Yahoo Movies Myles Goodwyn Dies: April Wine’s Founding Singer-Guitarist Was 75
Myles Goodwyn, the founding frontman and guitarist for platinum Canadian rock band April Wine who wrote and sang such hits as “Sign of the Gypsy Queen,” “Roller” and “I Like to Rock,” died December 4. He was 75.
No further details on cause of death, location or funeral details will be disclosed, according to a spokesman.
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Founded in Nova Scotia in 1969 and based in Montreal, April Wine has sold more than 10 million records worldwide. The group broke out with its 1972 sophomore album On Record, which featured “You Could Have Been a Lady,” a No. 2 hit in Canada that dented the U.S. Top 40. The band continued on nearly an album-a-year pace through the 1970s, with 1976’s The Whole World Is Going Crazy topping the Canadian chart.
April Wine returned to the U.S. charts with First Glance (1978), which featured the hard-rocking Top 40 U.S. single “Roller.” It was a prime example of the band’s three-guitar attack with Goodwyn, Brian Greenway and Gary Moffet. Bassist Steve Lang and drummer Jerry Mercer rounded out the quintet’s lineup as it entered its most popular era.
Harder … Faster (1979) spawned the FM hit “I Like to Rock,” which included simultaneously played snippets of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and The Beatles’ “Day Tripper” along with the track’s guitar riff. The disc, which went gold stateside, also a cover of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man,” which became a concert staple.
April Wine enjoyed its biggest commercial success with the 1981 album The Nature of the Beast, which spawned the hit single “Just Between You and Me.” The power ballad just missed the pop Top 20 in the U.S. and Canadaand hit No. 11 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart.
The album was the group’s lone million-seller in the U.S. and also produced “Sign of the Gypsy Queen,” which made the Mainstream Rock Top 20 and remains popular on classic rock radio. The disc’s “All Over Town” reach the Top 30 on that U.S. tally.
Follow-up set Power Play (1982) included the Top 10 Mainstream Rock hit “Enough Is Enough” Top 30 Mainstream single “If You See Kay” and became April Wine’s last U.S. Top 40 album. Animal Grace peaked at No. 62 in 1984.
The group put out 16 studio albums during its long career, most recently 2006’s Roughly Speaking. Six of them went platinum and three gold in Canada. April Wine was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2010 and Canada’s Walk of Fame this year.
Born on June 23, 1948 in New Brunswick, Goodwyn also received the East Coast Music Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 and the SOCAN National Achievement Award in 2002.
In 2016, he released his memoir, Just Between You and Me. His second book, Elvis and Tiger, was a fiction novel published in 2018.
The Myles Goodwyn and Friends of the Blues recording released in 2018 earned a JUNO nomination for Blues Recording of the Year in 2019. The recording also won the ECMA award for Blues Recording of the Year in 2019.
His follow-up blues recording that year, Myles Goodwyn and Friends of the Blues 2, won the same blues category in 2020.
Goodwyn left the group for live performances in March and continued to perform live with his acoustic trio.
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