From the North End With Love. And Brass Knuckles. And 4-part Harmonies.

Raised on Rock and Roll, stories from the days when rock was young – and my hometown Winnipeg was the rock and roll capital of Canada….

I used to try and force myself – I was working at a day job, too – but I'd come home and I used to try and write four or five songs every day. Just for practice. I was trying to teach myself phrasing and whatnot. I didn't have anybody showing me – like how can you? How could I show you how to write a song – you can't, it's got to come from your own head. So I would just do that, and every once in a while I’d come up with something that I liked..

So anyway, I had this whole big pile of songs, and I’d put them in a briefcase and I used to go around to there were different groups, like the Jury, that were playing around in the city, like the Jury, and I’d sit down with my guitar and I’d play them song after song after song and see if there was anything they liked. And the last one I sang for the Jury was WhoDat, so they recorded it. So yeah, that worked out okay.

And then Donnie McDougall, him and I wrote a few tunes one morning, and he ended up going to Vancouver and joining up with a group called Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck. They were a big band on the west coast. And so they recorded a couple of my songs – Donnie and I wrote two of the songs, yeah.

Singer, songwriter Bill Iveniuk is a product of the times – in his case, coming of age in the mid-1950s. And he’s a product of his environment. He was born in Point Douglas, a working class neighbourhood right next to Winnipeg’s infamous North End and just as tough. He was raised alongside his seven siblings. His father, known by most as Big Jim, was a tradesman, a mechanic, a some-time fur trapper. Back in the day, an amateur boxer. He did a little time for punching out a cop. As you might imagine, Big Jim was a big influence on young Bill.

It was like the Bowery boys or something that, you know, we were kids, we did a little stealing, like in gardens and that, like cucumbers and stuff, bring them home for our parents. Like, my dad was a labourer, so I mean he wasn't making a whole lot of money. So he would do his regular job at the city, and then he would fix cars. And so we'd be working, you know, like with my dad, like working on cars and stuff like that, you know, he’d say, you know, pass the half-inch socket, and you’d be daydreaming – like you’re a kid, right? And so what he used to do is, he used to get the metal part of the hammer in his hand and whack you in the forehead with the handle. Wham! Wake up, y’a*****e. Like, I had a lot of welts on my head. And my old man was the kind of guy like – he didn't have time to argue with you, ‘cause there's eight kids and they’re all running around, bouncing off the walls and what-not. So it was, you do this or else it was wham, right? But there was no problem. We had a great childhood, right? Like I didn’t see anything wrong with it…

When I was about, maybe eight or nine, I got a paper route. Like 75 papers, I was doing the whole neighbourhood with the paper route, in the winter – you know what the winters are like in Winnipeg – and so winter and summer and all that. Then I got a job in the bowling alley setting pins. And a lot of the guys – you had to set pins, you had to sit in the back and set the pins physically, there was no automatic stuff there – and there was a few of the guys who didn't have any front teeth, like from the pins, taking them out, right? Whang, there goes your teeth, right? And sometimes you'd be in the pit, and some arsehole would throw a ball down while you were in there, you know, showing off to his girlfriend or something? So we used to take the ball and come out from behind the screen and whip it overhand back at the arseholes, right?

And yeah, you’d have all these different kinds of jobs. I got a job in a factory that was making mattresses right. And so I was working away – the first day, right? I was about two hours into the job – and one of the bosses comes up to me and he says, you know how to run a forklift? And I thought I should know, right? I should know how to operate a forklift. I guess I was about 14. He said I want you to get a load of these springs and bring them back to these tables. So I said ok I’ll go get ‘em. On the forklift, the big pedal is the gas and the little pedal is the brake. And I got confused when I was driving. I got ’er going, right, and like somebody came across from a different way, right, like an intersection kind of thing? And I went to step on the brake and I goosed this forklift and went full speed into a pile of springs, and smashed all these springs. So I guess I was on the job for about two and a half, three hours and got fired. And that afternoon, I got another job in a pickle factory. So it was like, you could get a job just like that. And so I had those kinds of jobs.

Still in school, these are just summer jobs. And then I got a job – my dad got me on at Burns – remember Burns? And the job was like making brine for the hams. What you had to do, you go into this room, and it would be full of salt. And you'd be in there, you'd be shovelling the salt into this big vat on the other side of the wall. You’d have to do that all day…

When Bill and his best buddies started junior high over in the North End, they found themselves in a whole other world. And it wasn’t because of their new school

So we were gong to Aberdeen School, and there was a restaurant just around the corner on Selkirk Avenue called Nancy’s. And Nancy's was the hangout, like one of those Happy Days restaurants, you know, 10-cent milkshakes and all that – and all kinds of lunatics, you know, hanging out in the place.

Like the north end, like on a weekend, like on a Friday night or something, could swell to like almost double the population, because the motorcycle gangs from Transcona would come to Nancy’s – riding their motorcycles up Selkirk, with their arms folded, like no hands, and going like 60 miles an hour, you know, coming up the street, right? Just like in The Wild One, like Marlon Brando, you know, they would emulate those, you know, like what they see in the movies, right. And, you know, with the cigars. And then they’d stand around and some of them would be pushing weights and acting tough and and whatnot. And then, Hey Bill, want to go for a ride on the motorcycle? You jump on the back and you’re going like 80 miles an hour down Selkirk. I’d never been on a motorcycle before, right? And I was like, Oh my God, I mean, I’m gonna die, right? But yeah, and so I mean – but everybody, like once in a blue moon there'd be a gang war, like with chains and all that stuff, right? But that was just, that was rare, that never happened that often. I mean, it was usually one-on-one or a fight in the canteen. Or, you know, and it was usually like one hit – that would usually stop the other guy, right?

It’s pretty cool to be on the good side of the bikers, but there was another crowd hanging out at Nancy’s too. Bill Iveniuk and company fit right in with this one.

A cappella vocal groups – groups sort of like the Four Lads but maybe before that; the Diamonds, sha-boom sha-boom, like those songs – and so in Winnipeg, groups were forming and they would sing those songs. And the odd group would write some with their own material, very little of that, but there was all… – like there must have been 35 groups in Winnipeg at the time, really good groups…

There was a group called the Angels. They were probably one of the best groups in Winnipeg, and the lead singer of that group was called Walter Teske. And Walter Teske, he was sort of like, he was a teacher. he would get the young kids – like he was maybe two or three years older than us – and he would teach us. He would say ok, you sing this part, and he would teach you that part, and you, Bill, you sing this part, and Kody, you sing this part – and so the three or four of us would go and we’d get this harmony – and it was like, wow, we didn't know we could do this. Right. And he would just constantly be teaching us. And then he would go and do his own thing with his own group, right.

And so he called me up one time and he said, Bill he says, I'm going to come over with a few beers. And he says I got a guitar here for ya. He says, like, it’s about time you learned guitar, right. So my dad was sitting at the dining room table, looking out the window into the lane, and here comes Walter Teske with a garbage bag, a double garbage bag. I have 70 beers in the garbage bag. Well, my old man liked to drink, right? So he ‘C’mon in Walter’– quack quack quack.… So we go downstairs, we're going he's teaching me all day if I didn't have a pic to use the paper from a match book, and you know if we're playing guitar and teaching the chords…

He was the key for me, to have an interest. like, it's like, once you start once you start playing an instrument, you started seeing the possibilities that could open other doors for you, right? – with girls, and or to make a few bucks, right? So that's, like Walter Teske was a huge important part, you know, like in my life.

I was a kid, right, and he was an older guy, right? And he wasn't hanging out with me. He was just, he just liked me. He liked the way I sang, he liked my attitude. He liked my family, like, you know, my dad, and the friends that I was hanging around with. It was just that it was a community right, it was like – there was no television. You know, there was like, no video games, nothing, so people – how were they spending their time, right, like what were they doing? They were outside. They were interacting. There was community.

When I was 17, I wasn't doing well in high school. I didn't give a s**t, right. And so my dad sat me down, my mom was there, and my dad sat me down and said, ‘Okay, you've got three choices. One, you can join the army. Two, you can take a trade. And three, you can get the hell out of the house. Okay… The army? Get the hell out of the house? I’m 17, where the hell am I gonna go, right? Although a lot of people have gone that route. But – so my mom goes, ‘He's gonna take a trade, he's going to be an electrician.’ Okay, so then I started taking my apprenticeship as an electrician.

And so when I got married in 61, I was taking my apprenticeship, I was making 77 cents an hour, and married, right? I mean, s**t, man. I know it's a long time ago. And I know 77 cents an hour is maybe like a buck fifty now, but it's still no big deal, right? It's still garbage. You're still rolling your own, you can't buy a pack of weeds.

So yeah, here I am, married, 77 cents an hour, writing these songs, just getting fat. And Billy MacDougall – Donnie MacDougall’s brother, he was a drummer – he phoned me up and he said, there's a girl that's come into town and she's got an acoustic guitar. And she's got a de Armond pickup that goes into the acoustic guitar, but there’s a short in it or something, and she doesn't have an amp, and I had a Rickenbacker guitar. And he said, do you think you could bring your electric guitar over and let her use it?

Well I was smitten when I saw her. She sang, she was like a Joan Baez kind of thing, you know –hair down to her arse and sang fairly well, I thought, a good singer, and I’m saying, wow, like I wanna spend some time with her. And one thing led to another. And she said to me, Well, okay, Bill, if you want, get yourself a bass, I’ve got a job in Churchill, and you can come with me, I’m playing in the hotel there. So I didn't have any money – and first of all I had to leave my wife…So there was a lot of things that had to happen, right?

And I was working at the railway and I asked the boss if I could get time off because I had to go to Churchill. And he said, no no, you're too important, we need you here, you know? So I said, Okay, I'll see you later. And I just left my tools and walked out and went to Churchill.

But I didn't have the bass or the amp. And it was like 800 bucks, right? And so then my dad, who was really strict with me on everything, he just said to my mum, Give him the money, for the bass and the amp. But my dad really loved music, right? And he said, let him go…

Heading up to Churchill Manitoba with his new bass and amp and his new partner, 26-year-old Bill Iveniuk had ten years of songwriting behind him, but he was about to perform in front of an audience for the first time since elementary school. Over the next fifty-plus years, he would more than made up for lost time…

Bill’s musical adventures are featured in two chapters in the first volume of my book Raised on Rock and Roll – and in another chapter in the forthcoming volume two.

You’ve been listening to the Raised on Rock and Roll podcast, with stories and a sampling of music by Bill Iveniuk.

Taking us out, our series theme courtesy of Gord Osland and Steve Hegyi.

I’m Larry Hicock.

Get full access to Raised on Rock and Roll at larryhicock.substack.com/subscribe