April Wine on tap for Music Industry Hall of Fame
April Wine is now a vintage to be treasured — the Canadian rock band is to be inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame in March.
The rockers who had hits like You Could Have Been a Lady, Roller and Anything You Want You Got It are still performing, though there have been several changes of personnel over the years.
Myles Goodwyn, Jim Henman and brothers David and Ritchie Henman originally formed the band in Nova Scotia in 1969.
Lead singer Goodwyn remains and the other members are Jerry Mercer, a drummer who joined the band in 1973, Brian Greenway of Hawkesbury, Ont., on guitar and vocals, who joined in 1977 and bassist Breen LeBoeuf, formerly with Offenbach, who joined April Wine in 2007.
Goodwyn was in the news after collapsing after a Halifax show on Nov. 28. He was treated in hospital for internal bleeding and released.
The band will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and be inducted into the Hall of Fame March 13 during Canadian Music Week in Toronto.
April Wine moved to Montreal in 1970 and had their first hit with You Could Have Been a Lady, a song originally recorded by Hot Chocolate in the U.K.
Producer Ralph Murphy saw the group through a number of albums, including Stand Back and The Whole World's Goin' Crazy, with hits such as I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love and You Won't Dance with Me. They toured extensively, becoming known for their power ballads and rock 'n' roll sound.
The band is also famous for opening for a mystery group called the Cockroaches at the El Mocambo club in Toronto in 1977.
The Cockroaches turned out to be the Rolling Stones and the album recorded from that session, Live At The El Mocambo, features April Wine's She's No Angel.
The band's seventh studio album First Glance was a turning point, with the single Roller becoming a hit in the U.S.
The band, then with five members, continued touring throughout the 1980s with hits such as Crash and Burn and Just Between You and Me.
Goodwyn went solo for a while in the late 1980s, but the band reunited in July 1992.
Their most recent studio album is Roughly Speaking, released in 2006.