With just $40 in his pockets, Montrealer Andy Kim headed to New York City at age 16 and found fame when he wrote How’d We Ever Get This Way?, the first of nine Billboard Top 40 hits, including the No. 1 songs Rock Me Gently and Sugar, Sugar, one of Billboard’s “Greatest Songs of All Time.”
“Kim hails from a world of professional song factories and unionized session players,” Rolling Stone magazine wrote about Kim in 2014. “A seasoned songwriter who once hustled his way into the Brill Building compound of Jeff Barry.”
Kim was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame in 2019.
But over the past 15 years, Kim has also become beloved for his Christmas charity concerts in Toronto and Montreal. This week Kim headlines his sixth annual Andy Kim Christmas charity concert in Montreal, benifitting the Starlight Children’s Foundation. Past musical guests include Sam Roberts, Coeur de pirate, Michel Pagliaro, Patrick Watson and Martha Wainwright. This year’s guests are Men Without Hats, Tom Cochrane, Ron Sexsmith and Jake Clemons.
Curtains Up recently sat down with the Los Angeles-based Andy Kim for a candid Q&A about his Hall of Fame music career.
Curtains Up: What was it like for you growing up in Montreal?
Andy Kim: It was cold! (Laughs) Montreal was the best place for me to grow up. My earlier years were on Saint-Denis and De Castelnau, it was a real community. You knew your neighbours. That’s what I loved so much about the city. I grew up understanding community, love, caring for each other. That’s what I remember. I never saw a community like that again after I left Montreal. But everywhere I go in the world, I am a Montrealer.
Was being a songwriter back in the 1960s a more formal vocation? Is songwriting today a different kind of business?
I don’t connect songwriting to business. There are a lot of songwriters who are starving. Are they bad at business? No, it means people haven’t heard their songs. Or they have heard their songs but for some reason the temperature of the day was not listening to their song. I don’t think I have ever met any successful songwriter or musician who did it with the purpose of making money. Those of us who came from whatever era did it because we needed to do it. It was part of a dream, part of our existence. It was a lack of being good at anything else. I just wanted to hear my song on a transistor radio. That was my world. And if you’re lucky enough, you get the life that I have received.
Your 1969 global No. 1 smash hit Sugar, Sugar by The Archies turns 50 this year. It has been named one of Billboard’s “Greatest Songs of All Time.” Why is Sugar, Sugar timeless?
I have no idea. I have spent my life not analyzing things. There was a call from Don Kirshner – to a lot of people, I’m sure – to all the songwriters in the stable: do you have a song for The Archies? And I was a recipient of that call. In 10 minutes, my mentor and songwriting partner Jeff Barry and I came up with this song without thinking. In my life, thinking is the worst possible way to come up with a song. You are either inspired by something or God’s angels drop it into your life! A lot of songwriting is magic.
I was lucky to be given an opportunity to write with (Brill Building songwriter Jeff Barry), one of the iconic songwriters of the day. Like GPS today, I knew where I was and where I wanted to go. I knew I had to pinpoint where I wanted to go with my career. You can’t be general, you have to be specific, and I wanted to go meet Jeff Barry at 1619 Broadway. That was how fixed I was. I was also in over my head, but these guys let me in because they heard something in me.
I think it is a great tribute to you that Bob Marley – one of the greatest songwriters of all time – recorded Sugar, Sugar.
One time speaking with Bob’s widow, Rita Marley, when we were first introduced, Rita whispered in my ear the exact background part that she sang on that song. I got chills! It is mind-boggling because I wrote that song for a comic book character.
Have you heard Tina Turner’s version?
I sure have!
It kills me every time I hear it!
The first 45 I ever bought was It Never Rains in Southern California by Albert Hammond, the second was Dark Lady by Cher, and my third was your song Rock Me Gently. I still have the 45. Is there a story behind that song?
I had a career, had a lot of hits, and then … There is a great saying if you work in the Brill Building: “You’re only as good as your last two minutes and 30 seconds.”
That’s brutal, man!
It’s brutal, but it was exciting. I was lucky to be part of a musical world that still exists today. People are still playing my music.
Then I moved from New York City to L.A. where I didn’t know anybody. One morning I wrote Rock Me Gently, I called the musicians union and four musicians showed up. I met them at 7 pm on a rainy Friday evening (at the studio) and by 10 pm everybody was gone and I thought I had recorded the best song of my career. I was the writer, the artist and the producer. Close to a year later, nobody wanted it. Every record company said no. What they were basically saying was, “You’ve already had your two minutes and 30 seconds.”
But I never hear no. So I came back home to Montreal and started my own record company called Ice Records. So if your label has an ice cube on it, then you have one of the early editions.
Rock Me Gently went on to become a No. 1 smash hit in 1974.
No one is responsible for your life but yourself. Once you believe that and understand that, then there is so much that can propel you to do it.
I love the respect you get from younger musicians and songwriters, especially here in Canada. How does this make you feel?
It makes me emotional. I think if you have been through the wars of the music business – because it is a war sometimes, especially if you become successful – and survive and still love it enough to do it, I think that’s where this comes from. I am honoured and filled with gratitude.
You’ve been doing your Christmas benefit concerts for 15 years now. Your upcoming Montreal show will be your 6th annual Christmas Show in your hometown, once again benefitting the Starlight Children’s Foundation.
I have to thank Sam Roberts for that because he said to me (many years ago), “Why don’t you do a Christmas show in Montreal too? I’ll be there!” It’s exciting to come home, and this time I’ll be playing at Place des Arts for the first time in my career.
Prior to the show, Canada’s Walk of Fame will also present you with your Hometown Star, a plaque you can mount at a special location of your choice.
I’m over the moon! But I’m also the third of four brothers. So whenever I’m in Montreal, I’m not Andy Kim the singer or songwriter. I’m the third of four brothers. That’s who I am, so it ain’t a big deal for them. Over the years, when I would come home for Christmas to see my Mom and Dad, we all had our chores to do. I got to do the dishes, which I always tried to get out of. There’s nothing like being around family. That’s the cool thing about doing a show in Montreal.
Andy Kim headlines his 6th annual Andy Kim Montreal Christmas concert, with special guests Men Without Hats, Tom Cochrane, Ron Sexsmith and Jake Clemons, on Friday, December 13 at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Place des Arts. For tickets, visit evenko.ca.
Top photo by Susan Moss, courtesy evenko
