Young, Naive and Selfish

Aren't you glad that most people grow up and stop being selfish assholes? It's easy to be a jerk when you're young because you're immature and think that nothing bad's going to happen. So you're flippant and sometimes cruel. At least I was. I didn't really mean to be, it was more a reflection of my naiveté and insecurities.

I met Colleen at some concert - I don't remember which one but I remember it was at the Concert Hall, and probably in 1982. Colleen was into Simple Minds like I was into U2. I was happy enough to meet someone who liked almost the same bands I did and it was a nice change to hang out at a show with someone instead of always going on my own.

Colleen was instrumental in helping me start a fanzine.  Fanzines were all over the place in Toronto in the late 70s and early 80s but they were mostly punk-based and didn't reflect the bands we liked. So in early 1983 a few of us (myself, Colleen, my cousin, Anna from my high school,Colleen's friend Leta) decided to put one together. We called it "Terminal Echo" for some bizarre reason. I was at my cousin's the other day and miraculously she had a copy of the first issue. It's pretty embarrassing in a funny way, but we put out quite a few issues and they really got quite good at the end. We would bring copies down to the Peddlar, Records on Wheels, This Ain't the Rosedale Library and a few other places and they'd always sell out.

We (Colleen, myself and my cousin) were always trying to meet bands, either hanging around backstage doors, the Westbury or the Hampton Court Hotel on Jarvis. Bands invariably stayed at one of the two. We'd be on the prowl to say hello, get an autograph, and if we were lucky, hang out for a while. Sometimes we'd stalk the hallways - one of the funniest (probably not for him) was us knocking on Howard Devoto's door and him yelling out in a ticked off drawl, "I'm in the baaaaahth" - I remember running down the hall pissing ourselves laughing (small things amuse small brains).

Colleen was in heaven when we got Charlie Burchill from Simple Minds to sit down and talk to us. They played two shows at Massey Hall - May 9 and 10, 1983. The interview is laughable really, but I remember him being so friendly and approachable and when we weren't doing the interview we were all just hanging out in the courtyard chatting away.

Over the next year things started to change in the friendship; I'm not really sure why at the time. I remember being irritated a lot, was it because my cousin and I were going to more shows and hanging out, and since we were closer we didn't want "outsiders"? I remember a sense of wanting bands to myself (how stupid is that lol!). I thought of this post because I was looking for something and found a letter from Colleen apologizing for us falling out. She had nothing to apologize for, I was the asshole.

See...Colleen had cancer. I look back and realize how incredibly naive I was. I knew something was going on because at one point she had terrible breath and her stomach started protruding...then she found out she had stomach cancer. To be fair I don't think she told me how serious things were in the beginning, and me being the selfish bitch that I was, I just wanted to go to concerts and hang out with bands and do my thing. If she didn't make a big deal out of it, then I wasn't going to.

During the spring/summer of 1984 she had chemo and lost her hair (she joked she would look like her idol Annie Lennox when her hair grew back in) but she managed to come out to a show now and then, especially if it was a band she loved. I think our falling out came about because she got preferential treatment at some shows, and she was also pushy - I remember she basically crashed an interview we were doing with Aztec Camera (how inconsequential it all seems now). I was angry with her and let her know it. Looking back, she must have known how bad things were going for her and she was just seizing every moment she could.

We must have made up as friends. I remember going to visit her in the hospital later on, but honestly I really thought she would just get better. My cousin and I went to see U2 in Ottawa on March 30, 1985. When we crawled into bed the next morning my mom came in and told us that Colleen had died the previous night. I was stunned. I was also ashamed for being so selfish and uncaring. We went to the funeral, but in typical selfish bitch fashion we were down in New Jersey on April 12 to see U2 for string of dates in the US.

I often think of Colleen and how I would like to go back and change things, but I can't. Here's a photo of her with the Icicle Works, around July 1984, after she'd had her chemo.

R.I.P. Colleen. Hard to believe it's been 25 years last month.