride died of heart failure at North York General Hospital on February 20, 1998. He was 51, and he is buried at Westminster Memorial Park in Toronto. Later in life he was married to Janice Fobert-Seaton, and together they raised a son, Shawn. On October 17, 2022, McBride was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame with Prokop, Hoffert and Cole, with his daughter Lara accepting on his behalf. The four are honoured with a permanent exhibit at the National Music Centre in Calgary, and 'Hats Off (To the Stranger)' is now a SOCAN Classic. His bandmates remember a brilliant singer, a born comedian and a gentle soul.

-Robert Williston