First in a series of five Music Life Magazine interviews with 2025 Inductees into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Legends Induction Ceremony takes place Friday, Oct. 17, at the Lyric Theatre in the Meridian Arts Centre in downtown Toronto.
By Jim Barber
There were times, throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, when Canadian singer/songwriter/performer Gino Vannelli was known in pop culture as much for his lion’s mane of dark black hair and chiselled jawline as for the brilliant insistence of his songwriting. But once the image faded, people soon came to realize that the head, heart, and spirit under that head of hair was filled with an extraordinary talent, a passion for creation, a prodigious musical intellect, and a knack for crafting songs that are not only of their time but have stood the test of time.
With a pedigree stretching back more than five decades, a time filled with equal parts creative expression, exposition and exploration, Vannelli has most definitely earned his 2025 induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, alongside Ian Thomas, Jane Siberry, Triumph and Andy Kim.
Vannelli has released 23 albums over the last 52 years, starting with his precocious 1973 debut, Crazy Life, a period of massive commercial successes through the 1970s with albums such as the soul-filled (and soulful!) pop/Adult Contemporary trailblazers The Gist of the Gemini (1976), Brother to Brother (1978), his massive 1980s resurgence with the Black Cars and Big Dreamers Never Sleep records (1984 and 1987 respectively) through his compelling explorations of his love for jazz (Yonder Tree) and neo-classical (Canto) which also saw him immerse himself more and more into Italian language music. He’s also stripped back a lot of the instrumentation of those albums to express his natural singer/songwriter tendencies with the Americana-inspired Wilderness Road in 2019, as well as his latest album, the reflective, compelling and moving, The Life I Got, which was released earlier this year.
With such a varied, dynamic and aurally pleasing catalogue of musical ruminations, and with a seemingly unrelenting passion for music and creating, the honour of being elected to a hall of fame for doing what comes naturally for Vannelli, what has been his vocation and unalterable destiny for more than half a century, is lovely, and appreciated.
“The word is recognition and everybody likes to get recognized. There’s no doubt that being recognized is a good thing. And this is not something I really thought about, I didn’t expect it or anything like that, so it’s a welcome surprise. I mean, you decide at one point in your career and your life if you live for institutionalized recognition and if you do live for it, you’ll be sadly disappointed. But when it comes unexpected, it’s possible that you just feel grateful, and that’s enough. And that’s enough, and that’s how I feel,” said Vannelli from his home just outside Portland, Oregon, where he’s lived for the past quarter century.
Vannelli is as fascinated with storytelling, the human condition, and is insatiably curious about the worldly and otherworldly. That has never changed throughout his career, nor has his desire to explore that curiosity and express through various media, what the results of those explorations are.
“It’s first and foremost curiosity. I’m always interested in various things, you know, people and their relationships with other people, or with places or with the seen or unseen, things that people would consider mystical or religious or ontological or philosophical. They intrigue me. Belief systems, what people will do to get recognition, what people do to have success or be recognized by either their peers or in a love relationship. I mean, there’s no end to the dynamics and the nuances of human existence. So, as long as you choose to peer into it, you’ll have something to talk about. And then another thing is, I just love the sound of music. I’m talking to you here from my studio, and I’ve just produced this Italian comedian artist. He came all the way from Italy to do his vocals here. And it’s fun, you know. So there is that fun element that still remains for me. I still like to tour. I don’t over-tour, but I still like to perform. I like to perform at a high level, so I always make sure I’m ready for the stage. It really comes down to this, that once the fire is gone, or the flame is doused, I just won’t want to do it. But the flame is just not doused for me,” Vannelli said, before angling the conversation to the importance of always challenging oneself to be better, in this case, a better songwriter.
“In the beginning, it really takes you thumbing through the encyclopedia of good writers and what they wrote. Read their lyrics, listen to their music if it’s co-written, however it comes, and study them, and try to emulate them. Try to write a good Cole Porter song or an Irving Berlin song, or a Sammy Cahn song, or an Ira Gershwin lyric or a George Gershwin melody. Do it like an up-and-coming artist would try to mimic a great painter in the beginning. And when you get close to having something that’s listenable, that’s compact in three or four minutes, that sends a message and has all those qualities that a good song has, then you’re getting somewhere. But in the beginning, it really is all about study, study, study, emulate, mimic and see how you stack up. And it takes years to be able to suddenly have a passage where you say, okay I’m ready. For me, I started writing songs when I was 14 or 15 and I was ready to record my first album when I was 20 years old [leading to his debut album, Crazy Life, which came out in 1973 on A&M Records]. And that may seem like it was quick, but that five- or six-year period during my teenage years, that’s a hell of a long time for a teenager. Time goes really, really slowly when you’re that age.”
Warming to the topic, which makes sense since this article is about Vannelli being honoured for his skill and success as a songwriter, Vannelli said the next part of the process involves self-reflection, self-criticism and being honest with yourself.
“Think about it this way, there’s no way to tell if the suit fits you right unless you look in the mirror, or pass by a storefront window and go, ‘oh this is awful,’ or ‘this is fine.’ So, there’s no way to know if the song is good until you record it, hear it back and say, ‘oh, that’s it.’ Now, sometimes it’s a little confusing because you don’t know if you’re falling short as a singer, you don’t know if you’re falling short as a producer as, say, the music man or lyricist or someone who’s just not, you know, ready to express themselves yet. For me, it really was five or six elements that were going on before I really could tell whether a particular song was really good. Many times, the song was good, but I was not approaching it right, or with full awareness,” he explained.
“And sometimes I sang very well, but I wish I would have written a better lyric here and there. And then finally, as the years go by, you won’t let a song go out unless it’s a perfect lyric, unless you get to a point where you don’t need to subtract or add anything. I have my ways now, when I am working in the studio that help me get to that place. I will sing and produce something, then I’ll listen to it in various places: my home office, on earbuds, at a friend’s house, so then I have various ‘mirrors’ to see the reflection of my work. Then when I’m convinced, after I’ve listened to it in various places that it can’t be better, I’ll just wrap it up and put a bow on it. Now, we didn’t do that in the early days because studio time was very expensive.
“We were recording at A&M Studios or Epic or private studios, and you had to make the day work. And if you mixed it, that’s it. It was $1,000 a day or something like that, and you weren’t going to go back. The record company would give you no more budget. So after you spent whatever it was, $125,000, $150,000, $200,000 in some cases for an album, that was it. You were not going to redo it. Now I have that ability because for the last 20, 25 years, I have my own studio, my own place of production, the equipment that I really want. Now I can really sit and listen and say, ‘no this needs another touch.’ Now, the sin that a lot of artists are guilty of when they suddenly have all these things at their fingertips, is they can actually overstay their welcome in the studio and beat it to death, which takes all the life and spontaneity out of it. So that’s where you have to take it out of the studio, listen to it somewhere else, some other time, and suddenly you become the audience, the observer, the listener, and you’re not the producer. And you’ll get it, you’ll know whether it’s cool or not.”
While the creative fire still burns and has outlets in both music he produces for other artists, as well as his own, Vannelli is coming to a point where he believes less is more, in terms of how to release music. Even though he has released full LPs of his original compositions, as well as compilation and live albums, Vannelli said moving forward, he’s probably going to put out EPs instead of full-length albums.
“Artists, especially good artists, tend to be a little long winded. And they just like to express themselves and speak, in no uncertain terms, and usually speak for a little while. I myself, I’m thinking right now that I probably would not put out another album. I’ve put out 23, including the one that just came out less than a year ago. Going forward I would probably put out just extended plays with five or six songs. I think that would be enough for an audience to enjoy a concept. I don’t think people really have or take the time to really listen to almost an hour of music anymore. I think there are too many things going on in our lives, and I think an artist needs to be aware of that. There could be exceptions to the rule, and there always is, but my feeling is just based on my own habits. There are good albums that come out, and I devote some time to listening, but not like I did when I was 18 years old. We tend to listen almost like it’s a drive-by or on the fly. So, I think five cuts is really enough for an artist to express himself or herself. Maybe there’s a few really, really ultra-popular artists that still get off on releasing 10 cuts, but I think for 90 per cent of the artists the EP is going to be here to stay for a while because it sort of reverted back, in a strange way, to the 1940s and 1950s. I mean, in those days, artists just came out with a single, a 78 [rpm] in fact,” Vannelli said.
“45s weren’t out until the early 1960s, so an artist would release a 78 every three, four, five months and maybe put out there or four that year. If they had success, they’d play the Copacabana or something like that. Then when the 1960s came around, there were no albums. I think Frank Sinatra was one of the first artists that came out with the long player, the LP, in 1958 or 1959. Then it became the staple in the 60s and 70s. Albums became the thing. Artists put out albums and either got rich or poor off of them. As listeners, and as teenagers growing up, that was our pastime. Back then we didn’t have phones with 10,000 cuts per stream. So, we bought an album and we poured over that album for a month and just listened to it and listened to it and then carefully put it away in our archives, into our library, and maybe six months later we’d revisit it. It was a culture back them. Listening to music in the 1960s and 1970s and even in the 1980s was a culture. And it’s no longer a culture. I think a lot of people, even people of a certain age, have a hard time to sit down for an hour. Now, it may be that they put on a long player while they’re cooking, while they’re having a party, and it suits the ambience. But to actually park yourself down on a couch and listen – that’s a rarity these days.”
Technology is obviously the reason behind the epoch-changing way music is ‘consumed’ [editor’s note, the writer of this article HATES that term] as much as it has changed the way music is produced. It has added a levelling, democratizing, cost-effectiveness factor into the music creation equation that has allowed for more people to express themselves, and more choice for those on the other end of that relationship – the ‘consumers,’ so to speak. Vannelli was an early adaptor of new recording technologies, alongside his producer/brothers Ross and Joe, with whom he’s collaborated a lot over the years.
“By 1983, which I think was when the first Apple computer, the Macintosh came out, we looked at it and said, that’s the future. We’re going to have one box with all the instruments available on it. We knew it was coming. So, I learned the language very, very early on, which means I’m comfortable with both the old school and new school. Getting guys to rehearse, all that kind of stuff, as well as getting all the new software, the plug-ins, and all those things. I mean before long I could actually sit down and play all the rhythm instruments. I could actually create a record myself with all the new software that’s out. You still have to think old school in the sense that, even though your delivery system is brand new and your piano is digital and you’re using all the Thunderbolt 5s and so on and so forth, you still have to be able to play it and conceive it. You still have to be able to write a lyric. People think that they’re going to get away with creating a record with AI. Well, they’ll get away with it, but that’s about all,” he said, adding that technology may have aided in the mechanics and efficiency of songwriting, but that his process is still one that is highly natural, and has adapted and evolved over the years more out of genuine curiosity and willingness to challenge oneself than simply to show off his technical prowess with all the new gear.
“It varies even these days, because sometimes it would be just slamming the keys and just singing out loud and things would come out just unconsciously. And I’d be like, okay, that’s nice. And then the perspiration part of the process would happen where you have to finish it. For instance, the A Good Thing record that came out in 2009, that was all poetry, all lyrics first. And then I set music to it. So, that was a whole different technique; a lot of editing out of stanzas and quatrains an all that. But that was something different. One time I was sitting down in a café and I saw this woman wheel, what I took to be her husband in a wheelchair. He probably had a massive stroke or had Parkinson’s or something and he was shouting out involuntary sounds and all that and she treated him with such dignity and spoke to him as if he was a man. I knew that’s what I have to write about, this woman, this hero that I see before me. I mean, it happens for me in all kinds of ways. But when your eyes are open and ears are open, there’s these minor miracles all around you and you want to log them. I tend to be that way. My process is either write lyrics and then sit at the piano and say, ‘well, what kind of music does this want to be?’ Or sometimes I’ll just sit down and start writing music and say, ‘oh, I have a lyric somewhere and it would be perfect here.’ Sometimes that works out, sometimes it’s trimming the square peg to fit in the round hole, or the other way around. There really is no set process to it. It’s just any which way you can. The only thing I could say is really the process is when you have something you want to say, you want to get off your chest, something you think is really important. You don’t care how you’re going to say it, but you’re going to say it.
“The trick is to observe and try to hold back your own opinion, right? Because the minute your opinionate, then you’re not the documenter. You’re not the observer. You try to tell the truth, and sometimes you have to opinionate a little bit, but I try to not moralize what I am documenting in the song. I just try to present it as is, a little bit like [Russian playwright Anton] Chekhov would do with his plays, where he would just exhibit what the story was. He would just reveal the story, let it unfold, and resist giving us his take on whether it’s a good thing or bad thing. I think that’s where I tend to be a lot more these days. I try to reveal without cloaking it with my own opinion. In some ways, there’s going to be my opinion in there, but it’s opinion that’s nuanced. That’s the undercurrent because I’m bringing a point out, but I try to resist inserting myself into it too deep, so the audience can get, or the listener can get, taken away a lot easier. To me songwriting is to take people on a journey with me. That’s all. I enjoy the journey and I enjoy this place that I’ve been in writing this song and I listen to it and say, ‘that’s a very interesting thing.’ Maybe you will like the journey as well. Maybe you’ve been there before. Maybe you can relate to it and maybe it pleases you. It’s very simple. It’s taking people on a journey or just simply pleasing them, making them feel good or making them think a little bit. It’s almost like giving somebody the nod to agree with your thoughts and feelings as a writer. You write a song, you sing it, and someone listens to it and they go, ‘yeah, I’ve been there. It really is something I’ve experienced. I agree with you.’”
The legacy of commercially successful hit songs in Vannelli’s repertoire goes back 50 years. He admits that there are certain songs, certain chestnuts that not only catapulted him to prominence, but also built his reputation as a bona fide hitmaker and artist of some significance and excellence. Some artists and bands, especially ones who have continued to write, record and release new music, may not be as enthused about trotting out their hits night after night, especially when the music they’ve poured their heart, soul and energy into lately isn’t catching on because of the hyper-stimulated nature of the marketplace in the age of streaming, a dying terrestrial radio industry and stripped back record labels. Or they’ve decided it’s not worth their while to bother with new music and contend themselves with ONLY playing the back catalogue. For Vannelli, his professionalism, the respect he has for his audiences, as well as for his own hard work, means he still enjoys playing songs such as ‘Wild Horses,’ ‘Black Cars,’ ‘I Just Wanna Stop,’ ‘Living Inside Myself,’ ‘Hurts to Be In Love,’ ‘People Gotta Move,’ and others.
“You always get a little bit of a rush from the audience when you play those songs. There are six or seven songs that I can’t get away without playing. And you have to find a way to bring your spirit to it so that you can actually sing it, sing it well and play it well, so people can enjoy it because it means a lot to people. It brings them back to a time in their lives. It’s important to them. There are maybe artists who don’t give a lot of thought to that. I’ve heard artists say, ‘I won’t play this song anymore. I’ve played it too many times.’ But if you’re really empathetic, you think of your audience or you think of the person in 1977, or 1985 that listened to that hit over and over and over again, and they want to hear it because it brings them back to a certain time, a certain feeling in their life. If you can do that at the spur of the moment and enjoy it and really put your heart and soul into it, as if it’s a brand-new song, then you’ve mastered something inside of you as an artist. That’s how I look at it. And really, Jim, it’s also a code you live by. That you’re going to either do your best or not. Whether the audience is very attentive, or not so attentive. Whether it’s a great hall, or a not-so-great hall, whatever it is, whether you’ve got a cold, or not, you say, ‘I’m here for this and I’m giving it 100 per cent,” he said.
“I guess part of the code is you decide that if you don’t enjoy just singing, playing and being onstage, then you look for all those excuses to feel good. ‘Oh, you know, the audience knows this one better.’ Or ‘I’m not going to sing this song because of this or that.’ No. I don’t look at it that way. I choose 15 or 16 songs, I’m onstage for about an hour and 45, hour and 50 minutes, and I want to be able to sing well, and I want the band to be able to play their parts really well, and I want the sound engineer to do a great sound job at the board. And then it becomes worth it to be on the road. If it’s not, if you’re not reaching for that high standard every night, why be on the road? Why perform? Too many people who have got to my age [73] kind of phone it in, or mail it in. And it’s not pleasant to go see them. It’s really fun to go see someone who’s been in it for 50 or 60 years and their heart and soul is totally in it and for their band to be spot on. Everyone marvels at that, like seeing a guy at the gym who’s 80 years old and still in great shape. It’s very inspiring.”
One of the ways Vannelli believes artists can maintain that passion and dedication to their music, their craft of songwriting, the excellence of their stage show and the prodigious musical abilities of their band is by actually incorporating some other outlets into their lives.
“Artists have to develop other interests in life. You can’t be 85 or 90 years old and the only kicks you can get are from being onstage. You have to have something in your life that motivates you because it’s not only about being on stage, which is always going to be an enjoyable rush. You have to think of the travel, getting there, flights, sound checks, hotels, this and that. It takes a toll even when you’re young. I remember being 30 and 40 and being on the road and feeling beat up when you’re traveling 10 hours on a plane, or even five hours, and the next day you’ve got to get up and perform. And sometimes the hotel is fine, but sometimes it’s not. Sometime the people in the room next door are keeping you up, or the air conditioner doesn’t work, or the food is awful and you get a little food poisoning – you name it. There are so many things coming your way on the road. So when you’re older, it hurts even more. Sometimes when I see these artists in their 80s or even 90s, I think, ‘I wish you had some other point of interest in your life that would really make you passionate. What else have you done?’ And believe me, I’ll know when to hang it up. It may be a few years away, or it may be next year. I don’t know, but I know when I’m onstage how effortless it is, or how difficult it is, and sometimes it’s a little more difficult than other times, but most of the time, it just comes out the way I want it.”
For Vannelli, it may come as a surprise to some that his outlet is another form of creativity, that still incorporates his musical passion, but which is for a completely different audience – graphic novels.
“I’ve been writing a lot. I’ve just written seven books, and the first of the series is going to come out next year. I’ve also written music for it. Each story is going to come with an EP, plus the narration. That’s my new project. I’ve also almost finished a long novel, which is probably going to be around 400 to 450 pages. But these seven books, called ‘The Book of Seven,’ the first one comes out in 2026. They are graphic novels and they’re not that long, about 120 to 150 pages each. And they’re stories that have been living with me for many, many years. I finally finished them over the last five or six years. Now I’m just compiling the music for the first one, the first story,” he said.
“They are seven disparate stories. They don’t repeat. It’s not a continuum, but there is an undercurrent to all of them, and they’re all inspired by personal experience, and then I’ve taken liberties with that personal experience to expound. I really couldn’t tell you what it’s about without giving away the story, but the first one is called The Falconer. They’re close to my heart because they’re all about what I believe in and how I see things. And yet there’s nothing I believe that’s preachy about them. Most of the book will be in colour and the illustrations are amazingly beautiful. And there’s also great narration for those who want the audio book version. In the beginning, I was starting to write them as screenplays, but then I changed my mind, because I don’t want anybody messing with them. I went to a few directors and people in the movie industry and they wanted to change things. So, I decided, no, these will be books and I will codify my ideas and I will compete them. And they are completed, although there might be a few touches that I add here and there before they come out. But this is something I really wanted to do. The Book of Seven is indirectly autobiographical because they were writing from firsthand experience. So people could really read into them journey of my life, you know, with these books. I just didn’t want to do an autobiography per se and bore people with my life. I wanted to create enjoyable fiction out of something real.”
Discussions as to how The Falconer will be released, marketed and sold are ongoing, but Vannelli said he hopes an announcement will be coming soon.
For more information on the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, visit: https://www.cshf.ca.
For more information on Gino Vannelli, visit: https://ginov.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
