By Jim Barber
Champion is the name of Bif Naked’s latest studio album. Released in early 2025, it is an incendiary, powerfully honest, raw, delightfully ragged, yet well produced release, which is imbued with the characteristic authenticity, sense of wonder, wisdom and inspiration that have become the hallmarks of the iconic Canadian pop/punk/rock artist’s music over the past quarter century,
It could just as easily have also been the title of her incredible documentary, which hit the screens of communities across Canada, as well as on the Superchannel last November. Instead, the documentary is effectively and appropriately just called Bif Naked. It is as simple a title as it is evocative because those who know the subject – the human behind the name – know that there is going to be something very special contained within this cinematic story. They know it is going to be a story about raucous rebellion, sublime artistry, bold humanity. It is a story about more than just surviving the proverbial slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but thriving amidst the vagaries and vicissitudes of a life filled with an almost unbelievable level of danger, abuse, shady characters, existential pitfalls and stifling music industry bureaucracy.
Timed with a second run of screenings of the documentary is the release of a new single and video from Champion. ‘Snowblinded’ sees Bif (real name Beth Torbert) at her incendiary, soul-stirring, ‘get-off-your-ass-and-do-something-about-it’ best. In her own words, the song ‘is very different, because it serves as an anthem from my feeling of emotional discontent. ‘Snowblinded,’ ultimately, is my observation of society numbing themselves. The chorus says you’re so snow blinded; and I repeat that because I feel people need to wake up!”
The screenings of Bif Naked begin Feb. 26 at the Isabel Bader Centre, in Kingston, Ontario on Feb. 26, before moving on to a swing through Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, before wrapping up March 13 in Thunder Bay, Ontario at the Community Auditorium.
If you’re going to take away anything after absorbing the message and meaning of the documentary about this remarkable artist and human, it can be distilled down to a few key themes. First, it is a breathtakingly affirming tale of resilience, perseverance and how it is possible to retain one’s wonder, one’s hopefulness and one’s positivity even after enduring heartaches, disappointments, incidents of exploitation, injustice and abuse.
Second, the film is, in its own wonderfully singular way, a story of love. Much of the narrative hinges on the dynamics of the powerfully uplifting relationship between Bif and her longtime manager/business partner/friend Peter Karroll, who, rather than being a Svengali-like manipulator, is more like a best friend/father figure. He knows his charge better than anyone, and is as protective as a papa bear. Yet his oversight is not oppressive, and is undertaken without dampening the effusive joy and unpredictably, erratically fabulous artistry that has marked Bif Naked out as a one-in-a-million artist since her early days on the Canadian punk scene with the bands Gorilla Gorilla and Chrome Dog, and later as a critically and popularly-acclaimed alt-rock powerhouse.
It is also a revealing story of the incomprehensibly cliquey, demonstrably cynical and outright prejudicial nature of the music business from the perspective of a unicorn of an artist and a woman trying to retain her artistic independence, unique personality and creative integrity. It is actually kind of a sad commentary on how, even in what many perceive to be more enlightened times, especially when compared to the hedonism of the 1970s and decadence of the 1980s, being a woman, and a woman artist who does not fit the conventions of a female pop or rock artist, still counted against her.
But what elevates the spirit of the viewer is the elementally indomitability of Bif Naked herself throughout. Still smiling, eyes still bright with wonder, but also wisdom. A laugh not far from her lips, an expression of love towards her friends, her family, her fans not far from her mind. There is a hint of world-weariness, which adds to the strength of her enthusiasm for life and for creativity, and as battered-and bruised as she may have felt at times, her joy, love and optimism is unabated.
As with the release of her critically acclaimed autobiography, I Bificus, released by HarperCollins in 2016, Karroll was the one who pushed for Bif’s story to be made into a documentary.
“I have to blame him. I blame him for the book. I never wanted to do a memoir, for example. So, yeah, I blame him for it because he kind of forced me and badgered me to do it. And I’ve been saying that he made me do it because I didn’t croak,” she said, adding a full-throated laugh.
“The thing about it was Peter and our friends Yaz Taalat and Gabriel Napora [producers on the documentary] from Electric Panda Entertainment [a film production/financing company] are already working on the feature film based on the book I Bificus. And Peter was kind of bemoaning the fact that he was being harassed by a bunch of documentary filmmakers all the time to make a documentary,” she said.
“He was kind of whining about it but then Yaz and Gabriel said, ‘why aren’t you just using our guys to make a documentary?’ And they said, ‘yeah, Adam Scorgie and his bunch over in Alberta with Score G Productions. They have the number one documentary in the world with this thing.’ And they were working on the [former NHLer] Jordan Tootoo documentary and Things in the Ring and all of these fantastic athletic documentaries. So we started working with Score G Productions about three and a half, nearly four years ago. And it was just incredible, especially working with the director [Pollyana Hardwicke-Brown]. I mean, gosh, she’s really my guardian angel. She was such a fan, and just really brought the story out so well. She just really honoured the true story of my life in many ways, including bringing my birth mom into it. I am just really happy that she was able to bring out all of the sensitive and tender, tender stories that kind of made me who I am.”
Bif said there were no reservations or limitations put on the filmmakers and that she had none after seeing the final cut of the film before it was released.
“Obviously if I had any reservations, I certainly would have made them known, because that’s just the kind of person I’ve always been. But at the same time, I would never stand in the way of their creativity. I had full faith in not only Score G, but in Pollyanna, and of course in Peter. I had 100 per cent faith in them. After I saw the movie for the first time, I was just so happy how it turned out. I was so happy that Maureen, my birth mom, was able to have her story told. I was so moved by that. And of course, my dear friend George who I’ve been friends with since I was 13 years old. We’re still friends today and he’s been a big part of my life and my story. George has always been in my life. All of these wonderful people have been included and my heart just explodes seeing them on the screen,” she said.
“I love it all. I just, I cry through the whole thing. And then then to be able to sit in the audience and be there with the energy of the people there at the screening, seeing that film and seeing the people that I love in that atmosphere, has been so incredibly, incredibly moving. And to have a company like Superchannel, which is a Canadian company, get involved is so important to me. It all feels magical still. I just can’t believe it. And every year that goes on, we all get older, I think ‘well, life can’t get any better,’ but then, yes, it can. It’s so exciting. I feel like I am just beginning – I feel like a mid-career artist, like a painter beginning a new phase.”
And a lot of who she is, and who she has become is due to the unfettered support, unwavering encouragement and matchless understanding of Bif’s character, personality, predilections and power as an artist of Karroll.
“I couldn’t be more humbled by the way they did the film. I loved the way they treated the story between my manager and myself because I think it is kind of rare in this business. The music business is kind of weird and I think a lot of people don’t necessarily have a code of honour, if you will. I come from punk rock, and in punk rock there’s this real unspoken code of honour, but a lot of my friends and mentors in that world are long gone. A lot of them didn’t really survive – they just didn’t live that long. So for Peter and I to still have maintained this long-time relationship, I feel it’s a real love story. It’s a legacy story too, and I’m very proud of that,” she said.
The relationship is multifaceted. At times Karroll comes across as almost parental, others as a ‘bestie’ including a touching scene in the documentary where the two are interacting, bantering back and forth, while Karroll lovingly and quite adeptly trims Bif’s shock of jet-black hair. Karroll is part guardian angel, part muse, part road manager, and part minder.
“It’s a very tender scene and it’s very unique. Our relationship is very pure and true,” she said, her voice getting softer as the sentence trailed off.
Karroll of course is also responsible for much of the business interests that Bif is involved in, including her own record label, Her Royal Majesty’s Records. With a lengthy and diverse background in the music business, as well as being a rather intimidating physical specimen, possessing a brilliant organizational mind, he’s been crucial in helping Bif navigate through the minefield that is the music business – one populated with way more sharks than guppies.
Sexism, misogyny and exploitation of female artists has been the bane of much of the entertainment business, with the music industry being as awful as film and other media. It was hoped that with the rise of artists such as Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, and female fronted or all female alt-rock and punk acts during the grunge era of the 1990s that some of that vile behaviour perpetrated by an old-boys network within the still male-dominated record business would have abated. Bif disabuses anyone of that notion boldly and bluntly in the documentary.
“It exists, and it exists still, even as we get older. Today it exists times a million. All of the artists that I know that are my peers had to deal with it, and this goes for female actors too. It may be worse for Americans; I don’t know because they look a little different down in Hollywood [speaking about their culture of youth],” she said, not actually sidestepping the subject but allowing the stories from the documentary to speak for themselves, including moments where she talks about being ostracized on McLachlan’s Lilith Fair tour, and how on more than one occasion, a push from her record label was squelched by an executive because they thought she was too ‘rough around the edges’ and not marketable enough. Interestingly, in some of the most impactful negative decisions, it was a female executive who made the call.
“I know that stuff happened to me and it happened to other women too. And the thing about it is, and I maintain this to this day, with stuff like that, I never took anything personally. Never. And the same with where we were placed on the bill at the Lilith Fair and other festivals. If I was on a festival bill, I was always on first. I never took that personally and I still don’t. I’m actually happy because it just means that I’m going to be the one that’s playing for the crowd when they’re sober and they’ll remember it and they’re going to buy a record or something from the merch table. Whereas later in the night, they’re drunk, they’re not going to remember the songs for the bands, and they’re going to have spent all their money on booze and my merch,” she said.
“With Lilith Fair, that summer we were on tour with The Cult, and I was terribly excited about that and seeing Ian [Astbury], Billy [Duffy] and Matt Sorum was the drummer on that tour for them. We were all so excited to be on that tour with them. We weren’t really worried about anything else, in terms of the other girls who were on the Lilith Fair tour, where we dropped into in between shows with The Cult. Half the time we have our own groupies on the bus that would suntan on top of our tour bus naked. I remember USA Today called me ‘Porno Heidi.’ So we spray painted that on my tour bus. Every time we pulled up to a stop on the Lilith Fair it said, ‘Porno Heidi,’ which we all thought was quite hilarious, even though it was probably not appreciated. But, I mean, we found our own fun. So, yeah, it was kind of high schoolish. We were sort of sneered at by the rest of the tour. I always say that you are who you are and people in those situations are always going to behave like it’s Grade 8. And that’s okay.”
This led to a more general discussion of the music industry and how it’s changed in other ways since releasing her first self-titled album in 1994, followed by the masterfully, mayhem and melodic I Bificus in 1998. Purge was issued in 2001 followed by Superbeautifulmonster in 2005, The Promise in 2009, and Champion early last year. She’s also released a number of EPs, and had her songs included in the soundtrack for TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ready to Rumble, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Charmed and The West Wing. Bif has also had a number of live action and voice acting roles in television and film, and hosted live sports events on the former Bodog channel, making for a true creative polymath.
“We were very lucky, in one sense, to come of age when we sold our cassette tapes off the stage or out of the back of the tour van. That was serendipity. Young artists today and young bands today, they will never have that opportunity, despite the fact that they can stream and their song can potentially be heard by the entire globe instantly, which is an opportunity we didn’t have. As much as people do bemoan streaming, it’s actually an amazing opportunity. As I said even back then, there’s room for everybody in the music business. There’s room for every artist, and there still is today,” she said.
“But the music business was bananas. I heard an interview just last week where they were talking about how two executives basically had a pissing contest and they dropped Katy Perry and someone else at the same level, just to prove a point. There’s just no rhyme or reason sometimes.”
One of the constant themes of the documentary, and in Bif’s comments to members of the media regarding the film, is the importance of music in her life, not just as her vocation and medium of expression, but how she credits music for saving her life.
“I still think that performing music is probably my absolute favourite thing. And I still maintain that there’s nothing at all like a mosh pit anywhere else on the planet. It’s funny, I was just having a conversation with my guitar player, Doug Fury, and we were talking about the damage that potentially we could have been doing all along to our carotid arteries with all the headbanging. Really and truly. Ask any vascular surgeon about what we have been doing for all these years just whipping our heads around, it’s like being in a car crash – flipping our heads and our necks. But, you know what, throw on some music we love and you can bet your bottom dollar that we are going to forget ourselves. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, we’re gonna throw off the neck brace and go bananas – throwing all caution to the wind and risking our lives, flipping our hair and whipping our head as we’re taken by the music,” she said.
“Music saved me because it’s so freeing. It’s freeing for everybody involved. And there’s this sense of community that you all have at a gig. Everyone feels that there is this unspoken mutuality where if you go to any concert that you all have something in common. It’s your favourite act up there, whether you’re a fan of Hip Hop or country or whatever you’re going to see, you just have this amazing connection with all these strangers and for that two-hour show, you can forget the world. And we need that connection, especially nowadays. I think that, especially with music, for me anyway, I’ve always been such a music fan. It is just the most beautiful connection you can have with other people. And it really does, it really saves people. And it saved me. Writing music and performing is really my favourite thing to do. It really is, and it always will be.”
Like the body ink that adorns her frame, something for which she is rightly seen as a pioneer in the music industry back in the mid-1990s, Bif Naked’s music has not only saved her life, given her purpose and an outlet for her brilliant, badass and beautifully melodic voice and intellect that made her a unicorn ‘back in the day,’ and now a bona fide folk hero to so many girls and women of succeeding generations.
And she needed all the reserves of purpose and strength and motivation in 2008 when she battled breast cancer. Doing so with her usual joie de vivre and boundless optimism, as well as her blithely matter-of-fact directness, garnered an entire new audience, a new tribe if you will, for the punk rock icon – anyone who has battled cancer. Speaking forthrightly about the ups and downs of treatment, becoming a veritable walking ‘cancer warrior’ billboard, she is as appreciative of the connections she has made through the cancer battle as through her music.
“We all get older. I am getting older and my fans from before are all getting older. So many of my fans grew up with me, and now we’re growing old together. I’ve shared everything else with my fans, I’ve always got such amazing support from people that it was only natural to share my cancer journey too,” she said.
In the introductory paragraphs to this article, the author gave you his [my] takeaways. But here’s what Bif herself hopes audiences get from witnessing her story on the screen in such a visceral, open and relentlessly honest manner.
“I hope that people can see themselves in anyone’s story, obviously. I’ve always maintained, and I continue to maintain this with the book as well, that people know in their hearts that everyone’s story is equally important to tell. Everyone has a story. I’ve always said, and I’ve always understood that my story was interesting to people because I was an adoptee, I was a runaway, and for whatever reason, I didn’t get cut up into little pieces, you know. I didn’t end up in the morgue. I used to always say, ‘why wasn’t I in the morgue?’ So there’s a lot of survivor skill that goes along with that,” she said.
“And I guess I survived. I thought, ‘well, I have a big mouth, so I have to use it.’ As a result, if I didn’t croak, then I have a responsibility in this lifetime to try and be helpful in some way. Like, really and truly, how can I be helpful as a result of not winding up in the morgue. So, if I can share my story so that somebody else, even one person, can see my story and see themselves transcending their obstacles, or see themselves and pick themselves up and carry on in some way, and are overcoming something, then that’s amazing. I think that people will hopefully laugh at times too – hopefully, they’ll be able to laugh at themselves too and carry on. Hopefully, they fell like they too can overcome some of their own circumstances. Hopefully, they’ll be inspired. Maybe they’ll see themselves like me now, a 55-year-old and go, ‘yeah, I’m mid-career and I’m going to keep going too! Why not?’”
Besides the documentary screenings, Bif Naked – the band – will be hitting the summer festival circuit with her full-on rock show this coming summer, as well as an updated version of her I Bificus book, the ongoing feature film based on that book, as well as writing new music for a follow up to Champion.
For more information, visit https://www.bifnaked.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
