Remembering Scott Vye, my good-rockin’ buddy from the ‘Wack

By Steve Newton

It’s been over a week since I heard that one of my best friends, Scott Vye, was found dead of an apparent heart attack at his home in North Van. It’s taken me that long to process the loss and get myself in the headspace to write about our friendship, which spanned roughly 45 years. This isn’t an obituary for Scott–I’ll leave that honour to his family–just a remembrance of the good times we had, most of them connected by our passion for music. And laughs.

I first met Scotty when we were both in our early twenties and working at a hellhole of a cannery named York Farms in Sardis, B.C., just outside Chilliwack. (Vancouver-area fans of ’80s new-wave may be interested to know that Images in Vogue frontman Dale Martindale also slaved away in that miserable Canada Packers facility.) Scott and I instantly bonded through our love of music–me listening to it, he listening to it and also playing it–and we tried to make the best of working at York Farms, finding whatever comedy we could in the idea of stacking heavy boxes of juice for eight hours at a time.

What I remember most about the job was that time I was working on the canned spaghetti line, and one of the soul-crushing foremen caught me sampling the ingredients. Scotty must have been standing nearby, because for decades afterward, whenever we needed a chuckle, he could be heard repeating the foreman’s gruff warning: “Quit eatin’ the cheese, Newton”.

When I finally got fed up with the oppressive management and menial labour I quit in the middle of a shift, threw my yellow plastic hat into the parking lot, and applied for work at the Chilliwack Progress the next day. I got hired by the weekly paper as a stringer, covering things like school-board and city-council meetings, but to please myself I talked the managing editor into letting me write a series of stories on local bands. Lo and behold, the first group I covered was Joker, a quintet composed of leader and MC Gary McNab on rhythm guitar, wife Gail McNab on lead vocals, Jeff Bowman on lead guitar, Gary Marsh on drums, and my new pal Scott on bass and vocals.

Joker was basically a wedding band, and pretty tame compared to the music that was making the rounds on my Yamaha turntable at the time–like Montrose, Blue Öyster Cult, and Thin Lizzy–but popular guitar teacher Bowman was a very skilled player, and it was cool to see a friend performing on stage at the Chilliwack Legion and other upscale venues. I profiled eight more local bands–the Lakers, the Vacationers, Loose Change, Citizen’s Band, the Postcards, Midnight Smoke,  Homegrown, and Thunderhead—before working my way around to another group Scotty was in, Hydra.

Hydra was a little more my style, as it featured a rockin’ guitarist named Chris Mawhinney, who was big into Hendrix. The other members of the band were rhythm guitarist Brent Lauze from Abbotsford, keyboardist Rob Lee from Sardis, Chilliwack drummer Jeff Nuttall, and Scotty on bass.

“Everybody sings,” Vye told me at the time, “and singing is the most important thing.”

Scotty soon took that idea to heart, as his next band featured him as the lead vocalist and frontman. The Miks were a Billy Idol tribute band, and Scotty–who by this time I’d christened “Scotty Bad”–was the spitting image of the platinum-blonde punk-rocker from England.

The Miks traveled around B.C. and Alberta playing the club circuit via Feldman & Associates, with Nuttall from Hydra on drums, Jack Latreille on bass, and Jay Jones and Miles Anderson on guitars. This was right around the time of Idol’s Rebel Yell album, which spawned four hit singles and went five-times platinum in Canada, so the band was pretty well received. Scotty got to live the life of a “rock star” for a while, in his own little way. I was happy for him.

When he wasn’t rockin’ up a storm with his various bands or teaching guitar, Scotty liked accompanying me to concerts, and since I was the main rock writer for a popular Vancouver weekly by this time, we’d always get in for free. I remember him really enjoying himself when the Stray Cats played the Commodore Ballroom in 1982, because he was big on rockabilly and had his own standup bass, like Lee Rocker. He was also excited about meeting Robert Gordon downstairs at the Town Pump when he played there with Chris Spedding in 1992.

Scotty was psyched about getting his picture taken with Keith Richards backstage at the Orpheum Theatre in 1993. I said, “Listen Chucklebunch, you only get one chance. Put your arm around him like he’s your best friend.” Surprisingly, he listened. And while he did that, Keef and I touched skull rings.

Scotty loved all kinds of music, but one band he was particularly crazy about was the Beat Farmers out of San Diego. He idolized Country Dick Montana, the band’s drummer, occasional frontman, and rowdy emcee. He could not believe his eyes when Country Dick donned ski goggles and a raincoat and came on stage to be doused with beer by fans, as was the Vancouver tradition. When we met Country backstage and one of our buddies asked for an autograph, Montana, pen in hand, joked “How many g’s in maggot?”, and Scotty never forgot that.

He loved comedy, especially of the rude ‘n’ crude kind, hence his fondness for Beat Farmers songs like “King of Sleaze” and their “Countryized” version of Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille”. I took him to see Andrew Dice Clay, and he got me into Canadian comedy legends MacLean and MacLean. He could listen to their 1981 album Taking the ‘O’ Out of Country and Sucking Their Way to the Top until the 24-pack of Pilsner was completely obliterated.

Scotty’s musical partner for most of the second half of his life was Gordon Tipper, a Richmond-based guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. They played countless performances as a duo–and with a drummer sometimes too–all over the Lower Mainland, specializing in classic rock and country. They were the headliner at my wedding in Powell River back in ’96, which also featured a special appearance by Alberta-spawned hard-rockers Mad Duck.

Scotty and Gordie even drove out to Chilliwack to play a gig at the old folks’ home where my Mom and Dad were living.

Scotty really loved my parents, which made sense, ’cause he was like a member of the family. I like to think that maybe he’s up there with them right now, singing Dad his fave Beatles tune. “Blackbird”, maybe. Or “When I’m 64”.

R.I.P. my friend.