Joy ride

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This article was published 20/09/2021 (1628 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Highways haven’t been the same since Sept. 20, 1991.

Thirty years ago today, Tom Cochrane, who was born and grew up in the nickel-mining town of Lynn Lake, released Life Is a Highway, a song that pressed his career accelerator to the floor and has remained on cruise ever since.

The song is one of rock ’n’ roll’s enduring anthems and has become the quintessential Manitoba tune.

Think about it. If you want to do anything in this vast province, if you want to live, you’re going to need a highway.

Five years ago, on the song’s 25th anniversary, Cochrane was named to the Order of Manitoba and the province bestowed the words Life Is a Highway to a 322-kilometre stretch of pavement between Thompson and Lynn Lake as an additional honour to him and the song he wrote.

The song is a must whenever and wherever he takes the stage, especially when he returned to the province Aug. 28 for the Unite 150 concert, which, belatedly, celebrated Manitoba’s 150th year in Confederation.

“Manitoba’s always my home,” Cochrane said in an interview prior to the concert. “The road to Lynn Lake out of Thompson is a pretty cool honour. It’s the place that’s really stuck with me. I’m a son of a bush pilot. Northern Manitoba, it’s in my blood.”

Even a pandemic has been unable to silence the song’s endless optimism. The throng of fully vaccinated fans crowded in front of the stage and in the stands at Shaw Park that warm Saturday evening and shouted the famous chorus along with Cochrane like it was 1992, when Life Is a Highway shot up to No. 1 in the Canada and No. 6 in Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in the United States.

The Winnipeg show was one of the first he’d played since going back on tour after COVID-19 forced virtually all performing artists off the stage, and he realized how much of a buzz he gets when performing before a crowd, whether it’s his hits from Red Rider or his solo breakthrough.

“You forget that energy you get back from the audience and how it makes you perform better, how it makes you rise to the occasion,” Cochrane says. “If I had to sit and play that song in a room by myself, I’d be bored out of my mind, but to get in front of an audience and sing it, how do you get bored of a song like that that lights people up the way it does?”

Cochrane wasn’t alone when he recorded the song, but there was no audience and no expectations when the track was created. Life Is a Highway wasn’t even its original title when he walked into Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tenn., along with another Manitoban, Ken (Spider) Sinnaeve, whose bass helps drives the hit.

Sinnaeve is one of the founders of Streetheart, but also played in Cochrane’s band for 15 years starting in 1985. Even though he was on the Red Rider album Boy Inside the Man and other Cochrane albums, he says it was never a guarantee he would be chosen for recording dates.

He’s glad he was in on this one. A who’s who of performers have recorded at Ardent Studios — “from Al Green to ZZ Top,” Sinnaeve says — and Ardent’s magic rubbed off on Cochrane and the band that day too.

“I remember seeing Booker T. Jones’ Hammond organ in the corner and I knew I was in a special place,” Sinnaeve says. “The song was originally called Love Is a Highway but I think changing that one word put it in the direction to be a hit.”

He says he was intimidated at first because the drummer on the song, Mickey Curry, was so well regarded among rock musicians, but it wound up one of his most enjoyable sessions. The band recorded several takes but it was the first try that became the Life Is a Highway the world has come to know so well.

“We all felt really good about the song and knew it had something unique, especially when we heard the playbacks. Mickey had such a great groove and helped me put some Memphis funk into the bassline,” Sinnaeve says.

He’s played the song with Cochrane countless times on the road, yet it keeps bringing back fond memories when he hears it.

“The song is a metaphor for life and I think its positive and timeless message has made it universally appealing to so many folks,” he says. “Plus it just feels great! You can’t help dancing to it. It is so much fun to play as a bassist. To have been a part of that song and to hear it on the radio is the coolest thing! It always puts a smile on my face.”

The song tags along with Cochrane like the most loyal, lovable pet — and it draws a crowd like one too. It landed him appearances on the talk-show circuit and he remembers how hosts including Jay Leno and David Letterman took to it because they are car aficionados.

Letterman especially had fun with the song’s title, especially in the days leading up to Cochrane’s appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in May 1992.

“For about a month, he’d look over to (bandleader) Paul Shaffer and say, ‘Paul, life’s a highway isn’t it?’ and Paul (would say), ‘It certainly is Dave.’ It was a running joke for about a month, so it built a bit of a fever pitch,” Cochrane says.

The song perks up even the most banal moments, such as enduring a flight to the next gig. Cochrane remembers being on a plane when the members of a volleyball team, one by one, came to meet him because Life Is a Highway was their theme song.

“A lot of times, that song’s a snapshot of that period of their life. It’s a big part of their memories for them. To me, it’s a real trust to have played a part in people’s lives through the songs and so I try not to forget that,” Cochrane says.

“Not bad for a guy that’s kind of a miserable SOB from time to time to write one of the happier songs ever written out there.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall