Stan Meissner

Stan Meissner was born in Toronto on August 28, 1956. Years before he made records under his own name he played in The Stingers, a local Toronto band, and by the late 1970s he was recording his songs wherever he could. 'At The Water' was cut in 1979 on eight tracks in engineer D.D. Hill's basement studio, Great Shakes. The keyboard line in its verses was played on the tone of a Korg guitar tuner, triple tracked to sound out the chords. Around the same time Meissner went to Los Angeles to record 'You Make It All So Easy' for the film Middle Age Crazy, produced by Matthew McCauley at Record One with Toto's Jeff Porcaro on drums and David Hungate on bass. Meissner was a huge Toto fan, and he called the session a total gas.

In 1981 Almo Music, the publishing arm of A&M Records, signed him as a staff writer. Fred Mollin became one of his most frequent songwriting collaborators, and the songs began to find other singers. By early 1986 RPM could list Eric Clapton, Eddie Money, Burning Rome and the Toronto band Toronto among the artists who had recorded Meissner material.

Placing songs with other artists went slowly, and his demos turned out to be the real selling point. In 1982 the president of A&M phoned him with a proposal: the label had always been impressed by the sound of his demos, and since the pitching was not setting the world on fire, maybe Meissner should record the songs himself. A&M signed him as an artist in 1983. He spent most of that year layering guitar parts in the sweaty little control room of Wychwood, his home studio, with Paul Daiter on bass, Jorn Andersen on drums and Mollin co-producing. Basic tracks were cut at Manta Sound with engineer John Naslen. With the album nearly done, Meissner stayed awake for three days writing and recording 'Walking In The Dark' so it would be ready before the sessions moved to The Power Station in New York, where Scott Litt mixed the record in November 1983. Dangerous Games came out on A&M in 1984, and the label issued 'I Need Your Love', 'Hide The Night Away' and 'Once Over' as singles.

Meissner recalled writing 'One Chance' in 1985 the first time he hooked a computer up to his synthesizer through MIDI, then calling Mollin to help shape the lyric. A&M released it ahead of his second album, with a video directed by Ron Berti of Total Eclipse that was already drawing heavy support before the single shipped. In the week of March 1, 1986, it was the second most-added single at Canadian radio and entered the RPM 100. Eddie Money recorded the song for Can't Hold Back later that year, with Richard Page, Pat Mastelotto and Steve George of Mr. Mister playing on his version.

Windows To Light followed in the spring of 1986. Meissner produced it himself at Wychwood and played guitars and keyboards, with Peter Cardinali on bass and Mollin as associate producer and lyricist on most of the songs. Rob Yale programmed the Fairlight on 'I Want Everything', 'One Chance' and 'Coming Out Of Nowhere'. Mike Sloski and Kevan McKenzie each drummed on three tracks, and Paul Northfield recorded basic tracks for 'Heart Of Ice', 'Counting On Love' and 'Hold Me' at Le Studio in Morin Heights, where he also mixed the album. Meissner told RPM the new record leaned harder on keyboards, synthesizers and drum machines, and that its production was more textural and lush where Dangerous Games had been power pop. 'I Want Everything' followed 'One Chance' as a single, backed with 'Surrender To You', a song that does not appear on the album. That year Meissner was nominated for the JUNO Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist.

In 1987 he started a third album that was never finished, and 'Renegade' from those sessions stayed in the vaults until 1994. The same year he went looking for a powerful rock voice to sing a demo of 'Wild And Blue'. When he saw Peter Fredette in Kim Mitchell's video for 'All We Are', he knew he had found the singer, and the two kept working together on and off for the next decade. 'The Darkest Side Of The Night', a Meissner and Mollin song, became the title track of Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989. It was part of a growing body of screen work that included songs and source music for Friday The 13th: The Series, Ghoulies 3, My Secret Identity, Forever Knight, Beverly Hills 90210, Life Goes On, Tales From The Crypt and Shining Time Station, and scores for Sweating Bullets (Tropical Heat), A&E's Biography, The Berenstain Bears and Timothy Goes To School. His music for CBC's It's Only Rock And Roll earned him a Gemini Award.

Meissner returned as a recording artist in 1992 with Undertow on Duke Street Records. He wrote or co-wrote all ten songs, with Mollin, Glen Burtnick, Jesse Harms, Billy Sherwood and Carl Dixon among his partners, and he played every instrument and sang every part except a handful of guest spots: Peter Cardinali on bass for four songs, Pat Perez on soprano saxophone for 'River Of Fire', John Panchyshyn on the saxophone solo of 'If It Takes All Night', and backing vocals by Dixon, Terry Crawford and Lori Yates. He recorded and engineered it at Wychwood, John Naslen mixed it at Manta Sound and Doug Sax mastered it in Los Angeles. The album was dedicated to Wendy Vincent. 'River Of Fire' reached No. 25 on the RPM 100, 'It's No Secret' and 'Someone Like You' followed it onto the chart, and 'If It Takes All Night' climbed to No. 2 on RPM's Adult Contemporary chart in 1993. Undertow was also released in Japan in August 1992. In 1993 Ben Orr of The Cars recorded 'River Of Fire' as the title song of a second solo album that was never released.

In 1994 Meissner prepared Dangerous Games for its first CD release, remastering it with George Graves at Lacquer Channel and adding 'You Make It All So Easy', 'At The Water' and 'Renegade'. Going back to the original 24-track master, he restored the breakdown at the end of 'I Need Your Love', where co-producer Mollin can be heard telling Andersen the take was a keeper. He also replaced the LP version of 'Heart Of The Fire', which he had never liked because the mix had almost no bass, with the original demo.

Through all of this, writing for other singers remained the core of his career, with publishing agreements over the years at Almo/Irving, Warner-Chappell, BMG and Rondor/Universal. His songs were recorded by Céline Dion, Rita Coolidge, B.J. Thomas, Ricochet, LeeAnn Womack, Lee Aaron, Darby Mills, Alias and Triumph. With Lara Fabian he wrote 'Leïla', which earned a SOCAN No. 1 Award in 1995, and Fabian's 'Il suffit d'un éclair' brought him a SOCAN airplay award, giving him hits in French as well as English Canada. For the Vancouver trio Farmer's Daughter he co-wrote 'Blue Horizon' and the title song of their 1998 album This Is The Life. 'Blue Horizon' reached No. 6 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in April 1999 and was named Song of the Year by the British Columbia Country Music Association, which gave Meissner its Songwriter of the Year award.

The Metropolis album finally came together after Magnus Söderqvist and Mario Lehmann of the German label MTM Music urged Meissner and Fredette to finish the songs they had been accumulating since 1987. The Power Of The Night was released in 1999, recorded and mixed at Wychwood with Meissner on guitars, keyboards and drums and Fredette on vocals and bass. It included 'The Darkest Side Of The Night'.

From 2000 on, much of Meissner's energy went into representing songwriters. He was president of the Songwriters Association of Canada from 2000 to 2006 and sat on the board of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame over the same years. He became SOCAN's treasurer in 2003 and president of the SOCAN Foundation in 2006, and on June 20, 2012, the SOCAN board elected him its president and chair, succeeding Earl Rosen. He held that post until 2018, then chaired SOCAN's Risk and Audit Committee until 2024. From 2012 to 2024 he chaired the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, presiding over inductions such as Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Beau Dommage and Stéphane Venne at Massey Hall in 2017, and over the same years he sat on the executive committee of CIAM, the international council of music creators. His work as a writer has also brought gold and multi-platinum records and a Canadian Music Publishers Association award for 'One Chance'.

-Robert Williston