Known for its joyous jazz-rock fusion sound, Lighthouse is a rock band unlike any other. Earning multiple Juno awards and charting numerous hits, Lighthouse deserves its place as one of Canada’s most beloved bands. The legacy of its songs coupled with its superb musicianship has continued to excite fans since reuniting in 1992. Last year Lighthouse proudly celebrated 50 years of music. The idea for Lighthouse was dreamed up by drummer and songwriter Skip (Ronald Harry) Prokop, whom Bernie Finkelstein called “One of the great drummers of our time.” Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Prokop’s iconic style was honed by drumming with the Sea Cadets and the Royal Canadian Naval Band and by winning rudimentary drum championships along the way. His years with The Paupers propelled him to rock star status and he was asked to put a new band together for Janis Joplin. This left him with a weighty decision. Go with Janis or forge a new direction for himself. He had a sound in his head that intrigued him. What would a four-person rock group sound like if he added strings and horns? If they fused jazz, rock, and classical genres? Quite simply, it had never been done.
Meanwhile, Toronto composer Paul Hoffert was wrestling with his own weighty decision. Born in Brooklyn NY, he emigrated with his parents to Toronto when he was 13. Already an accomplished performer, he had recorded an album with a doo-wop band just before leaving for Canada. He studied composition with the renowned Gordon Delamont while in High School, released a jazz album and was Music Director of a CBC television show at 16 and wrote his first film score at 19 while studying Maths, Physics and Chemistry at U of T. In 1968, his off-Broadway musical, Get Thee to Canterbury, had opened a new career path but he had recently been approached to develop a Music Programme at a Kenyan University. Which direction to take? Little did he know that another decision was waiting in the wings.
While Prokop and Hoffert were deciding their futures, Ralph Cole was assured that he had found his path and had no thoughts of diverging from it. A native of Kalamazoo Michigan, he had received a guitar for his eighth birthday and knew that music was his destiny. Like all dedicated musicians, he studied hard and spent long hours practising until he could make his fingers fly. When the opportunity arose, he left high school and began successfully performing in clubs around Michigan with his band Thyme. Prokop saw Cole performing in Detroit’s famed Grande Ballroom and was blown away. Here was a musician he would really like to play with and Cole’s unique sound and assured musicality was filed away in his memory bank.
So all the pieces were floating around when fate intervened. Prokop and Hoffert met in New York on Prokop’s last night with The Paupers. They chatted a bit and then by chance were seatmates the next day on the plane back to Toronto. The trip gave them ample time to talk about music and Prokop’s idea for his dream band with its big, cinematic sound. Knowing Hoffert’s reputation as a jazz musician and film composer, Prokop asked if this would be something Hoffert might be interested in pursuing with him. And the rest is history.
Prokop knew the rock scene and Hoffert knew the classical and jazz scenes and together they assembled a group of musicians including guitarist Ralph Cole. All those disparate pieces had finally come together. Lighthouse’s brand of free-wheeling, high-spirited jazz-rock-classical fusion took North America by storm starting with their debut in May 1969 at Toronto’s Rock Pile. They followed this with performances at Carnegie Hall and the Boston Pop Festival, and from there became the first rock band to play the Newport and Monterey jazz festivals. As Prokop told The Record: “When Lighthouse first went out there, we were doing fusion before we even knew there was a word called ‘fusion.’”
The band sold out everywhere they played. Prokop told music historian Bob Mersereau, “It was crazy everywhere we went, they just had never seen anything like it … and they never have since.”
Lighthouse issued three albums in quick succession, and the singles Feel So Good and The Chant became their first national hits. Hoffert was Music Director and wrote most of the sophisticated arrangements with contributions from Prokop and band member Howard Shore on a few cuts (now an Oscar winning Hollywood composer). Along with some bold covers such as the Beatle’s Day in the Life, The Band’s Chest Fever and the Byrd’s Eight Miles High the majority of the songs were penned by Prokop and Hoffert along with members Cole and Grant Fullerton as well as Brenda Hoffert and Peggy Devereux.
Lighthouse was critically acclaimed as a killer live band but there were few radio friendly songs on the first three releases. In 1970, New York producer Jimmy Einner, helped steer the band’s writers towards creating the hit songs that have kept Lighthouse on the airwaves for more than 50 years. At the same time Lighthouse brought in Toronto-born Bob McBride whose distinctive vocals became a hallmark of the Lighthouse sound.
Bob McBride was one of the young musicians who was drawn to Yorkville in the early sixties. Several years on the road with Ronnie Hawkins and vocal studies with Johnny Mathis helped develop his style. McBride possessed incredible range, attacking a song with evangelistic fury at one moment, his notes ascending into the stratosphere, then purring softly as he lovingly caressed a phrase.
With these changes in direction, the band immediately scored its first top-ten hit, the SOCAN Classic Hats Off to the Stranger (by Prokop, McBride, and Peter McGraw). Next Prokop’s celebratory, jazzy One Fine Morning charted to No. 2 on RPM and Billboard’s No. 24.
Lighthouse was now on a winning streak: Juno awards three years running from 1972 to 1974, plus a Juno for lead singer Bob McBride. Their 1972 Carnegie Hall live album achieved another first for a Canadian act by reaching platinum sales. Other firsts included performances with Symphony orchestras in Canada and the US as well as a collaboration between Lighthouse and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet resulting in the first Rock Ballet titled Ballet High that swept the nation with standing-room-only performances.
Lighthouse’s 1972 album “Sunny Days” made RPM’s top 10 album chart, its joyful title single (by Prokop) reaching Billboard’s No. 34, CHUM’s No. 10, and RPM’s No. 4.
Other hit Lighthouse singles included Cole’s Take It Slow (Out in the Country) (written with Keith Jollimore and Larry Smith), Prokop’s Pretty Lady (now a SOCAN Classic), and McBride’s and Prokop’s I Just Wanna Be Your Friend. Five Lighthouse albums made the Billboard 200 chart.
After touring heavily throughout Canada and the US, performing at the Isle of Wight Festival and touring Japan, Lighthouse disbanded in 1976. The group reunited for a weekend of concerts at Ontario Place in 1982 but it took ten more years before coming together again with a ten-piece powerhouse band that included Prokop, Hoffert, Cole and McBride.
Within a short time, McBride was replaced by Dan Clancy whose unique ability to capture the dynamic Lighthouse sound while maintaining his own style has kept him front and centre for the past 30 years. The current band has had few changes since re-forming but with the passing of Skip Prokop in 2017 and the recent retirement of Ralph Cole (guitar) and Steve Kennedy (saxes and flute) the Lighthouse family now includes Marc Ganatakos (guitar) and Michael Stuart (saxes and flute) with Paul DeLong sharing the drum throne with Jamie Prokop. Original member Paul Hoffert (keyboards and vibraphone), Doug Moore (bass), Don Paulton (keyboards), Russ Little (trombone), Chris Howells (trumpet), Simon Wallis (saxes and flute) complete the line-up. The 1994 release of Remember the Times (penned by Prokop and Moore) off the Song of the Ages album was a top-forty hit followed by the beautiful ballad, Fine China. Lighthouse’s fortieth year was marked by the release of Forty Years of Sunny Days, a compilation that included 16 classic hits along with a DVD of the current band performing the same hits. A new double album set will be released this fall.
While maintaining a touring schedule with Lighthouse, Prokop, Hoffert, Cole and McBride continued to expand their horizons.
Cole established a successful jingle production company, produced many artists including Shirley Eikhard and was a sought-after session musician. One of his ‘jingles’ became so popular it was recorded as a single titled It Don’t Matter and was on the charts for months.
Though still actively performing with Lighthouse he is enjoying life as a semi-retired musician.
McBride released several singles, such as the hit Pretty City Lady, and several solo albums one of which went gold. He battled multiple addiction-related health problems for years, but though finally defeating his addiction, his health was compromised and he died in 1998.
Hoffert established a research centre at York University in the 80s and his expertise in digital copyright law resulted in Faculty positions at Harvard University and the University of Toronto. He continues to compose and conduct original music for film and television. His 1979 album “Concerto for Contemporary Violin” won a Juno award for best engineering while the Hoffert-Hoffert co-release, “I Lost My Pet Lizard”, received a Juno nomination in 1980. The recent Gelcer-Hoffert release in 2018, “Jim and Paul Play Glenn and Ludwig”, was number one on both jazz and classical charts. Hoffert received the Order of Canada in 2004 for his contribution to music and the arts.
Prokop released several albums, including “Smoothside”, which was awarded Jazz Album of the Year at the 2012 Hamilton Music Awards. He was a producer, session player, and radio show host before passing away in 2017. Music industry executive Duff Roman (David Mostoway) told Billboard, “Skip was the driving force — a superb drummer and prolific songwriter —who had the awesome talent and relentless energy to make his mark on the North American music scene.”
