I remember when The Tragically Hip played their last show. I watched the live broadcast on CBC television.

When Gord Downey announced to the world that he had terminal brain cancer, I, and all of my friends were absolutely gutted. We religiously followed the Farewell Tour and rooted for Gord to somehow defy the odds.

I think we all expected some last minute miracle and when that didn't happen we wept as if we had lost a family member. In a way, we did. The Tragically Hip was a fiercely proud Canadian band and the songs they wrote and sang resonated with Canadians from coast-to-coast.

This book is a MUST OWN for anyone who ever loved the band no matter what their reasons were.

I loved that Gord Downey used his star-power to inform Canadians about the attempted genocide of Canada's Indigenous population. I believe he did a lot of great things in his life and that he has left us better informed.

The Tragically Hip was not just a Canadian band. They are also important figures in the history of our amazing country.

This book needs to be purchased by every Canadian. I rate it as 10 out of 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

What can I say about this book beyond how grateful I am that I have finally finished it? In ugly and stark contract to my favorite book of the year (also a biography), Barclay has taken one of my favorite bands and one of my favorite songwriters into something and someone I don't want to read another word about.

I have loved The Tragically Hip and Gord Downie for years. Every time they came to my city, I went to see them. They've had some interesting opening bands, some of which are mentioned in the book, and some I didn't care for, but they were always something new. Gord Downie was on my top 5 list of people I really wanted to just spend hours talking to because his mind was so fascinating.

Fast forward to this trainwreck of a book. First, this is an unauthorized biography and it shows. What does that mean? Well, almost nothing is said about the other members of the band. Johnny Fay, Gord Sinclair, Paul Langlois, and Rob Baker only exist to back up Gord Downie in this book. They had nothing to say to Barclay and I learned nothing about them I didn't already know.

As for Downie, I learned very little about the man, let alone about the songwriter. There are flashes early on that talk about specific songs and their inspirations, but that's only within the context of how they shouldn't be considered "Canada's Band".

So what actually fills out this 380 page book? Discussions of the music industry, long tracts of pages about musicians they knew, some information about how certain records were mixed (and by that I mean, literally, they used this instrument or put a mic in water or some such thing). There was a lot of industry stuff.

What else filled out this book? Bias. Barclay just could not stop editorializing, contextualizing, and preaching. I don't really care how or what Barclay feels about, for example, another of my favorite bands. He hates them, btw. But he was determined to insert himself and his beliefs and his preferences into this narrative at every possible moment. It wasn't just off-putting; it changed the narrative considerably.

That it took me - on and off - the better part of a year to read this book says a lot. Skip it and wait for a real biography. This one isn't worthy. And worse, I feel sullied and cheapened for having read it, as though I have participated in a nastily voyeuristic ritual I never meant to be part of.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book - all opinions are my own.

Michael Barclay completely blew me away with this book. It would be a disservice to pigeonhole this as a biography about the Tragically Hip - yes the focus of the book is the Hip, however it is not just a biography of the 5 guys in the band, rather, of the footprint they made in music history, and that includes an in depth look at every person and event that shaped the band into the 30 year success story they are.

This book is like a master class on the Hip, and as a fan of both the band, and Gord Downie, having such a deep dive into the band was such an absolute pleasure to read. This book is sprawling in the history it covers - literally every step on the path, from the inception of the band in high school right through to the last days of Gord's life. Michael left no one out of this retrospective - this is the Hip on the largest scale possible - the band, yes, and of course a focus on Gord, but also the producers, agents, engineers, the bands music peers, family, fans, Hip cover bands, roadies, industry players - the list goes on. So many individuals who played a part in the history of the Hip are included, and that shapes the story in a way that gives it legs, and brings the band to life off the pages.

This book made me laugh out loud more than once, and unabashedly shed a few tears. This will be a book that Hip fans love, of course, but more than that, this is a book for that anyone with a love and respect for music and music history - Hip fan or not.