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In the late '70s, a teenage guitar player from Saskatchewan was standing in the pouring rain at a bus stop in downtown Calgary, wondering where his next meal and gig was coming from. As the story goes, a van being driven by a gentleman named ELMAR SPANIER noticed the guitar case by the young man's feet. He quickly jammed on the brakes pulled over through traffic, rolled down the window and yelled at this Opey-type kid, "Hey do you know how to play that thing?" The young man said, "Yes, of course I know how to play it." Spanier told the kid to jump in if he wanted a gig. Spanier was on his way to a music shop in downtown Calgary in search of a guitarist to fill the shoes of their recently fired guitar player. When they got back to the club, he told the kid to set up his guitar and he would go upstairs and get the "boss man" to see if the kid could cut it. The "boss man?" BILLY COWSILL. The young gun guitar slinger? COLIN JAMES. The rest is Canadian music history: the gig led James to his first manager STEVE MACKLAM (Diana Krall/Norah Jones/Chieftans, etc.) and there was no turning back.
Cowsill, who had a lengthy run of big pop hits in America with his family band THE COWSILLS, has recently adopted Alberta as his home. Like so many of the stars, the fortune was long gone through various indulgences.
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