 here, Metal Voice. Look at this. The Metal Voice shirts are now on sale. Just go to the video description to find out on how you can purchase one. Metal! Welcome to the Metal Voice, a treat today, Alan. Okay, I guess what we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about the studio Moray Heights. Now that we're allowed to get out a little bit here, Jimmy went traveling, went up to Moray Heights and had to talk about the carcass, I guess there's only the carcass left, Jim, you know, burnt out structure. That's right. There's studio, a famous, famous recording studio about 45 minutes north of Montreal, where many, many, many top-notch grade A artists recorded most famously, and maybe perhaps the most, was Rush. Seven albums, Alan, seven albums. Neil loved the area so much he bought a cottage not far away from there. That's how much he enjoyed the Laurentian mountains here in beautiful Quebec. And just a brief history was Andre Perret and his wife, who, their claim to fame was engineering songs for, or a song for John Lennon, I guess when he came to Montreal, and his dream to build a studio where people can be free to sort of create in the middle of the woods. In a very tranquil and peaceful setting, Cat Stevens Numbers was one of the albums recorded there. Yeah, and you had David Bowie tonight. The police. The police. Synchronicity was what, mixed there? Was that what it was or overdubbed? Overdubbed. But look, I mean here, you know, for me, there's April Wine, Harder Faster, that's them right there in front of the studio. Yeah. Harder Faster, I like to rock. Great album. Great production. Was the same room as Rush when they did Tom Sawyer. You got there. You got that. I got there. Here's moving pictures. But hold on, this is the picture here, right? This is the loose studio pictures right here. You could see where Alex is and you could see the window out into the forest. And they loved it there. And what a great production, what a great sound this had. Grace under pressure. Yep. Yep. I got another one for you, Alan. Wait a second. Where's the dogs? Here's a dog. Got that one. Here's a dog. Our friend. Look at this. Queens right. No mention of it whatsoever. You could find anything. There's a picture of them and then all the lyrics, I mean. And when we spoke to Jeff Tate, he says he was writing or creating the characters in Montreal, right, on St. Denise Street in a bar. And then he used to go and record, you know, up north, you know, at least to the countryside of Montreal, the album. So he was creating the characters in Montreal and of course, recording and Warren Heights and probably one of the best Queens right albums there ever was. I think so. Yeah. One of my top 10 albums of all time. And in fact, when he was here with Aventasia and I had the chance to speak to Jeff, we revisited that. He asked me a time to go around and see some of his old haunts. He said he didn't, but we did talk briefly about their studio and what the status of that building was while he was here in town. So there's another one. Jeff Healy. Jeff Healy held the pay. But Alan, we forgot to mention that after our little chit chat, I'm going to show what is the remains of the studio. All right. Look at this one here, Alan. Here we go. That's a live album, Jim. I'm confused. Isn't it strange? Isn't it strange? I'm confused that a live album made it. Look at this. Of course, it's not at the studio, but a lot of it was recorded in Montreal. They used the mobile, the Lystudio mobile to record it. Oh, hey, watch out. Watch out in the end. Roll the bones. Counterparts. So I mean, you're looking at what the permanent waves was, what? 78, 79, 78. Got my moving pictures. All the way through to 93. Rush? Oh, yeah. Right. It's almost 20 years. April Wine, I believe it was first glance that they recorded there. Harder, faster. No, not harder, faster as well. But I believe also power play was recorded there. The one right after Nature of the Beast. I'm not sure. I don't think so, but maybe. Yeah, and the cult. The cult? Yeah, which I would. Electric. Electric Ocean. One track. One track. Dream of the Blue Turtle by Sting. That was over there. Canada's owned a tea party recorded three albums there, so. Kim Mitchell. She's like a human being. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. Kim Mitchell. Lawrence Gowen, who's the lead singer and piano player with sticks these days. Sarah McLaughlin. Yeah, the Bee Gees. You see a lot of Bee Gees, a lot of Canadian influence, but it was the premier studio here in Canada. I think we had the metal works, but I think the studio for a very long time, like I said, Cat Stevens in 1975 and the tea party all the way up in the early 2000s. That's quite a great run, and we're not talking just local bands recording. We're talking some of the biggest names in the business. Yeah, Brian Adams. Nazareth. It goes on and on, and I believe Frank Marino. Rainbow. Rainbow straight between the eyes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Keith Richards. Keith Richards. So we mentioned Keith Richards. His first solo album, yeah. Yeah, I mean. So now what's the story here, Jim? You went up there. Well, I want to give a little, let's get a timeline going. Let's get a timeline going here, right? Get a timeline. Built in 1972 by Andre Perry and his wife. Like we mentioned, a recording engineer. Cat Stevens probably was one of the first albums, I believe, that was recorded there until until he sold it in 1988. I think they're in Australia now. I think it's the last I heard they were. That's what I remember. Well, in 1993 was owned by Likip Spectra, a Montreal company that I guess at the time did the jazz fest, right? Shut down in 2003. That's where the squatters started infiltrating the studio. It was completely abandoned, graffiti everywhere. People just basically taking things, stealing stuff. You don't call it stealing if you just leave it there, right? And nobody owns it. 2009. It has a lock on the door. Well, there was no lock. There were no, they got rid of that really quickly. 2009, it was bought by, again, I can't confirm it or not, but let's say by a company or a person. And ever since then, it's been the same owner. And it's just basically sitting there. And I guess I have to say this, but this man named Richard Baxter, who's a drummer, a street performer. Last five years, he sort of dedicated his life to sort of try to get this renovated. And I will be clear right here now. He does not own the property. He does not own the building, but he's on this quest to get it cleaned up and make it some sort of, I don't know, museum. Maybe a place where people can learn how to play music. So again, he doesn't own it. He claims he owns this. Labor of love, Jim. Labor of love. And the guy's driven. I got to give the guy credit. He gets a lot of flack on the internet, this guy, because you know, who are you to do this? But at the end of the day, no one's doing anything but him, right? So hats off to him. I did buy this shirt off him. He did not force me to buy it. He got asked me to buy it. I wanted to have a little momentum of the studio that we so much love the music from, right? The famous, famous logo. Unfortunately, in 2017, there was a fire that was all over the news. Yeah, I woke up one morning to the radio and I said, Hey, there's a fire, Maury. Hi, the old, the studio is on fire. I mean, we interviewed Jeff Tater on that time just so shortly after and we were asking him, did you hear? He said, Yeah, I heard something about that. So it's sad because it's sad because Richard was doing his best and he's one guy, right? He's doing his best to send the message out. Let's, let's get this fixed up. The owner, and I'm being quite honest here from my understanding is the owner really doesn't know what he wants to do, right? Because it requires a lot of money and very little return, right? That's the end, the end point. If you're a museum and you charge 20 bucks and it costs 500,000 to fix up, your return on investment is a long time. I think it's up to more nights, the city to declare a historic landmark. That's my opinion. And again, I don't know the politics of why the building's there and why no one cares and what the owner's intention are. All I know is this, I think the city could step up and whatever financial burdens it has or doesn't, they can just declare the historic site, doesn't have to pay taxes, at least my understanding and use that monument to bring in tourists, right? Like, you know, you drive into a town and, hey, get to see the Morne Heights here, turn right, turn right. I didn't see that. Maybe there is a sign somewhere, but they should use that, like Niagara Falls. Come see the falls, like, you know, some, I mean, there's, you know, there's, I don't know, I don't know the logistics insurance wise for the owner. Yeah, you have to work all that out. I mean, again, we're just, we're just talking. You were able to get up there, you were able to witness it for yourself. I was kind of sad. I was kind of sad. It's like walking in the paths of greatness and all these great stars and Jimmy was taking the same path. I got to say, I'm just gonna give everybody the facts here. I saw footage of it before, a graffiti and broken doors and broken windows. Then I saw footage of it maybe a year ago or a year and a half ago before the fires. He looked, hey man, this could shape up to be a nice little museum. No promises that if this money goes to this GoFundMe that it will be coming museum because it's up to the owner at the end of the day, right? So that's why I think the only road to this is declaring it some sort of historic monument by the city of Morne Heights or the town of Morne Heights. That's the only way I see it. And I'm just being completely honest. If people want to buy a shirt, I think you're getting something in return. You're getting a little memento. That's cool. Other than that, I think you should talk to Richard Baxter. And from there, if you want to give, give, but if you feel it's better, you talk to him. I don't want to tell anybody to give or not to give. I just want to tell people, talk to him. See, talk about his passion, talk about the building and from there, take it. Yeah. And again, that's why you went up there, all these historic albums recorded there. It's got a great history. And it's sad to see that it's decrepit now. It's not as far from as glory days, but a lot of things, a lot of things change over the years, right? I mean, it's stuff goes bankrupt or whatever. It's no longer functioning for whatever reason that goes the way of the dodo bird. So it's unfortunate that the premier studio here in Canada for decades has ended up that way. And I guess if anybody has suggestions of what we should do with the studio, what they should do, send them in and maybe get some momentum, get the ball rolling for all the artists that we've interviewed over time and the books I've read and stuff, nobody's had anything bad to ever say about their experience at that, Maury Heights and this studio. You know, it's an interesting thing, and I said this before, that in the new box set of Permanent Waves 40, in the box set rush the band or the people that put together that box set, right, they included sort of like a notepad that says this studio like that. And it also has the URL, at least from my understanding of this video I watched of the unboxing, you know, the go find me sort of URL, you know, so there is an endorsement from the people who put the box set together of the 40 year anniversary of rush, right, management or whoever it was. So that's pretty cool. Getty Lee, when we went to see Getty Lee signing the books, his books in Montreal, I know Richard was there and he gave him a shirt like this and Getty where's the shirt today because it just makes him feel so good to remember the good old days, you know, of what that studio, that energy that he gave them, right. I did not go inside the building because there's a sign outside the building that says, you know, so there was a fire in the roof collapse and you can imagine after something like that it's not fit unless you have a construction company go in and fix it. So there's a sign outside that says you can't enter the building but I did not enter. But I did look through the windows around and I could see inside it's fixable. It's super fixable. It's repairable. It's a question is who's going to fix it? How's it going to get done? At what cost? And is there a return from that cost? So these are big questions. It was sad. I could see a lot of work being done around it because that's the only place where people can do work clearing out the trees, you know, making those little shrines of all the albums, which is pretty cool. The lake is beautiful. There's a nice great lake there. They boarded up all the windows and they took removed all the flags because they didn't want people going there thinking it's open and walking in, right. There is an alarm system that Richard installed. There is cap there are cameras so people don't start smashing doors and start squatting there. So it's secure. So that's the good news. It's secure. That's all I can say really. Watch the video. Watch the video. It's going to be right after this. And, you know, hopefully somebody with all deep pockets will say, you know what? I want to maybe build some condos and my centerpiece will be the studio and we'll make it into some sort of, you know, and we'll get some contributions from some of the bands that recorded there, you know, maybe they can send some of the gold records or drum sets or whatever, you know, this was and make it that kind of incorporate like a hard rock cafe in a larger setting. I think that's a great idea. Now you're saying you got a reason to go there. You got a reason to stay there. You got a reason to the history is preserved. And, you know, like I said, a lot of bands might be willing to get some gear like a hard rock cafe, excuse me. And maybe if there's a resort or there's condos, there's a lake there, you know, you put that as the centerpiece and, you know, you can, you can studio condos, the studio cafe. And you've got about the $40 million to spare. Jimmy will be the project manager. Well, you know, a lot of people give Richard a hard time, you know, he doesn't own the property, he doesn't own, he says he owns a name, the studio fair enough. He's a cool drummer, a very good drummer, great, great drummer. He's a man with a big dream, you know, and maybe that dream might not happen. But hats off to him for dreaming and you know, it's commendable. A lot of people crap on him. He's taken on the mantle to be the caretakers, but I understand from this. And if he's not going to do it, who's going to do it, right? That's right. Trying to keep the memory alive. So I mean, he does, you know, podcasts and he does videos. And that's how you keep it alive. That's how you get interest. And maybe he's not doing it right, but what is right? What is the right way to do something like this when there's no resources available, right? So hats off to him. I, you know, I appreciate what he's doing. I know a little, a little time traveling back in the past and talking about a great, great studio here in Canada, just about 45 minutes north of where Jimmy and I are. And it was one of the greats back in the day. And what do we do with it moving forward is, I guess today's the discussion debate. Leave your comments. You know, leave your comments. What can you do at the end of the day? I don't know. I think that lobby some sort of multimillionaire to build condos around it. That's probably what you could do. Get the, get the city of Warren Heights to declare it a historic site and just rebuild it and use that to bring in the tourists from all around the world. We'll leave it here. Everybody watch the little clip I did at the studio on his, on my pilgrimage, his remote travels, my many travels out, my many travels. All right. Enjoy. All right. Here we are at Warren Heights at the famous studio right here with Richard who's given like Mo at six years of your life, trying to pieces together after a fire, after a roof, roof collapse. There's just so many crazy things that's happened. And with all those insanities or let's say all these problems and challenges, you're still trying to No, I'll never give up. Never giving up. No, not giving up to finish. Until the, you know, until it's done. So why do you find it so important that you, well, I think it's the, the building that's the most music history in Canada. Yeah. By far. So we have rush, we have April wine, rainbow, rainbow, David Bowie, Bee Gees, Bee Gees, Celine Dion, Celine Dion for your Celine Dion lovers, workman. Yes. Nazareth, Nazareth, three albums, Nazareth, Tea Party, four albums. In the list. And then these are an Operation Wine Crime by Queens, right? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So I mean, you're not talking about just albums. The Colt, the Colt, Chicago, Chicago, Cat Stevens, Cat Stevens, Brian Adams, Brian Adams, Loverboy, Honeymoon Suite, Street Heart, two albums. So in other words, this is not, this is like an inspirational place where people made so much great music. Oh, yeah. Right. And that's why you're not giving up. 250 million albums. Wow. So let's take a look at sort of, we'll build up to, to the studio, which is, again, it's still under major repairs, right? So let's take a look at this here. Linda, come here. These are little shrines, right? They're monuments. Little monuments. So if you take a look at this here, this is a permanent waste. The first album they recorded here. First album they recorded here with the spirit of radio. That's right. Did you know the 40th box set, the 40th? Yes, just came out. Came out and they put the studio, rebuildestudio.com tag? No, I didn't know that on the notepad. That's pretty amazing. That's nice. The rush are supporting it. Yep, that's it. Slowly. So let's move on to the next little one here. Look here, Linda. Come here. Let's still keep it recording. We're going to do this all in one shot. Here we go. Rush, moving pictures. With the flag too? With the flag. Oh my god, there's, well, it's kind of not really positioned well, but yes. Well, there's one, that's a moving pictures flag right there, right? That's one, one-sided. So here we have moving pictures. Of course, Tom Sawyer, Red Bear Cheta, YYZ. Vital signs. Vital signs, which was actually Tom Sawyer and Vital signs were filmed inside. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's move, let's move on here. Of course, exit stage left, the famous Rush album. That album was done live, but the only thing they kept, it was the drums and the live, the audience. Everything else was re-recorded here. Oh, I didn't know if it was re-recorded. I thought it was remixed, like mixed here. No, it was re-recorded. Terry Brown said it. Okay, all right. So he said it's almost a studio album. There you go. So I was debating of doing it or not. I said, I'm going to do it. Why not? It's part of the history. And here, of course, the dogs, the single one. Signals, right? That was done double. He's a new world man, right? There we go. And the weapon and this is right here. We're seeing the peak of Rush right here. All the years. All the years. And we're moving up. And oh my god, right after signals, what do you got? You got grace under pressure, right? And you have the egg and the vice. That's right. So the meaning behind the egg, you can't crack an egg if you hold it at both points. However you put it sideways, you can crack it. But you cannot crack the egg if you have it even in a vice. That's craziness. Okay, here we go. And look, we're the buddies. Here's the buddies. What are you doing there? Cleaning up a little bit. I see what you're doing. It's never ending. It's never ending. It's always working. But here you can see the stairs. Yeah. The bunnies from Presto. 89, right? 89, the bunnies. Okay, let's move up. That's the nicest one. I think so. One of the nicest ones. Oh, Jack, relax. That's right. I have a feeling my wife holding the camera is going to fall down the stairs. Here we go. What is this? Roll the bones. Rush does rap. It's not finished. I took a bunch of dice and I remade the album cover. Yeah. And the girl, she's painting it. Yeah. You know, the little guy. Very cool. It's going to go on the whole day. Move up here. So another roll the bones like that. I did a big area for roll the bones. I like that album. Here we go. Counterparts. Counterparts. Another, you know, a 90s Rush album. Did okay. That's a nice album. The drums are something. Yeah. Very good. Again, recorded. Are you sure? The camera's okay, Lynn? Is recording? Yeah. Okay, good. Let's move on. Again, the sad part of this all is we need to take down the flags, right? The city needs to take down the flags. And the piano window. Is that blackness from from the burning? Is that it? No, that was algae. It was done. It was like that before the fire. Okay. Even Neil came here and it was black. And he was saying, he was saying negligence, negligence. Yeah. Yeah. Right here. What do we have? We have the dog. Yeah. The Dalmatian dog for signals. Okay. So let's do it. Are we about to go up here? Yeah. Yeah. Install. Wait for my wife there. Okay. All right. So here we go. So right now there's cameras. Yeah. So for all you crazy people who want to come here and just vandalize, you can't because there's cameras. Well, if they go inside it, the police going to be here in five minutes. Yeah. And that's what happened. That's what happened after the years of neglect, right? Yeah. Was people just breaking in, taking things off? It was not. They didn't break in, it was open. It was open. It was open. Everything was open. Can we see anything on the inside here? I think there's renovations in there. Can't see anything. There's the studio light there. That thing, too, is the studio signs that change colors. Again, the city, they asked me to they asked me to order. And that's because of the roof. What about, what about the city of Moran Heights saying, okay, this is now a historic site. Can we declare it a historic site? Yes, we could. Come, come closer. We could do it. And is there any intention for the city to? I'm not sure about that. No? I'm not sure. Okay. All right. I think the day when they would like to destroy it. Really? They had too much trouble, but since I'm here, 22 months, not a call. They used to have a call from the firemen and the police every day. Every two days, every day, police was here and always trouble, you know. But since I put the cameras and I put the alarm system and stuff, they didn't have calls. You probably need like 500,000, 400,000 to fix this place up. But I just put a new go fund me on for 25,000 to fix the roof. Okay. The two main beams in there, they collapse. There's a new video I just put up there. You see the work we did. We we just an emergency work. We jacked it up with posts, you know, to keep it. But now you can't go in. Was the inside cleaned up? From what I see was cleaned up. The inside's all cleaned up. It just becomes dangerous because the roof collapsed, right? Yeah. So the city doesn't want me to go in. But until we get the renovation done, we apply it. Yeah. Okay. So let's take a look around here. Is there anywhere else to look in? Oh, yeah, the lake. Oh, the famous lake. Oh, there's a lake. Nice. And from what I remember, we gotta wait. Oh, people are swimming. Yeah. And from what I remember Richard, this was one of the first digital studios to create digital albums, like to record in digital. I'm not sure. Yeah. No, no, but afterwards, when everything started going digital, well, we could double check. No, I don't think so. Because it went down because it didn't go digital. Is this the famous place where sort of like you see the drum kit? This right here? Yeah, that's the main room. So this window is here where you could see like, you know, Tom Sawyer and stuff? Well, there's a, all this part here was an extension in 86. Yeah. So when Tom Sawyer was recorded, it wasn't there. So what did what Tom Sawyer? It wasn't there? No, it's the same place. He was just, they had an extension. Okay. Okay. And it was windows inside, but they made an extension. Some part was extended, you know, they made a sure more, more room. Can you see any side? No, you can't. You can see. We'll see some stuff. No, we can't film in there. Can't see nothing. We'll see some stuff there. There's the famous way. Yeah. Okay. Let's go down the stairs. You might want to just walk down slowly there. Okay. You know, I think I'll stay up here me. Here, you're in the camera? Okay. Okay. Is it running? Yeah. Okay. Here, yeah. Jimmy, be careful. Yeah. I'm going to go from here. Just be careful. Oh, come on. There's no really. No, be okay. No, be okay. Just take your time. No, no, she's going to have a hard time. Okay. Let's go down here. All right. So what's going on here? Let's, before we go down to the lake. Well, that was the part that was built in 86. This part here, that was like the reception and little place for them to relax. Yeah. Dining area too. Okay. Is this going to be a roof suddenly over its head here or not? I don't know about that. If we would get a few millions, yes, but for now, I don't know. Look at my net. I did a nice job there. Okay. This is where the bonfires are. Okay. Now, and this is like the famous lake where you can see a lot of musicians sort of like taking a little canoes or eight. That's right. And if actually, if this raft right here is where Neilpert put his drum kit on, right? That was gone. It was gone all over. There was one, one raft went there. The other one went all the way to the other side of the lake. And the neighbor helped us last year to bring him back. So if anybody remembers that, that's where Neilpert like said, you know, I'm going to put my drum kit on this raft, put it in the middle and play for time over there. Unfortunately, you know, it is the shape that it's in, right? We're not the roof caved in. So they had to sort of remove the flags, the flags, the city asked to remove the flags. I'm not sure here it is. It's all in the wilderness. So that's all you're going to get for now. And we'll talk later. Thank you.