After a magical opening night to the Strange Animal weekend, I was so thankful that I still had the Saturday show to attend! This was the night I’d have front row almost-center seats, and I wore my modified Strange Animal shirt so that Gowan would hopefully see it! I also brought a real camera in my bag this time to see if I could sneak in a few shots at the end of the show. Shh

The festivities of the evening started at 6pm at Falls & Firkin Pub inside the Fallsview Casino. I’d come there on Friday night with Amy and Juile after the show, and they presented me with the bright idea of asking if they took reservations. It turns out they did, so I reserved a large table that would hopefully fit all 15 or so people who had RSVP’d on Facebook.

It worked out pretty well! We were a little squished once everyone arrived, but all seemed to have a great time. I ended up at a table surrounded by Janet, Norma-Lee, Shane, Julie, and Amy. I had a greek salad and arranged the remaining pieces to look like a face when I was too full to finish.

At one point someone was pointing out the window, and I turned to look — oh geez, that couldn’t be snow, could it? It was! There was a slight chance of snow that day but I didn’t actually think it would happen! The snow only fell for a couple of minutes, but boy was that odd!

After getting a few group shots of everyone, the party broke up and most of us headed over to the Avalon Theater. People were hanging outside the lobby for awhile, and while I was anxious to see my front row seat, I did wait out there for a few minutes.

Janet and I decided to take a picture of an ad for the concert that we’d seen down the hall. As I was taking the picture, a guy came up to me and complimented me on my shirt. I thanked him, and he soon found out that both I and Janet had come up from North Carolina to see Gowan. “Wow,” he said. “You are huge fans! Are you going to the meet and greet?”

Janet and I exchanged “WTF” looks. No, we replied, we had no knowledge of a meet and greet. Craig (which, I later found out, was his name) said he’d gotten into the meet and greet because a friend of his works at the casino. Without thinking twice, he said he’d call her to see if she couldn’t get us in somehow. Unfortunately, when he made the call we could hear in his voice that the answer was going no. Man, so close! But it was very nice of him to ask for us. He had to go because the meet and greet was starting soon…so we told him goodbye!

The mid-'80's are often viewed as sort of a black hole for rock and roll. It was an MTV world, with synth-pop dominating the charts and hair, teased and styled into pretty-boy perfection. It's hard to reflect on that period without cringing.

But for Larry Gowan it was time of rock 'n' roll glory, a time when he was known as the Strange Animal.

It was 25 years ago and Gowan had turned a bunch of demo tapes he had made in his parent's basement in Scarborough, Ont., into a multiplatinum-selling album that competed at the top of the charts with Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. and Phil Collins' No Jacket Required. The album scored radio hits with four songs - A Criminal Mind, Cosmetics, Guerrilla Soldier and (You're a) Strange Animal.

The album was called Strange Animal and it was recorded in a stately English mansion, Tittenhurst Park, that was home to two Beatles. It was where John Lennon recorded Imagine and provided the backdrop for the Fab Four's last photo shoot in 1969.

When Gowan arrived in 1985 for five months of recording, Ringo Starr was living there.

He still marvels at the experience. "To go up to that house and get past the guard dogs and knock on the door and have Ringo open the door and say hello. Wow."

Gowan has gone on to do many things since. For the past 11 years, he's been the lead singer and keyboard player for the hugely successful prog-rock band Styx. He still performs more than 100 shows a year with them.

Yet his defining moment will always be 1985, the year of the Strange Animal.

"To this day, I can't walk out on the street without someone yelling out 'you've got a criminal mind,' or 'you're a strange animal,'" Gowan says in an interview from his Toronto home.

Although Styx is now Gowan's bread and butter, he couldn't let the 25th anniversary of Strange Animal go by without marking it in some way. He took some time off from Styx, found the original tapes in a New York vault and remastered the nine songs for a special anniversary package - Return Of The Strange Animal - recently released on the Linus Entertainment label.

He's also assembled some of his old bandmates from the mid-'80's (as well as Styx drummer Todd Zuckerman) to perform the album front to back at two concerts Friday and Saturday at the Avalon Theatre of Niagara Fallsview Casino. Both shows sold out quickly.

Gowan, 53, admits that a lot of bad music was made in the '80's.

"I'm usually one of the people dissing that period of music," he says. "There was some dreadful stuff in the '80's, but like any decade, there's always dreadful stuff. We were just more aware of it because it was all over the television, but there was great stuff as well and that's what has survived."

Gowan attributes the success of Strange Animal largely to the quality of the band he had working with him - David Rhodes on guitar, Jerry Marotta on drums and Tony Levin on bass. If the names are familiar, it's because they are the guys who have backed Peter Gabriel for most of the past 3o years.

It was at a Gabriel concert in Toronto where Strange Animal had its start, Gowan explains. He passed his demo tape to British producer David Tickle who was working as sound engineer for the Gabriel tour. Gowan told Tickle that musicians like the ones backing Gabriel on stage that night were what his songs needed to bring them to life. A few months later, he got a phone call. Tickle told him the guys from the Gabriel band liked the demo. He also mentioned that he had been hired to outfit a studio at this big house in England called Tittenhurst.

"The name seemed familiar to me," Gowan recalls about. "And then I said, 'Wait a minute is that the place where John made Imagine?'

"And he said, "Yeah, Ringo has moved in there now and he wants to get the home studio up and running again. So why don't we make a record at the same time?'

"And that's how it all very rapidly and remarkably came together. Yes, it was a real 'wow.'"

©2010 (Graham Rockingham, Hamilton Spectator)