The docuseries The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal won the documentary People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The series, directed by Mike Downie, brother of The Tragically Hip's front man Gord Downie (pictured), is a definitive account of the Canadian group.Supplied
According to the publicity hype, the new four-part docuseries on the Tragically Hip is “warts and all.” True to the claim, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, which premieres Friday on Prime Video, does have blemishes.
The warts are not ungainly. They represent the fairly typical tensions and ego trips of a rock band that lasted more than three decades. The series as a whole is a celebrative, definitive account of a beloved Canadian institution that broke up after lyricist-frontman Gord Downie died of brain cancer seven years ago.
Still, the revelation of quarrels is a surprise development. The quintet, comprised of five close-knit kids from Kingston, was fairly insular during its long run as Can-rock heroes. Inner-band beefs mostly stayed in-house.
“Generally speaking, we were very, very private people,” bassist Gord Sinclair told The Globe and Mail. “We were friends first, and the friendship only became tighter as we travelled and worked together.”
The series, which won the documentary People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, was directed by Mike Downie, the late singer’s older brother. You can’t beat the access or the archival clips – No Dress Rehearsal is a Hip aficionado’s nirvana and a compelling chronicle for most any pop music fan. An exhaustive forthcoming coffee-table book, This is Our Life, fills in any gaps.
While celebrity interviewees gush maple-leafed platitudes – “Gord made it cool to be Canadian,” says Hollywood-based actor Will Arnett – the documentary is often concerned with family, whether it be the musician’s families or the band itself as a familial unit.
“There’s this popular image of the band living like the Monkees, running around on tricycles,” Sinclair said. “It was anything but.”
(The Monkees were a made-for-television pop band in the 1960s known for shenanigans and snappy tunes. The name Tragically Hip came from a comedy video made by the Monkees’ Michael Nesmith.)
Director Downie pulls no punches. Not even executive producer Jake Gold, the band’s original co-manager who was fired in 2003 and rehired in 2020 to look after its ongoing business affairs, is spared. He’s shown on camera reading the poetic dismissal letter he received from the group.
“I’ve seen the documentary a fair number of times, and I’ve watched myself get fired over and over again,” Gold told The Globe. “When we sat the band down to talk about this documentary, they agreed 100 per cent that we would not be making a puff piece.”
The firing of Gold aside, almost all of the conflicts portrayed in the series involve issues between frontman Downie and the rest of the band. In a segment dedicated to the creation of the song Little Bones, the Hip’s first heavy dispute is documented.
Before recording the band’s second full-length album, 1991′s Road Apples, Downie declared that he would only sing his own lyrics from that point forward. Contributing lyricists Sinclair and guitarist Paul Langlois were not happy.
“That was a difficult band meeting,” Sinclair says in the series’ second episode. “Both Paul and I kind of got our wings clipped a little bit in terms of our ability to evolve as songwriters as well.”
Other moments of dissension are threaded throughout the documentary: Downie releasing a solo album out of the blue, Downie bringing in other musicians to expand the band’s musical palette, Downie’s loyalty to producer Bob Rock.
In the mid-1990s, the singer known for his live-wire energy and eclectic physicality significantly toned down his onstage antics when he began performing with an acoustic guitar.
It was a radical, unwelcome change.
“I hated it,” guitarist Rob Baker says in the documentary. “I don’t think anyone really embraced it,” adds drummer Johnny Fay.
When it comes to the making of No Dress Rehearsal, the elephant in the room is that the late Downie isn’t in the room. While the four other band members get their say, obviously Downie does not. The director did what he could to make it a five-way conversation.
“We went through a lot of archives to get Gord’s voice in there,” Downie told the Globe. “We did get him on the record on all these things. You’re getting an inside look at what the tension was.”
Added Gold, “We did the best we could, but that’s the unfortunate part of all of us losing Gord.”
He died on Oct. 17, 2017, at age 53. The band’s farewell Canadian tour and final concert (televised across the country from Kingston) and, of course, his death, were national events of mourning and sombre celebration. All of it is portrayed in the emotional fourth episode.
The documentary served as a kind of collective closure for the surviving band members, according to the filmmakers. “These guys were all grieving for their brother, but they happened to be grieving individually,” Gold said. “That they’re talking about their feelings now is a big part of this film.”
The timing of the interviews, four years after the singer’s death, was key: “It was still recent enough to be emotionally connected to it, but with some clarity,” the director said. “It felt like a real unweighting.”
For the 2021 Juno Awards, Langlois, Baker, Fay and Sinclair were joined by Leslie Feist at Toronto’s Massey Hall for an elegant presentation of the Hip song It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. Though the more or less official party line is that there will never be a full-on Hip revival, the Juno performance offers hope.
“I’ve always been in the ‘never say never’ camp,” Sinclair said. “If someone was interested, it would be great to see how Gord’s lyrics would be interpreted by someone else. And if they needed a bass player, I’d be happy to do it.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that co-manager Allan Gregg had been fired alongside co-manager Jake Gold. It also incorrectly stated the docuseries premieres Saturday. In fact, it premieres Friday.