As the holiday season approaches, music fans are in for a treat with an unforgettable night of nostalgia and celebration. On December 5th, Glass Tiger, one of Canada’s most iconic ’80s bands, will take the stage at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre for a special performance as part of their This Island Earth Tour. Fronted by the legendary Alan Frew, the band has left an indelible mark on the music world with giant anthems like “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” “Someday,” and “My Town.” Joining them on this magical evening will be special guest MuchMusic VJ Erica Ehm, adding to the retro atmosphere. Ahead of the show, we caught up with Alan Frew to discuss the band’s lasting legacy, the changing landscape of the music industry, and what fans can expect from this highly anticipated performance.
Jeromme Graham: Looking back at Glass Tiger’s rise to fame in the ’80s, how does it feel knowing that your music still resonates with so many people today?
Alan Frew: Seeing everyone singing word for word to just about every song, it’s a powerful feeling. It’s a legacy. It’s their way of saying, you know, we’re still with you. You’re still here. You’re still relevant. And like I say, I’m very humbled by it. This tour has been great so far. It pretty much sold out everywhere we’ve gone. And I’m forever grateful.
Jeromme Graham: What can fans expect from the upcoming show at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre?
Alan Frew: Well, the band is playing great. My vocals are still, you know, still at the top of the game, still in all the original keys. So we give them everything that they would expect. And then we’ve thrown in a couple of great nostalgic moments. I won’t give it away, but there’s a real retro moment at the show’s end. And then in the middle of it, we bring it down into a very humble sort of nostalgic moment between us and the audience where it gets very acoustic. For a couple, two or three songs, it’s just Sam and myself and Al on three stools and we have some fun with it. Then there are a couple of songs in the set, especially for the fans who have seen us over and over and over again, and they’ll be surprised by them.
Jeromme Graham: What role will special guest Erica Ehm play in the show?
Alan Frew: Well, this is a really cool thing. It would have been more expected to have maybe a young artist or someone on an acoustic guitar just come out and warm the audience up and sing for them. We had this idea of asking Erica Ehm if she would like to bring some of MuchMusic’s nostalgia to the opening of the show and she said sure. She’s actually been on the tour bus traveling with the band like a musician and it’s great. Erica gives everybody a little walk down memory lane to the MuchMusic days.
Jeromme Graham: Oh wow. I’m sure you two must go way back to when she was a VJ.
Alan Frew: Absolutely. There was a moment there when Glass Tiger felt like MuchMusic was home. People used to equate Duran Duran and MTV and then they would sort of equate Glass Tiger with MuchMusic. We go way back. You got to see how Erica was sort of tossed in. She was a young girl working within MuchMusic in the back room and they came along and said Erica we’re going to make you a VJ and really just sort of threw her to the lions. She learned how to be a VJ on the spot, so you know more power to her for that.
Jeromme Graham: “This Island Earth” is mentioned as the theme of the show. Can you tell us what that means to you personally and how it ties into the performance?
Alan Frew: People think of “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” you know, a three-minute pop song and you just tap your toe and sing along, which is fine. I enjoy that. But there were numerous Glass Tiger songs where I was moved to a place of wishing this world could be closer together without the anger, the divisiveness, the angst, and all of these things that go on. If you asked me in 1986 what I thought the world would have been like in 2024 going into 2025, I thought it would have been like Star Trek. I thought we would all have been over the idea of war, divisiveness, treating each other so poorly, politicians becoming celebrities themselves, and worrying more about themselves than the people around them. But here we are. And so the irony is when we look back on some of my lyrics to songs like “Healing Hands” and “This Island Earth,” they’ve become rather prophetic.
That’s what “This Island Earth” is about. It’s about recognizing the sort of anger and divisiveness that goes on in the everyday world and just wishing we would realize that it’s just noise. A hundred years from now, when we’re all dead and gone and the next generation’s there, maybe eventually Star Trek will come and people will start to get it together and realize that it’s just useless.
Like, what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine? I don’t care what anybody says. At the end of the day, it’s just going to be a whole bunch of dead people and a whole bunch of ruined lives and infrastructure. Then suddenly someone will say okay, now we have to build it back up again.
Let’s move on. Sorry, I got quite heavy on you.
Jeromme Graham: It’s all good. That’s a very timely message. And you know, they do say music can be a great unifier. Hopefully, people will take that message and start to realize that we’re more alike than we are dissimilar.
You’ve seen the music industry change a lot over the years. How have you and Glass Tiger evolved in terms of both your sound and your approach to live performances?
Alan Frew: Well, we’re a legacy band now. We haven’t changed and we don’t need to change. That’s one of the major benefits of having a 40-year career. We know if we write a new song tomorrow, the only people who are going to get to hear it are those who care enough to come find it because radio and online outlets will not give us any play. That’s the same for nine-tenths of my generation and actually even up to just a few generations ago. We understand that.
On the positive side, we can go out and fill a theater and have a great time and share the music that people love. People will buy a T-shirt and buy a ticket to come see us, whereas a lot of young acts can’t do that. They don’t get the chance to do that. The difference, though, is that several young acts can click and have some kind of massive TikTok presence and get this little window of huge success. So for us, we don’t have to change. I mean, we still enjoy experimenting if we’re in the studio or just songwriting. Why not? You know, why not play around? But the essence of the band never changes, nor should it.
Jeromme Graham: That’s a great point. With so many hits like “I’m Still Searching,” “Someday,” “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” and so many more, how do you choose which classics to feature in a setlist for shows like this, and how do you balance nostalgia with the excitement of introducing something new or pulling out some deep cuts?
Alan Frew: I’m sure if you were talking to Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney or Guns N’ Roses or whatever, we would all universally agree that certain songs just have to be in your set. These people who are coming to see you are coming because of the legacy that you have and because they’ve supported you through all these years. If we didn’t play “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” they’re going to be very disappointed. And so people ask then, how can you play the same song all through the years, over and over? The song doesn’t change, but the presence that you have in each new city, each venue, each audience, they’re different. And it’s a different time of year. You might have been in Calgary, you know, two years ago in the summertime at a festival, and now you’re in Calgary in a theater in the depths of winter. So people’s attitudes and surroundings change, everything’s different. It’s the audience that actually changes.
When you go out and play a song for the millionth time, you get this different atmosphere, regardless if it’s the same song. And so that’s what picks the spirit of the band up. You feel like you’re playing it again for the first time because it’s got a whole different feel to it. Songs like “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” “Someday,” “My Town,” “Thin Red Line,” you know, you’re going to play them. It’s the extraneous songs that you want to try and have fun with, like we’re doing on this tour. We give them “This Island Earth,” that they’ve never had before.
We give them “Looking at a Picture,” which I don’t think they’ve had since the very beginning of the band. As I mentioned before, we also give them this lovely acoustic moment in the middle of the show.
People who have seen the show have been writing to me just raving about it, so it’s obviously working. But we will always continue to give them the classic songs that they love and expect.
Jeromme Graham: That’s great to hear. Well, Alan, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Anything else you want to add about the upcoming show in Mississauga?
Alan Frew: I would just say that Mississauga is as close to Toronto as we’re going to get. So any Torontonians reading this, get in your car and scoot out to Mississauga. We love the Living Art Center. It’s one of our favorite gigs ever. I’m looking forward to coming through to Mississauga and seeing everyone. If you don’t have a ticket yet, please grab one now.
Jeromme Graham: Best of luck with the show. I’m sure it’ll be a great night for Glass Tiger fans.
Glass Tiger’s This Island Earth Tour comes to Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre on Thursday, December 5th. Get tickets here.
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