Holly Woods distances herself from Toronto but keeps the name alive (for now)

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUG. 10, 1984

By Steve Newton

With four platinum-plus records to their credit, Toronto is easily one of the most popular bands in the history of Canadian rock. High-velocity LPs like Lookin’ For Trouble and Get It on Credit combined with outstanding live shows, won the group plenty of fans across the country and even down into the hard-to-break U.S. market.

But earlier this year, after the release of the band’s Greatest Hits LP, the guitar-playing husband and wife team of Brian Allen and Sheron Alton called it quits, leaving lead vocalist Holly Woods and keyboardist Scott Kreyer to carry on the name.

Calling themselves Holly Woods & Toronto, the two set to work on a new album, the just-released Assault & Flattery. Produced by Mike Flicker, the record features sterling performances from L.A. guitarist Marty Walsh. The Headpins team of Darby Mills and Brian MacLeod also appears on one track, “Cats and Dogs (Stealin’)”.

In support of the new album, Woods and Kreyer–along with bassist Mike Gingrich, drummer Marty Morin, and guitarist Daryl Alvaro–performed three nights at Club Soda August 7-9. Before her Vancouver shows I contacted Woods in Toronto and asked her about the new album and the old band.

You came from Durham, North Carolina. What was the musical atmosphere like there?

Great. I really thank god for it–literally–because I started out in gospel. Then I got into rhythm and blues, which was very heavy down there at that time. It was a great learning process.

When did you come up to Toronto?

I was about 21 when I first came up. I was with an upstate New York band at that time, and we were just traveling around Ontario.

In a recent edition of Music Express you said that the previous Toronto lineup was beginning to be like an assembly line.

That’s right. It was too much of the same. But we were a great live band, one of the best. We always put out, and still do. It was just something that we had to outgrow.

Is “Bang Your Head” a heavy metal anthem?

No, actually, that is misprinted. The song is called “You Don’t Have to Bang Your Head”.

What’s the message in that tune?

It’s about a guy that really tried very hard to go out with me, and I kept refusing. And finally I just gave in, you know. “You don’t have to bang your head no more.”

But then it started coming out like “Bang Your Head”, like Quiet Riot or something. So I’m trying to correct that.

And what about the song “Cats and Dogs (Stealin’)”?

That I wrote specifically for Darby Mills and myself, because the media had us pitted against each other as enemies. And it just isn’t true. Darby and I are really good friends. So I thought, what a great way to dispel all these stupid rumours–I’ll write a song for the two of us fighting over a guy! It’s tongue-in-cheek.

I wonder why the press started that thing between you and Darby.

Oh I think it started on the Lock Up Your Sons tour. A lot of things got misprinted and misunderstood.

Were you thinking of dropping the name Toronto?

I’d love to drop the name; I don’t think it suits us anymore. There’s only two of us left, and we’d really like to try and break away from that image. We kept it because we didn’t want the fans to think that the band was totally dissolved, because it isn’t. Fortunately they’ve stuck with us.

Your single “Desperation” is about suicide. Have you ever thought about that yourself?

Hasn’t everybody? Yes. It’s something that I really shied away from writing about for many years. I had the lyrics tucked away, and I kept thinkin’ about it and thinkin’ about it, and then Scott and Daryl came up with this riff. And I thought “This is it. This is perfect.”

Did you think Toronto was underrated?

Yes, I thought we were terribly underrated. And I thought that our image was terribly whitewashed. Because of the name of the band, people had a tendency to pigeonhole us. And I didn’t think it was very fair.

But it’s difficult to be in a band with six people and have the public really identify with you. It’s very hard. It’s sort of like one of those faceless bands that you hear about [laughs].

Now there’s much more of a focus on you.

Myself and Scott, hopefully.

Are you looking forward to playing Club Soda?

Oh yeah. And hopefully we can get Darby and MacLeod up. It doesn’t take too much to get MacLeod up. He loves to jam. He’s already warned me: “Make sure you tell the guys in the band that I’m comin’ up.” [laughs].