Final installment of 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
Andy Kim is thankful for the gifts that life has given him. He exudes gratitude in every word he says, especially when talking about the incredibly serendipitous experiences, the fortunate coincidences, the blessings, the way the guiding hand of fate chose to bless him for his remarkable career as a songwriter, artist, vocalist and performer.
He’s grateful for the nearly 60 years that he has lived his dream of being a recording artist. He’s grateful for the people who helped him along the way, grateful for the opportunities that he was proffered, and for the insight, fortitude and self-belief to leap at those opportunities.
Among a number of deserving accolades afforded him by the Canadian music industry in recent years another deserving honour will be added when Kim is inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on Oct. 17 in Toronto, alongside Jane Siberry, Ian Thomas, Triumph and Gino Vannelli.
The story of how Kim, best known for his late 1960’s iconic pop composition ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and his equally iconic, melodic song about a passionate rendezvous ‘Rock Me Gently’ got to this place in his life and career is something almost too good, too compelling, too Hollywood-esque to be believed. The success, the accolades, the airplay, the adulation and respect garnered from a literal lifetime of creating memorable music is built on the foundation of a few key, but epic objects, moments and people.
First there was the radio. As a youngster, growing up in one of the sprawling, working-class tenements in Montreal, the son of Lebanese immigrants who came to Canada seeking a better life, there were few if any roads leading to fame and fortune. To have a life a bit better, a bit less harrowing, a bit less economically and socially tenuous as you parents’ generation was something to strive for. Perhaps, if you were blessed with God-given athletic skill, and an opportunity to get out on the ice at a local rink, you could follow in the footsteps of many working-class Quebeckers and become a pro hockey player. But this was not the destiny for young Androwis Youakim. Hockey was not the promised land out of his neighbourhood – music was. And it was because of a kindness from one of his older brothers that a dream was not only kindled, but erupted into a passionate, all-consuming focal point for the youngster who would one day garner worldwide recognition as Andy Kim. Wanting to listen to music, the brother allowed Andy to borrow his little transistor radio, one of his prized possessions. After fumbling around with the dial, the waves of static parted, a booming, excitable voice came through the speakers, practically grabbing young Andy by the scruff of his neck, beckoning him to listen. The moment is almost too good to be true, something that if it were written by a scriptwriter for a movie, it would be turned down as too fanciful, too unrealistic.
“I grew up in a tenement in Montreal. We didn’t have much, but we had love. I’m the third of four brothers and somewhere around age 11 or 12, I asked my older brother if I could borrow his radio. And he loaned me a transistor radio and never asked for it back. There was a lot of static, but listen Jim, how I grew up, where I grew up, my destiny had already been written. But then one night, in my bed, I finally get through all the static and I’m listening to WABC New York. And I was mesmerized. And the guy went on to talk about the artists that are coming up, and wherever they go, girls are all lined up to get their autographs. Now we didn’t have a musical family. There was no history of anyone playing music. And even thinking about this now, I get emotional, because that’s where my career started. I loved going to school. I loved homework, I loved all that stuff. But then there was WABC in New York, Cousin Brucie was the DJ [Bruce Morrow, who turned 90 on Oct. 13!] and I was listening and heard music that I did not hear in Montreal. And I started dreaming. I went to parochial school, and they didn’t have music lessons. They had nothing except something that looked like a playground where you can run around during recess. At home, in my brother’s room, I found all these magazines and they were all about music and there were all these names and address about people in music and the name Jeff Barry was always front and centre. I didn’t do anything but start this dream. I went to New York City, where I did not know a soul, in search of the songwriters and producers that made the records I was listening to on my brother’s transistor radio. Now, at the time, my parents thought I was foolish. They didn’t want me to do it. But I was one of those kids. As I said, I loved homework, I wasn’t a problem child until my dream. And as I got older, I realized if you have a dream, you will find your dream, but if all you do is wish, you’re never going to go anywhere. So, it was my older brother who really kind of championed my dream because he saw that it was a way out. I guess he wanted a better life for his little brother,” he said.
“My father did not want me to go. My father made it known in many different ways that I was never going to do this. But look, by that point, I never listened to anybody. I just listened to my heart, and I listened to that whisper that I believe God gave me. Deep down inside, there was a moment in time that where it’s almost like I already saw Chapter 2 in my life, but no one else did, except maybe my brother who saw the idea that I had. What’s really interesting is that my father was very old school. We never really saw eye to eye on a lot of things. But I found out from him that I had second cousins in New Jersey. And the solace was that after my time in the city, I could take a bus to New Jersey and meet folks I did not know existed. And they took me in. The whole experience opened up my world.”
The next pivotal moment was that decision, that monumental choice that could easily lead to rack and ruin – but which held out a golden chalice of hope, a sparkling allure of a wonderful life following. As he said, still in his teens, Kim made the fateful decision to literally follow the voice of Uncle Brucie and seek out this mythical ‘Jeff Barry’ to seek an audience, as one would seek an audience with the Pope at St. Peter’s Basilica. In this case, The Brill Building was the sacred and holy destination, the centre of the music industry not just in The United States and North America, but the world. Kim would make his way, this teenaged son of Middle Eastern immigrants, knowing no-one in New York City, but laser focused on meeting the mysterious man who made amazing music.
“As I’m talking to you now, it’s almost like a story or a movie. Like, wait a minute, did all this really happen? It doesn’t sound plausible. And the truth is dreams are different from reality. It comes down to that transistor radio, and Cousin Brucie. If I never asked for that radio, I don’t know what would have been. I did have that umbilical cord in New Jersey if I needed something, so I wasn’t completely at a loss. But I was a stranger there, I was a stranger to all those people, those names I heard on the radio. So, I waited two and a half hours to meet Jeff Barry. He gave me five minutes and then said, ‘okay, play me something.’ So, I played him something [he had his guitar with him] and he said, ‘okay, come back next week. I kind of like it, maybe we’ll finish it together.’ I said, ‘well sir, I can’t come back because I’ve got to go home. My mom and dad are expecting me to go home, back to Montreal,’ and so I started packing up my guitar to put it in the case. Then he said, ‘well, get the address from the girl at the front desk, because I’ve got to go into the studio.’ I looked at him and asked if I could come with him, because I had never been in a studio before. So, this is the next unreal thing that happens. Jeff Barry looks at me and said, ‘have you had lunch?’ I told him that I hadn’t eaten, so he said, ‘I usually get a sandwich, and I’ll give you half.’ So, there I was, walking on Broadway at Seventh Avenue with Jeff Barry. He didn’t say a word to me as I ate half his sandwich,” Kim explained.
“We went into the basement of this hotel, which was the studio which Phil Spector, Jeff used, Ellie Greenwich used, Leiber and Stoller – a lot of people made records there. So, I’m following him, and he waves for me to sit behind the engineer, and I have no idea what’s going on, so I just sit there, and I get up to leave after a few minutes and Jeff sees me and waves me to sit back down. So, I sit there for another few minutes, but then left, ran up to the ninth floor of the Brill Building, got the phone number and the mailing address, then later got on a bus to come back to Montreal. Even just saying all this out loud to you sounds like a fairytale, let alone being around the great Jeff Barry. I mean, just being in the Brill Building was something. The Brill Building is Tin Pan Alley. The building was all musicians, songwriters, publishers and labels. It housed probably everyone you wanted to meet as far as songwriting goes. So, when I saw in my magazine ‘1619 Broadway,’ I figured it was where I needed to be. But I still didn’t really get the importance of the place before I got there. You walk into the Brill Building at that time, and you look at a board that tells me where the offices or whatever you’re looking for are. To your right, as you walk in, it was the Jack Dempsey Restaurant – with [legendary former heavyweight boxing champion] Jack Dempsey standing there shaking hands with people as they walk in. I don’t really have the words to explain it, but this was Jack Dempsey. This was New York City, in the 1960s. And it was somewhere that I felt I wanted, that I needed to be a part of. But looking at the board, I saw that Jeff Barry was on the ninth floor. And then you see the other names, Ellie Greenwich [at the time Barry’s paramour and sometime collaborator] and there’s Leiber and Stoller.”
It might be worth a short pause to just soak in the importance of those names and the songs that they crafted to the culture of, well, the world. It gives the context and setting of this momentous visit to New York way more significance, even gravitas, to Kim’s story.
Greenwich wrote or co-wrote with Barry ‘Da Doo Ron Ron,’ ‘Be My Baby,’ ‘Then He Kissed Me,’ ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy,’ ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),’ ‘Chapel of Love,’ ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and ‘River Deep – Mountain High,’ among others.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote songs that became some of Elvis Presley’s earliest and most iconic hits including ‘Hound Dog.’ ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ ‘King Creole,’ and others, while also cracking the upper echelons of the charts with tracks like ‘Kansas City,’ ‘Yakety Yak,’ ‘Charlie Brown,’ ‘There Goes My Baby,’ and ‘Stand By Me.’
Barry, the object of Kim’s obsession, wrote many hit songs alongside Greenwich, as well as with Phil Spector, highlighted by the ones mentioned above with Greenwich, as well as ‘Tell Laura I Love Her,’ ‘Remember (Walking In The Sand),’ and later ‘I Honestly Love You,’ which was the breakout hit for Australian ingenue, Olivia Newton-John.
As well as these luminaries mentioned by Kim, the Brill Building also boasted the songwriting/producing talents of Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Sonny Bono, Neil Diamond, Carole King, Gerry Coffin, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Tony Orlando, Doc Pomus, Neil Sedaka and Paul Simon.
Picking up the narrative of this incredible story, Kim talks about how he soon became more deeply enmeshed within the Brill Building system, eventually becoming collaborators with his hero, all of which leads to, eventually, the current subject of this piece, his induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“After I moved down there and started working with Jeff, one day he walked in while I was playing his song ‘Baby, I Love You,’ on guitar [written by Barry, Greenwich and Spector, originally a hit for The Ronettes, later becoming a hit again for punk icons, The Ramones] and he asked what rhythm was I playing. He liked the way I was playing it, and he encouraged me to cut the track, and it became my first million seller [hitting number one in Canada and number 9 on the Billboard charts in the U.S.]. As I think back, I was excited about being a songwriter, although I was not really a songwriter yet. All I know is that I had this opportunity to go into the studio and record my version of ‘Baby, I Love You.’ I got the courage to explore my own songwriting there. Jerry and Mike [Leiber and Stoller] and Jeff pulled me into the office one day and said, ‘stop being so f***ing humble.’ And I didn’t know what they were talking about. They learned I was there, in the building, pretty much 24/7. I lived there. It was where my dreams were expanding to not only just writing but recording, and not only just recording but for touring and being able to eventually travel the world and all that stuff. But you know what, between you and me, I still have no idea why it all worked. It’s just that there was something inside of a dream that gave me the path that eventually led me to being honoured with all these great songwriters,” Kim said, before coming to the story of the song that would mark him out as a special artist, both from a songwriting perspective, and as a performer. This song is perhaps the most impactful in his career – ‘Sugar, Sugar,’ which was performed by Kim and a group of topflight studio musicians as the soundtrack to a made-up group called The Archies, a popular kids cartoon show.
“May 24, 1969, ‘Baby, I Love You’ hit the charts for me for the first time, going on to being my first million seller and all that. The same day, May 24, 1969, ‘Sugar, Sugar’ was released. I never thought about it in any other way than just a song for Saturday morning television comic book characters. Don Kirshner, they called him the man with the golden ear, he got fired from working with The Monkees [also a prefabricated, for television band] I’m sure he had the whole songwriting world trying to write a song for this television show. And I don’t know how to explain it, how it came to be me. I mean, it took me all of 10 minutes and then you move on to the next thing and it’s in someone else’s hands. When something happens, it just happens. I have tried to dissect it a little more. I was still on the high from ‘Baby, I Love You,’ and this was just another song to me, yeah it was on the charts, but I didn’t think people really wanted to play it on the radio. But then it travels all over the world. And I really, don’t have the answer as to why. It’s not a question as to why the song was written, it was written for this TV show. The question is why has it lived so far beyond its shelf life, and my name is attached to it as writer and the singer who sang it. At the time, I didn’t look back to analyze anything.
“A few years ago, [music store chain] Long and McQuade asked me if I would come in and talk to younger songwriters. So, there were a few hundred people in the audience, and I said to them, ‘before we get started, can anyone tell me where these two lyric lines came from? ‘I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you. I just can’t believe it’s true.’ A few people put up their hands. One said Leonard Cohen, another Joni Mitchell. They talked about the poetry of it all: ‘I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you. I just can’t believe it’s true. I just can’t believe the wonder of this feeling too. I just can’t believe it’s true.’ So, for about a good minute or so, people were shouting out names of all these great artists and songwriters. And I said, ‘it’s the first verse from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’ And everybody was dumbfounded because nobody knows the verse, but everyone knows the tune.
“Are you familiar with [renowned and influential Lebanese poet/writer] Khalil Gibran? There’s a great comment [from his most famous work, ‘The Prophet’] where he basically says that your children come from you, but they don’t belong to you. You are the bow, they are the arrow, once they are born, once you let the arrow go, it goes it’s own way. That’s the way it is to me for songs. I was never precious about anything. I was excited about the process and energy of writing an idea that became a song. But then once it’s done and passed on to the producer or whoever, you just kind of leave it. I’ve had songs that were hits and songs that I loved that should have been hits but they didn’t even get one play on a radio station. But it didn’t matter. What mattered is that I was in the tent of artists, I was in the tent of songwriters and producers that made these songs come to life. I never wanted to be the guy who owned the tent. I didn’t want to be number one in the tent; I just wanted to be part of it. And that’s why, when it’s time, I will be leaving my one and only life as a happy one.”
Kim is almost reticent to talk about the songwriting process, as he chalks so much of how he creates, based on his own personal experiences and remembrances, to that ephemeral entity called inspiration.
“Honestly, I have no f***ing idea how ‘Sugar, Sugar,’ or ‘Rock Me Gently’ or anything else I’ve written actually come together. I think that deep down inside, if you really dream about something, then that dream becomes a reality. That dream has a focus to it. I can’t take a bow for inspiration. It’s an excitement, it’s an energy. And thank God that back in the day my cassette player was always working because I would hum and sing things that are going by in my mind so quickly and capturing and freezing that moment of inspiration. So, then I’ll go back and listen and wonder, ‘how did I sing that? And why did I sing it in that way? What made me sing that?’ Someone said it’s like magic – songwriter’s magic. Now, there are lots of people that will say, ‘we spent three weeks writing this song.’ And I get that. But it’s just not the way it’s worked for me. I think songwriting is the treasure of believing that something is there, inside you, our outside of you, that you haven’t touched yet. I’ve been around Jane Siberry, and I am sure there’s inspiration there for her, but there’s also technique. But honestly, I’ve never looked over my shoulder at what someone else has done. So, in a way, I think you’ve got the wrong guy to have a good conversation with about process,” he said with a chuckle, before we moved onto the subject of the aforementioned other iconic hit song that has become ingrained in popular culture, and Canadian culture, the massive 1974 hit song, ‘Rock Me Gently.’
“If you take the time to read the lyric slowly and understand the context, it’s pretty easy to figure out what it’s about and why I wrote it. There’s no serious intellectual process at work here either. I had moved from New York to Los Angeles and had met someone. Now I had only been there for a couple of days. We went to dinner in Malibu and after dinner she asked if I wanted to walk on the beach. So, we walked on the beach … and I got home at four o’clock in the morning. It’s the most graphic song I’ve ever written. And nobody wanted to put it out, nobody wanted to record or produce it. I was the songwriter, but I ended up also being the producer and the artist. I thought I had made my best record, on my own. And I think the reason why nobody was interested was because my two minutes and 30 seconds [of fame, the average length of a hit song] were up. That’s my conclusion. So, I came back home to Montreal, started by own Canadian record company [ICE Records] and put it out on my own. I knew disc jockeys from coast to coast and I called and told them I had this new record; would they play it. I didn’t say anything about the U.S., and it started to get airplay and thanks to CKLW [a Windsor, Ontario AM radio station] they loved the song, and they kept playing it enough that I got a phone call from a distributor who would put it out in the U.S. and the rest is history. So, the dreamer kept on dreaming.”
The fickle unpredictability of the music business had already left its mark on Kim, although he overcame its ignorance and infidelity to still conquer the charts with ‘Rock Me Gently’ but even that success was not enough to overcome changing fashions, changing tastes and the ‘flavour of the month,’ ‘what have you done for me lately’ ethos of pop music.
New management had the brilliant idea that Andy Kim needed a re-brand (of course that term was not around at the time, but it is what happened,’ and so he re-merged in the later 1970s as Baron Longfellow. It didn’t exactly go according to expectations of management.
“I was managed by someone who had three artists on his label. And I’ll name them for you; Tom Woodward became Tom Jones, Gerry Dorsey became Engelbert Humperdinck and Raymond Sullivan became Gilbert O’Sullivan. And he thought Andy Kim had to change his name too. I said, ‘well, everybody knows my name.’ He said, ‘no, no, you look like a Baron Longfellow. You are six foot two, with dark hair. You are Baron Longfellow.’ I went around and asked some musician friends and other people in the industry, and they said, ‘no man, we’re always going to remember you as Andy Kim.’ But then the manager passes away and I decided I would give it a shot, so I started releasing music as Baron Longfellow and this is what I would hear on the radio,’ Hey this song is from Baron Longfellow. We also know him as Andy Kim.’ But I decided not to go to his gravesite and say, ‘I told you so,’” he deadpanned, adding that there was then another lull that lasted into the early years of the 21st century before another serendipitous human entered the picture.
“It almost felt like the stamp of Andy Kim was, you know, kind of evaporating until Ed Robertson [of The Barenaked Ladies] showed up in my life and said, ‘hey man, I want to write a song with you and produce a record. I was always writing and put out some cheap music, but nobody heard any of it. Nobody cared, but I cared. Like I’ve said many times before, I have no other known skill, what I do is write songs. So, I was living my life, I was happy writing songs, even if nobody was interested and nobody was listening and then out of the shadows comes my friend Ed Robertson. And he produced my [2005 EP] I Forgot to Mention. He did such a great job and, hey man, I ended up winning Indie Solo Artist of the Year during Canadian Music Week. I don’t know how to explain all this. All I know is this; ever since I was a kid, when I was an altar boy, was to thank God. I thank him for my life. It’s been a big thank you ever since I can remember. Through the ups and downs the moments where you were hoping something would change your life, and it did for a moment, and then it didn’t. It’s always been about thanking God for these moments.
That same year, he also began something which, again was a dream that turned into a reality, which turned into a phenomenon – The Andy Kim Christmas Show, with proceeds over the years going to various Toronto-area charities. There is likely an entire generation of folks who came to know who Andy Kim was because of this popular and well-publicized event that sees luminaries from across the length and breadth of the Canadian music scene to come together and share the venerable stage at Massey Hall to play festive music, and generally have a wonderfully celebratory time.
“As I told you earlier, I grew up in a tenement. And every time I travelled and did a show, there’s always the day before the show, and a lot of times I would take my guitar to orphanages and other places where kids are in tough situations and hurting. And I would sing ‘Sugar, Sugar’ to them, and it was something I could give back. A little thing to make them feel at least a little bit better for a moment. So, I decided to do a show, a one-off, at The Mod Club. It was an incredible audience, and we all had a good time. Later that year, I remember getting off a cruise ship where I was performing in Florida and got a phone call asked if I was doing my Christmas show again. I said, I wasn’t sure, maybe? They said ‘well, we’d like to promote your show.’ So, at the beginning it was CHUM and then it became other radio stations. And I was doing this as a thank you to everyone who would take the bus, take the streetcar, take the subway – I wanted it to be affordable. I didn’t care who showed up, I wanted to show my gratitude and give something back for everything that I had been given,” Kim explained.
“The point is that with my mom, my kid brother and I used to help her a lot. We’d drag a Christmas tree from the market up three flights of stairs. And my mother would have that Christmas tree. There would be no gifts like you have today, but it didn’t matter. We had this beautiful tree. So, I’m getting a little emotional thinking about it, because I’d hardly thought about it until now but it’s still what I do think about when I think about Christmas and why I do my Christmas shows. It’s going to a charity that can help people. And to have the people, all these great artists coming out, it’s mind boggling. To actually have Alex Lifeson [Rush, Envy of None] play your songs and for him to be there, it’s beyond reality to me.”
The list of performers for the 2025 edition of the Andy Kim Christmas Show has yet to be released, and even when it is, there are still often surprises on the night of the show. A sampling of past guest performers includes Colin James, Feist, Kim Mitchell, Lights, Metric, Nelly Furtado, Ron Sexsmith, Sarah McLachlan, Serena Ryder, The Sheepdogs, Arkells, Barenaked Ladies, City and Colour, Tom Cochrane, William Prince and more!
This year’s version of the event takes place Wednesday, Dec. 3 with proceeds going to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Gifts of Light program. Tickets went on sale Oct. 17 via www.ticketmaster.ca.
The dream to be a songwriter continues apace, as Kim has never stopped following his passion and his muse. In 2011, he released his first full length album in decades, Happen Again, followed three years later by a collaboration with Kevin Drew [Broken Social Scene] on the album, It’s Decided. His most recent album, It’s Decided, was released on the Arts & Crafts label in 2015.
Besides the induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, Kim was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2018, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2019 and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2023.
“Things just come in waves sometimes. Most of the time, I’m just excited about just sitting there writing songs, then all of a sudden, they decide to give you an honour of a lifetime and I don’t really know what to do about it. I guess there comes a time when people give you an award just for a lifetime of having the best time in your life, doing what you always dreamed of doing,” Kim said.
“I’ve always celebrated; I’ve celebrated all the times I wrote a song and went into the studio and made the record, and whether they went to number one, or they never saw the light of day on the charts, I was always invigorated by the fact that I’m doing the only thing I know how to do, but the thing I love to do. It’s really a joy all around. And to be surrounded by all the other artists at the induction ceremony, that’s a cool thing. You’re around other songwriters and although we may write different songs, we may have different ideas about things, at the end of the day, we all want people to listen. And we’re celebrating the fact that, hey man this is what we decided to do with our lives.
“And here’s the thing, what I’m excited about is the fact that, just listening to them and their music throughout the years, I’m just happy they’re still around and they’re still excited. I know Triumph isn’t performing but Rik is, but either way, it doesn’t take away the joy of having done something that is part of Canadian history and Canadian culture.”
For more information on Andy Kim, visit https://www.andykimmusic.com.
For more information on the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, visit https://www.cshf.ca.
- 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.
