Remembering Larry Gillstrom, Kick Axe guitarist and passionate purveyor of Canadian metal

By Steve Newton

Shocked and saddened to hear last night about the recent passing of Larry Gillstrom, a legend of the Canadian heavy-metal scene. According to a post on the Facebook group Fans of Kick Axe, he died of cancer on August 4.

Gillstrom was the founding guitarist for Kick Axe, the Regina-spawned metal act that released three albums in the ’80s, including the gold-selling 1984 debut, Vices. But he was also involved in the business and promotional side of music, and earned a reputation as a tireless advocate for hard rock and the musicians who played it.

I first encountered Gillstrom after his band had relocated to Vancouver and was making waves on the local bar scene. If I recall correctly the band, which at that time featured vocalist Charles McNary, played a gig downstairs at a rough-n-tumble club near Main and Kingsway called Vancouver’s Tonite. Gillstrom stood out not only for his nasty guitar licks, but for being six-foot-something with added height from a huge mop of curly blonde hair.

I did my first interview with Gillstrom back in April of 1983, five months after the band opened for Judas Priest in Vancouver on Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance Tour. By this time McNary had been replaced on vocals by George Widule, a 21-year-old from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who impressed the band with his demo tape.

“Charlie was a good singer,” Gillstrom explained, “and he helped us to get to a good level in the club scene as far as Top 40 goes. But he was still stuck on the Top 40 thing; he wasn’t willing to go on the way we wanted to go.

“So with the assistance of Sam Feldman, and The Agency in Toronto and a few agencies in the United States, we managed to get a lot of replies from a lot of singers. George sent his tape to us, and it was all basically Scorpions, Judas Priest, and Ozzy Osbourne that he was singing. So we figured he sounded like the right guy.”

Setting their sights on the hugely popular mainstream-metal sound of the early ’80s, Kick Axe scored a deal with Spencer Proffer’s Pasha Records, distributed by CBS, and released Vices, which broke into the Billboard Top 200 and spawned the single “On the Road to Rock”.

In November of ’85 Kick Axe released its sophomore album, Welcome to the Club, and though it didn’t sell as well as Vices, I actually thought it was better, all in all. By that time the band had toured with Scorpions, Whitesnake, and Judas Priest, so in my second Kick Axe interview I asked bassist Victor Langen if there was one particular band that had given them the impetus to get to where they were.

“Well, goin’ back a ways, when Priest came through on the Screaming for Vengeance tour–that all kicked us in the nuts a good one [laughs]. We got to see the show, and it was there when we said, ‘Yup–that’s how you do it.’ That was a turning point.”

That burst of inspiration from Rob Halford and his leather-bound crew wasn’t enough to keep Kick Axe on the road to rock for too long, though, and after one more album, 1986’s Rock the World, they packed it in–at least until reforming in 2003 with a different singer for their final release, Kick Axe IV.

Gillstrom wasn’t done making his mark on the Canadian metal scene, however. Back in July of 1988 I interviewed him again when he was doing his best to keep music loud in Vancouver by organizing Metal Storm–a showcase night for the city’s up-and-coming metal acts–with Club Soda sound tech Mike Price.

“Mike and I have always been into heavy rock, guitar-rock,” said Gillstrom, “but there’s not enough going on in this city to support it in the music industry–it’s all supporting pop music, or alternative music. So we thought we’d do our share.”

The first Metal Storm night took place July 11, 1988, and featured the rip-snortin’ sounds of Death Sentence, Ogre, and Aregothor. Because it proved so popular (drawing 400 people), Club Soda gave Gillstrom the okay to put the show on every Monday in August. He said there wouldn’t be a problem finding enough heavy bands to fill the bill.

“There’s a lot of bands out there,” he pointed out. “Once I started investigating it I found there were three or four times as many bands as I had thought. There are the ones that people hear about, like Pretty Boy Floyd and Nitevigil and that, but there are also Harlots Webb, Goliath, Night Child, Anasthasia, Dragon, Night’s Realm, High Strung, Beauty Kills, Organized Chaos–the list goes on and on. And we’re gonna give them all a chance.”

While Kick Axe was in limbo at this point, its members were keeping busy in a number of other projects. Gillstrom’s co-guitarist, Ray “Hitman” Harvey, became a member of Rock & Hyde, and had been working with saxophonist Kirsten Nash. Criston was collaborating with keyboardist Doug Johnson from Loverboy and Skywalk guitarist Harris Van Berkel. Langen had joined former members of White Wolf and Simon Kaos in the hard-rock cover band Giant. And Gillstrom and his drummer brother Brian were putting their own band together.

With all that going on, I still had to ask Gillstrom if there was any chance of a Kick Axe reunion.

“Oh, yeah,” he enthused, “definitely. We’re still the best of friends, and we’ve always had a lot of respect for each other–even after the band came to a rest.”

True to his word, four months later, on November 17, 1988, a Kick Axe reunion took place at the Commodore Ballroom, although according to Gillstrom it was more of a “new-union”. Harvey and Langen were off with their respective bands, Kirsten Nash and Giant, so the only real Kick Axers were the Gillstrom brothers and Criston.

According to the Facebook post announcing Gillstrom’s death, Kick Axe had reunited again and, with new vocalist Daniel Nargang, performed gigs last year in Calgary, Winnipeg, and his beloved hometown of Regina, where Gillstrom’s final show took place on November 23. According to the post he maintained a positive and upbeat attitude as he quietly fought his courageous battle with cancer, and was working on a new Kick Axe album until the very end.