Memories Die Hard, Love Dies Harder Still: Q and A with Dan Hill

Memories Die Hard, Love Dies Harder Still: Q and A with Dan Hill

“Memories Die Hard, Love Dies Harder Still” – a lyric from the song “I Am My Father’s Child”. I had the pleasure of discussing with Dan Hill his memoirs “I Am My Father’s Child.” Photographer Barry Shainbaum captured the exchange as Dan entertained us with his music and enlightened us with the insights he had gained spanning from his early life, to the “Sometimes When We Touch” years and then his reinvention as a songwriter and author.

Martin C. Winer:Your book tells of your complicated relationship with your father, the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Are you politically active in the realm of human rights and social justice?

Dan Hill: Living in my parents’ house, it was impossible to avoid the subject of social justice. However as young men often do, I tended to move away from my father’s direction to find my own – my music. Only later through all my various projects have I come to be a de-facto scholar in Black History. For example, I wrote two songs for Joe Sealy’s “Africville Suite” reflecting on the life and times in Canada’s first Black community in Canada.

I also co wrote ‘The Railway Porter Song’ which celebrates the plight of Black railway porters working on the railway in the mid 20th century. This was a highly esteemed job for a Black man back then and relatively well paying. Oscar Peterson and Joe Sealy’s fathers were both railway porters. So in a sense, the song is a celebration of this one of the few job opportunities open to Black men in mid 20th century Canada.

Martin C. Winer: I think the thesis for your book can be found in this excerpt:

“[We were] outsiders: wary of the world hovering just beyond our doorstep. … To survive in such a world … you had to embrace cunning and gamesmanship … while always remaining on the highest alert. [If you failed] the world [would] reach in and rip you apart from the inside.”

This sense of constant threat led your father to ‘hyper-succeed’. Have you arrived at a more measured definition of success?

Dan Hill: Human Connection. The most important success in life is to achieve human connection such as the connections I have with family, friends, fellow songwriters and performers. I find I can keep on an even keel if I have 3 things daily. First exercise on daily basis. Next creative output be it writing or song writing or performing. Finally some measure of human connection. If you can have these three things on a daily basis, then that is to have success.

Martin C. Winer: Now a father yourself, have you taken any special steps to ensure that your son is not pushed to hyper-succeed?

Dan Hill: Bev [,my wife,] and I have been very careful not to pressure David to succeed. David has chosen to be a writer but we’ve made clear that he doesn’t have to be a ‘Hemingway’ to earn our love. Our love is unconditional and not contingent upon his success. Having said all that, he lives in a driven household with my wife being a lawyer and I frequently eating dinner with stacks of music or manuscripts in my hands. It’s difficult not to inhale the driven lifestyle in our house, so we’ve had to be extra clear in our message that he needn’t earn our love in any way.

Martin C. Winer: Your songs and lyrics have always been very honest, but I think over the years, especially with the song “I Am My Father’s Son” you have more truth to share?

Dan Hill: I find it interesting that songwriting can occur at any age, but you typically need to break into the scene when you are young. I had my first hit by age 23; Dylan, Lennon, and so many others all started out young. But as I’ve grown as a person and accumulated life experience I find that being a songwriter is more like being a therapist. You have to learn to channel other peoples thoughts and emotions through you. I have never personally experienced the terrible pain of cancer, yet I’m just about to perform a song Paul Quarrington and I wrote together before he passed away from lung cancer. I think the key to writing meaningful songs is empathy.

Martin C. Winer: The acknowledgments section notes that the manuscript for this book was some 800 pages long. Editing can be a painful process, especially with this being the story of your life. Where their any treasured stories that needed to be cut?

Dan Hill: I think there is an entire book to be written about the Don Mills community that I grew up in. I was exposed to some very talented and remarkable people. Take for example the Matthew McCauley. Now here was a kid in the 60’s with a recording studio in his basement. He even had a synthesizer long before anyone knew what a synthesizer was. Not only that, his grandfather Leslie McFarlane wrote some of the Hardy Boys books. I mean these are some pretty remarkable people. Then there was Paul Quarrington who went on to be a notable musician and a highly acclaimed writer.

My book mentions that we fought with our gifts and not with our fists. It was a unique community where losing an argument was much more devastating than losing a fight. Don Mills was, on the surface, the suburbs of suburbs, and very conservative at that. But, if you scratched beneath the surface all manner of dynamic and talented people emerged.

Martin C. Winer: Were there any things you were prevented from saying?

Dan Hill: Regrettably we live in a very litigious society. So my book, like most others, is passed in front of a string of lawyers who remove anything that could pose a legal problem. I remember that they told me that I couldn’t name the teacher nor the school where I was told as a student to clean my nails to get the n—er out of them. The lawyers said I could get sued. I could get sued? I asked them. Shouldn’t I be suing the school? Just the same, the story wasn’t hurt by leaving out the names.

Martin C. Winer: Your father’s ‘conversion’ to atheism occurred during his army years. For so many African Americans the pain of slavery served only to draw them closer to God and religion. In this case, the racist regimen of the US army drove your father away from religion. Can you offer any insight here?

Dan Hill: Human connection is one of the key components of life. In the US army my father was socially isolated being surrounded by the racist (self hating) Blacks or the sharecroppers of the South who were familiar to such treatment. My father was in the rare 1/10th of educated Black men and couldn’t find a community to support him through his experiences. Had their been a social group in which he found comfort and that group was church attending, it’s quite possible that there may have been a different outcome.

Martin C. Winer: Your father’s father was a minister?

Dan Hill: Yes, a methodist minister.

Martin C. Winer: One might think that this would give him a solid foundation in religion which he would use to carry himself through these times.

Dan Hill: This is yet another example of a son rebelling against the model set by his father. If rebellion doesn’t apply to all young males, it certainly applies to Hill sons. Although I’ll say this, my rebellion was ‘within the rules’. I didn’t have the daring of my father who was in a group called the Red Wine Boys because they drank so heavily. My father’s rebellious ways caused him to lose his job which then led him to be drafted. My rebellion was channeled into my music.

Martin C. Winer: That you and your father both had rebellious early years, and only settled down when you both found the right woman: are you aware of the similarities?

Dan Hill: Our lives are eerily similar and it was only through the writing of this book that I became deeply aware of them. During the writing of this book, I felt my father was still alive. It was only at the gentle prodding of my brother and editor that I was eventually able to let go.

Martin C. Winer: Speaking of finding the ‘right woman’ I would like to read you lyrics from Johnny Mercer’s “When a Woman Loves a Man” (not “When A Man Loves a Woman”) and ask you if this best describes your mother and/or wife?

“Maybe he’s not much / Just another man / Doing what he can / But what does she care / When a woman loves a man? …

She’ll be the first one to praise him when he’s going strong / The last one to blame him when everything’s wrong / It’s such a one sided game that they play / Ah, but women are funny that way.”

Dan Hill: Those lyrics speak of both my mother and my wife.

Martin C. Winer: Specifically the section “just another man / doing what he can” I believe you met your wife during an IRS investigation and a law suit?

Dan Hill: That’s right, and her love and dedication brought me through those terrible times. What’s more, my father was having trouble finishing his PhD thesis and there was my mother, on the phone to professors, proofing and typing his research and encouraging him all the way. My father and I are both very fortunate to have found the women that we did. It wasn’t until we both found them that our lives had found structure and direction.

Martin C. Winer: Your father had an opportunity to return that love when your mother suffered from – what was colloquially called ‘an episode’ in your family – a nervous breakdown. Your book tells of valuable lessons you ended up learning from your mother’s hospitalization.

Dan Hill: Many many lessons. First is the role of a husband, a loving partner, to be there unconditionally and without fail. Despite my father’s busy schedule he would always go to the hospital with flowers, candies, and warm letters. I learned from his example never to abandon those that I care for. Many people might have left my mother for a ‘more stable’ woman. Not my Dad.

Martin C. Winer: Your book mentions that your mothers breakdown helped mould you as an artist and your brother as an author: how so?

Dan Hill: Life is all about what you do with situations. You have very little control over many situations but you can channel and redirect your response to them. My brother and I were both horrified when my mother was hospitalized. We were scared but we channeled that fear into artistic expression. I developed my music and my brother developed his writing.

Martin C. Winer: Speaking of how you react to situations, you mentioned that your songwriting was hampered by your endulging young woman who had suddenly become attracted to your fame. When Cole Porter moved to Hollywood his romantic endeavours (admittedly not with women) increased dramatically, yet his career flourished. Can you explain the discrepancy?

Dan Hill: Being 23 with my first hit, I started touring. And with touring comes the relentless schedule of criss-crossing the country and life on the road. I literally had four hours a week to myself to devote to songwriting. I didn’t put in those hours and competing with the likes of Stevie Wonder, I needed to. Songwriting is a very demanding art and a 23 year old being exposed to fawning fans for the first time, I chose them over my craft.

[Note: Cole Porter was a composer who didn’t need to tour.]

Martin C. Winer: While reading your book a passage of poetry kept coming back to me:

“We shall no cease from our explorations

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

–T.S. Eliot

I see this theme of ‘traveling only discover the same place for the first time’ occur in your relationships, your music and your professional associations. I was wondering if you had any reactions to this passage?

Dan Hill: Yes, unconditional love. Through all my travels, in all the things I’ve done, I’ve come to realize that unconditional love is the at the core of human happiness. In my 20’s I was largely selfish, and also pretty unhappy. Through all that I’ve done, through all that I’ve seen, giving and receiving unconditional love is the only thing that has reliably made me happy.

Originally printed in: www.goodnewstoronto.ca

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