Four decades after touring Canada with Billy Idol, Platinum Blonde will open for him at Scotiabank Arena on Aug. 9.


By Nick Krewen

Special to the Star

You have your Halley’s Comet. You have your solar eclipses. But an even rarer phenomenon — a national tour pairing two rock acts who played together 40 years ago — will be visible in Toronto when Billy Idol and Platinum Blonde perform at Scotiabank Arena on August 9.

Back in January 1984, when music videos reigned supreme, the sneering, spiky British punk Billy Idol, then riding high on his Rebel Yell tour, invited Toronto’s ascendant glam rockers Platinum Blonde to open for him in Ontario, including a Massey Hall appearance.

Four decades later, with many hits, kilometres and history behind them, the bands began a cross-Canada tour in Vancouver on July 30.

So how does Platinum Blonde bassist and singer Mark Holmes feel about this full circle moment?

“When (promoter) Live Nation talked to me about it, they wanted to hearken back to those times, because we were both fresh and green and it was exciting,” said Holmes, who has piloted the fashionable group since its inception in 1979. “And now, after all this time, we get to do it again. It’s almost like a gift.”

In ‘84, he recalled, “we were really catching on. It was more of a doubleheader (billing). We were both on the rise, pretty much neck and neck.”

He’s not kidding: Canadians quickly took to the Blondes, which in addition to Holmes — a native of Mansfield, England — featured Sergio Galli on guitar and Chris Steffler on drums. Aided by colourful videos and punchy, hook-laden songs such as “Not in Love” and “Doesn’t Really Matter,” they ruled the airwaves.

Their debut album, Standing in the Dark, released in early ‘84, ended up selling several hundred thousand copies. A free concert at Nathan Phillips Square on May 25 of that same year, expected to draw 2,500 people, attracted a crowd estimated at between 25,000 to 40,000, resulting in more than 100 people being treated for various ailments and front-page coverage in the Toronto Star.

Guitarist Kenny MacLean joined the band a year later, in time for their sophomore album, Alien Shores, which yielded the No. 1 single “Crying Over You” and sold more than 500,000 copies.

“We had teenage girls screaming like the Beatles, and every time we stopped a song, we had to cover our ears, they were so loud,” Holmes recalled during a recent interview conducted on his 64th birthday.

“Fans loved us. The industry really hated us. We were rock stars: crazy kids doing crazy stuff, getting drunk and getting into fights.”

They had no handbook, so Holmes and crew played up their celebrity stature.

“You feel like it’s your path,” he said. “Because everything is happening for the first time, you don’t know what’s going to be happening the next time.”

Some misunderstanding

Despite the hysteria, Holmes maintained that Platinum Blonde may have been one of the world’s most misunderstood bands.

“Did anybody know what we were singing about?” he asked rhetorically. “We were singing about fallout from nuclear war. We were singing about acid rain. We were singing about f—ked-up psychological things, like ‘Not in Love,’ which is about denial.

“We weren’t singing, ‘I love you, baby,’ and I’m f—king proud about that. I wanted to be remembered for being socially conscious.”

“Doesn’t Really Matter,” for example, was inspired by the time Holmes was travelling to an airport but didn’t make it because the Irish Republican Army had blown up an entrance to the highway.

“That was our first hit, and all these teenage girls were screaming at us,” he said. “Listen to that first record, it’s dark. ‘Standing in the Dark’ — that’s how I’d like to be remembered.

“Will people remember us that way? No, because people still remember the hair.”

As much as fans may remember those magnificent, massive coifs, they haven’t forgotten the music: Sony Music Canada recently announced that Alien Shores has sold 860,000 units.

Platinum Blonde’s winning streak ended with 1987’s Contact, an album that reimagined the group as a funk band (with new drummer Sascha Tukatsch) — a direction that Holmes conceded may have been a bit premature in the wake of the Alien Shores triumph.

“The ‘80s were a changing, volatile time,” Holmes admitted. “Holy cow: every six months there was a new sound, a new vibe.” When the supergroup Power Station released their debut album with the of-the-moment gated drum sound, Platinum Blonde enlisted their producer Bernard Edwards (Chic) to work on Contact.

“That music was so great and of course we got to play with a real funk-rock legend,” Holmes said.

“But this is what I learned: when you’re in a band, you’ve heard your own songs and played them so much and they (may not even be) released yet, but you find yourself musically moving on to different things.

“You have to slow yourself down. You’ve got to think, ‘If we want to take our fans with us, we’ve got to bring this in a little bit more with our classic sound.’

“During that Contact record, there were a lot of influences, because now, all of a sudden, we’re big stars — big money, everybody’s got things on the line. Contact put wedges between band members.”

Holmes admitted that drugs also played a part in the internal strife.

“It absolutely was in the band,” he said. “It was a coke-fueled industry, and I can say that now without having people say to me, ‘Oh, you’ll never work again.’”

A new beginning

Though they didn’t tour Contact, they regrouped as the Blondes for the album Yeah Yeah Yeah, but after 1989 didn’t play together live for 10 years. They reconvened for the occasional gig between 2000 and 2002, and then Holmes put Platinum Blonde on hold to co-found Toronto’s Mod Club, where he was also known as DJ MRK.

While he was spinning, his old bandmate Kenny MacLean kept in touch.

“He would call me when I had found a lot of success as a DJ and with remixes,” Holmes recalled. “That’s where my life was: I had no time to talk or rehearse with the band. I’m trying to stay atop of the DJ world. You talk about pressure? That’s pressure: always being the guy who is trying to come up with the new thing. It’s an interesting world and I became fully involved in it.

“One day, I just decided to soften up. Kenny had called me every six months to say, ‘Let’s write some songs and do a tour with the band.’ I was leading a double life: my DJ fans didn’t know I was in Platinum Blonde. All they knew was MRK is this big English DJ. They had no clue of any of my past.  

“I didn’t want that knowledge to cross over to a band, because I don’t know what that would have done to my rep. All my fans were in their early 20s.”

But Holmes finally relented and agreed to reunite Platinum Blonde on stage, joining MacLean at the Mod Club during the release party for one of the musician’s solo albums to sing an old hit or two.

“You should have seen his face,” Holmes said. “He was so happy.”

That was on Nov. 22, 2008 — the last time Holmes saw MacLean alive.

“Kenny was so happy, and I was so happy to see him so happy. I was invigorated, and I thought, we’re going to do this! This is going to be awesome! We had the after-party upstairs in what we call the Orange Room and then he went home that night.

“When he was brushing his teeth, it was over.” On Nov. 24, MacLean was found dead of natural causes.

Holmes said he decided to honour MacLean’s memory by reuniting with Sergio Galli and recording 2012’s Now & Never.

“I couldn’t say that was the end,” said Holmes. “We did a record, released it and toured it, and it was a success. Every moment I played, Kenny was with us. It’s still heartbreaking.”

After having his band feted at Canada’s Walk of Fame last September, Holmes — also co-owner of the West End club Jean Darlene Piano Room — said Platinum Blonde is back and prepping new music, some of which will be heard at Scotiabank Arena.

They’re also yearning for another hit.

“When you’re a creative artist and all you do is write and produce, that never goes away,” he said. “Even with Platinum Blonde, we’ll never lose that feeling of wanting to put out another hit — and, who knows, maybe one day you get a solid hit.

In 2010, Platinum Blonde got a boost when Toronto electro act Crystal Castles, with help from the Cure’s Robert Smith, covered “Not in Love.”

“When we released our song ‘Beautiful,’” Holmes said, “we got hits in places we’d never had before. That was in 2012.

“So, it’s always there, if you want it. The key component to being a functioning, creative musician and songwriter is to never ever, under any circumstances, grow up. You grow up, your art is done. It’s over.”