Red Rider was a Canadian rock band popular in the 1980s.
In 1978, Tom Cochrane joined up with Rob Baker on drums, Jeff Jones on bass, Peter Boynton on keyboards and Ken Greer to form Red Rider. They were signed to Capitol Records and released their first album Don’t Fight It in 1980. With the singles “White Hot” and “Don’t Fight It”, the album quickly reached gold status. Their second album As Far as Siam was released in 1981 and featured the hit “Lunatic Fringe” which was used in the 1985 movie Vision Quest, and which is now a mainstay on American classic rock radio. The song also saw high rotation on the United States cable network MTV. Two other tracks, “Can’t Turn Back” and “Big League” were featured in later episodes of Miami Vice. Peter Boynton left the band on Christmas Eve on a tour through the southern United States because of continuing conflicts with Tom Cochrane and was replaced by keyboardist Steve Sexton on Red Rider’s third album Neruda, released in 1983. The track “Napoleon Sheds His Skin” would become one of the more popular songs from the album. “Human Race” was released as a single and also made it into heavy rotation on MTV.
For their 1984 album Breaking Curfew, John Webster replaced Sexton on keyboards. The album did not sell as well as Neruda and a dispute with Capitol Records over the future direction of the band resulted in Red Rider being dropped from the record label later in 1984.
The band subsequently signed with RCA. In what became a strong signal regarding the future of the band, they officially became known as Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, and released their self-titled fifth album in 1986 which included Ken Spider Sinnaeve on bass.
Capitol released a compilation CD in 1987 titled Over 60 Minutes with Red Rider, covering the band’s first four albums.
In the fall of 1988, the band released their sixth album Victory Day which contained the track “Big League,” about the death of a young hockey player. The young man’s father had approached Cochrane on the day of a concert, mentioning that his son was a big fan of Red Rider’s song, “Boy Inside The Man.” Cochrane asked the man if his son was going to be attending the concert, and the man responded that his son had recently died in a car accident.[1] Another note about “Big League” is that Cochrane played it at GM place at the start of the 08/09 hockey season to commemorate the passing of Luc Bourdon, a member of the Vancouver Canucks. The song was featured in a segment on CBC Television’s Hockey Night in Canada. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
