By Jim Barber
They’re one of those bands that kind of gets lost in the shuffle when talking about the excellent Canadian rock music of the 1970s and early 1980s. Overshadowed? Often. Underrated? Always. Prism was as prominent a name on the airwaves of Canada, and North America for that matter, during that time period as contemporaries such as April Wine, Trooper and Triumph, and perhaps only eclipsed by the juggernaut that was – and is – Rush.
With a blisteringly potent, instantly memorably, and brilliantly compelling series of hit songs from the powerhouse ‘Take Me to the Kaptain,’ ‘Young and Restless,’ and “Spaceship Superstar’ to the sublimely melodic ‘Flying,’ ‘See Forever Eyes,’ and ‘Virginia,’ epic ballads like ‘Take Me Away’ and ‘It’s Over’ to the monumental epic, ‘Armageddon’ Prism was a bona fide rock hit making machine – perhaps the Great White North’s version of Kansas, Boston, Journey or Styx.
Many of those songs are still played on old-school terrestrial radio, especially with the proliferation of the ‘Classic Rock’ or ‘Classic Hits’ formats, as well as on satellite radio and streaming platforms. But their elevation to the pantheon of great Canadian bands, commercially and touring wise, only lasted five years. The vicissitudes and vagaries of the music industry, and the many issues, both business and personnel related, took a toll, and by 1983, there were no original members left.
The ’classic lineup’ of Prism was constituted by lead vocalist Ron Tabak, lead guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, keyboardist John Hall, drummer Rocket Norton and bass/rhythm guitarist Al Harlow. At times, the early lineup of the band, especially for their first, self-titled album, also included Jim Vallance, soon to become one of Canada’s most successful and lauded songwriters/producers, on drums, as well as trumpet player Bruce Fairbairn, later also becoming a legendary rock producer. It even included bassist Tom Lavin, who would go on to found Juno winning blues act, the Powder Blues Band.
After the 1977 first album, three others quickly followed, establishing Prism as one of the most prolific and in-demand bands in Canada. See Forever Eyes came in 1978, followed by Armageddon a year later, with Young and Restless being released in 1980. Later that year, their All The Best of Prism compilation dominated sales. But by then the ‘issues’ had settled in. Small Change in 1981 spawned one hit single (oddly enough, way more successful in the U.S. than in Canada) ‘Don’t Let Him Know,’ followed by the album Beat Street in 1983, which was not promoted by the label, and featured none of the classic members.
But over those glorious few years, Prism garnered 11 Juno Award nominations, including for Group of the Year four times (winning in 1981) with Fairbairn winning for Producer of the Year for the Armageddon Album in 1980.
Fast forward to 2025, and Prism, under the leadership of Harlow, is still out there, still playing those songs, as well as a few newer ones, with the same energy, vigour, enthusiasm and passion as always – a true example of rock and roll resilience.
After a pair of shows opening for British rock legends Nazareth, which includes an Oct. 9 date at the new Hard Rock Casino and Hotel just outside Ottawa, Prism heads back west for shows in Oliver and Kamloops B.C., before a Halloween concert at the Regent Casino in Winnipeg and a New Year’s Eve performance at the Deerfoot Casino in Calgary.
What would eventually become Prism began in the incredibly fertile and dynamic Vancouver music scene of the early 1970s. Harlow said that the future members of the band were already in demand performers and songwriters, venturing into various studios to record and release music – all at the same time. Rubbing shoulders, sitting in on one another’s sessions, keeping tabs on what the other folks were doing, these were all part and parcel of being young, hungry musicians on the rise.
“There was a band, The Seeds of Time, which was Rocket, and Lindsay and John Hall and me. And we were around about ten years before Prism. But at the time, like most young bands, we were like a dysfunctional family, shall we say. And people came and went. A bit later, there was Bruce Fairbairn, and Rocket Norton had the Rocket Norton Band. So, they were recording, and The Seeds of Time was recording, and I was solo Al Harlow, in a way I’ve always been solo Al Harlow. If I wasn’t in the Seeds of Time, in and out of The Seeds of Time, I was in the studio making my own recordings. So, there was all this mishmash of recording that was going on, and it kind of morphed into the Prism project, insofar as Bruce Fairbairn and Lindsay Mitchell, they kind of roped in Jim Vallance, and they were cutting some tunes at the same time that the Rocket Norton Band was recording, and the Al Harlow band was recording. However, they grabbed Jim Vallance’s songs, shall we say. And then when we were all together, they realized that between all of these projects, there wasn’t really a singer in the room,” Harlow explained.
“They went out and found Ron Tabak. So, if you want to use that as the lightening rod, then you would have to say that bringing in Ron Tabak to sing on the recordings that Bruce Fairbairn and Jim Vallance were making, and Lindsay Mitchell was in the room as well, that could be said to be the birth of Prism. However, John Hall and Rocket Norton and I were kind of lingering around. When it finally got serious, and we had to sort of congeal as a band, instead of being just a bunch of guys, because there were like five drummers and seven bass players – there were all kinds of people coming and going – when we realized this was going somewhere, there is some magic here, we’d better form a band around it. And that became the Prism on the album covers.
“We had a few names; actually the band was called Under Construction for a beat there, and then somebody came up with the idea of Prism because it seemed to have a visual connotation. You can close your eyes and sort of imagine how you might present this thing, with light shows and rainbows and crystal reflections and all of that. And it’s funny because it fit in more with some of the stuff we did on the original demos, all of which I have. There were some jazz fusion stuff that was being recorded, but it was the songs that Jim Vallance was working on, that was what attracted the record companies. They kind of said, ‘well that’s great guys. You’re playing jazz fusion. Well, you can just put that in your back pocket and save it for the box set. We’ll go with ‘Spaceship Superstar,’ and ‘Open Soul Surgery,’ and ‘Take Me to the Kaptain’ and ‘It’s Over.’ We’ll go with those songs. And they did. So that’s kind of how it all began, and heaven knows, if nothing else had happened, Prism was at the centre of this little community there, which spawned so much other activity. Like, Jim Vallance met Bryan Admas around Prism’s songwriting demoing process. And of course, Bruce Fairbairn himself went on to an illustrious career producing AC/DC [The Razor’s Edge] and Bon Jovi [Slippery When Wet, New Jersey] and Aerosmith [Permanent Vacation, Pump]. So that’s a pretty cool legacy on its own.”
And then there was the kid hanging around the studio. With tousled blonde hair, a rasping voice that belied his incredible youth (he was 17 turning 18 in 1977) but with a confident streak a mile wide, Harlow witnessed firsthand the nascent Bryan Adams learning his craft by watching Fairbairn, the Prism lads, and especially from working closely with Vallance.
“Even before he did the stuff with Sweeny Todd [replacing Nick Gilder as a 15 year old!], I knew he had something. He was so focused. I mean, he blew everybody away because he was just a very determined young man. Everybody else was sort of bouncing around and making a few mistakes and getting involved in drugs and partying, but he stayed away from that, and it was noticeable just how serious he was. I mean, it’s hard to say, you know, yes, I knew the Titanic was going to sink, or yes, I knew Bryan Adams was going to become this big international star – nobody knows for sure. But I remember him from before everything happened for him. And I remember being really impressed that, first of all, he was very gregarious, you could feel as though you were friends, and you could chat and hang out and do all that. He was very easy to engage with. But foremost, he was very, very intent and very, very focused. Nothing was going to dissuade him from reaching his goals. I love him still.”
All of the folks involved in the early Prism days were influenced by many different styles, including jazz, hence the element of horns introduced into many of the band’s songs. At one point, an American music critic called them, ‘The Who with horns,’ because of the bombastic riffs and then the scintillating cascade of horns. Harlow said the music of the 1960s, as with many of their generation, was fundamental to their development as players and writers, as well as their abiding desire to join or form bands.
“Rocket, John Hall, Lindsay and I, as The Seeds of Time, we were the Beatles and Stones generation, that kind of stuff. We all saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964. I even had copies of ‘Love Me Do,’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ in late 1963. However, we were also children of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and also early Motown and the Stax, Volt stuff – the great rhythm and blues. So, we were bathed in horns and horn sections. It was our dream to make music that would have all those elements in it. It was a direct result of our influences, between Motown and the British Invasion and all that kind of stuff. I mean, the Rolling Stones’ original mission was to teach us little young suburban kids that this all came from Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, way back there. We all became students of the blues through that. And in that sense, we were much like Trooper and April Wine and those guys because we were all the same generation. To this day I can hear all the little similarities in the songs that we all wrote. But for us, what really thrilled us and turned us on came out in our own stuff,” he said.
It’s kind of in the eye of the beholder as to when the ‘official’ 50th anniversary of Prism is, and when it should be celebrated. Most within the music industry count the first release as the starting point, so that would mean 1977, when the self-titled debut album came out. But as Harlow said, the band had been in the works and probably had its name in late 1975 and into 1976. For the sake of argument, let’s say sometime between now and next year is the 50th, just for the sake of argument … and to make a significant portion of this article way more relevant. Even if it’s 1977, that still means Prism has been around for a really long friggin’ period of time. The songs are still played on terrestrial radio, people still flock to their shows and even as recently as two years ago, the band was still receiving accolades, this time from Canada’s Walk of Fame. So, what does it mean to Harlow as, by far, the longest tenured member of the band, to reach such a milestone and still be out on the road and still have relevance to fans and the Canadian music industry.
“You know what? It’s invigorating. I’m grateful. I have an attitude of gratitude, because so many of our contemporaries are no longer here. And of those that are, some of them are not in good enough shape to actually got out and do the rigours of what it takes to get out there and lay it out on stage, travel across the country and all that stuff. But I feel great and, mercifully, still got my health and all that. I feel like I’m 25 years old. I really do. And I still appreciate the chance to get out there and sing and play these songs. I have the privilege of representing that catalogue. Some people still ask me how I can get out there and sing, ‘Young and Restless,’ and ‘See Forever Eyes,’ or ‘Armageddon’ every night? And I say, just like Tony Bennet would say, you reinterpret it every night. It’s always fresh, and you always have to sing it like you mean it. It’s got to come out of your gut and our of your heart. So, you have to imbue it with all the meaning that you can give it now. And I also get the energy from the crowd, from the audience. I feed off the enthusiasm and the adrenaline. If people are showing up to hear that music, they want to hear it for real. And they’re coming to see Prism, not a cover band doing Chuck Berry covers or whatever. You’ve got to show up because they have. I know it sounds overly sentimental, but if the audience is showing up full of energy, I am showing up full of energy. It’s a mutual gesture. We’re all there for one reason, and it’s a wonderful feeling,” he said.
“These were the songs that we wrote, and when we wrote them, we meant it. We put everything we had into writing and recording and performing those songs. None of it was mercenary for us. When you’re young and you’re a kid just new to the music business, you’re not self-editing. You’re not examining what you’re doing and looking out for your own ulterior motives or being strategic. There isn’t any of that. You’re just in love with what you’re doing. So those songs, those recordings, those albums capture those moments. I may have written ‘Young and Restless,’ or ‘Take Me Away,’ or ‘Flying’ when I was in my 20s, but I know how I felt. I can still remember how I felt. I was talking to someone about the lyrics to ‘Flying’ recently and I told them it was about a real girl. What you hear in the song really happened, and I know how I felt about her, and I remember how she felt about me. So, if I happen to be singing that song tomorrow night, or Thursday night up in Ottawa, I’m right back in that moment.
“And there is an element of paying tribute not only to the songs, but also doing my best to do justice to the song’s because Ron’s not here to sing them [Tabak was killed not long after being struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle to Harlow’s house in 1984, to a meeting that was possibly leading to a reunion of the classic Prism lineup]. We were pals. We were brothers. We were in it together, and he’s no longer here, right. It’s been a while, but I do have these private moments where I wonder what it would be like of Ron was still around. Well, he’d probably be the third person on this phone call right now, for one thing. He’d be here and very present. I’m representing what we all wanted to express through those songs. We were proud of what we did and I’m still proud of it. And it is sort of my responsibility to be the keeper of the flame. Before Rocket passed [in April 2024] we were able to talk about this because we did some fairly large-scale cancer benefit concerts, which Rocket produced in his last days, but which he did not personally benefit from. There’s a bit of a misunderstanding there because people thought the shows were raising money for his battle, but it was for the Children’s Hospital, the Canadian Cancer Foundation. A bunch of us from Prism were doing these shows and it really brought us together. And of course, the elephant in the room was the fact that I’m out here still doing it. But we were able to talk about that, John Hall, Rocket and I. We had our little conversations, and they were giving it the thumbs up and said, ‘yeah, you’re carrying the torch. We’re proud of you.’”
Prism blasted into the Canadian music industry from the opening, prog-like keyboard twinkles for ‘Spaceship Superstar’ in 1977, through to the single ‘Cover Girl’ released on 45 rpm and on the band’s All the Best From Prism compilation, in 1980. Tabak left the band shortly thereafter taking away one of the fundamental components of the band’s sound. Even with the unique success of the next single, featuring new singer Henry Small, ‘Don’t Let Him Know,’ which actually made it all the way to number one on U.S. rock charts, the band couldn’t sustain it’s success and more or less drifted apart by late 1983. Then came the death of Tabak and another hiatus, which saw a moderate resurgence in attention with the song ‘Good to be Back’ from their 1988 compilation, Over 60 Minutes with Prism (featuring Darcy Deutch on lead vocals. Deutch lasted until around 2003, Mitchell left the band a couple of years later. Norton, who returned in 1988, only lasted until 1994 before getting into show production and other ventures.)
In 2005, and ever since, Harlow has been the consistent presence – and lead voice – of the band onstage and in the studio. A new album, Big Black Sky, came out in 2008, and Harlow himself released a solo album, Now! in 2022. Through it all, he has trod the boards on stages in clubs, at festivals, in arenas and all sorts of other venues, keeping that proverbial flame alight for Prism’s music and for Prism fans.
“Depending on the venue, it’s a pretty wide fan base. If it’s a casino theatre as opposed to an afternoon set at an outdoor summer festival, or if it’s an all-ages thing or a soft seater or indoor hockey rink it can vary. At a lot of places, you’ll have an audience that I can split into like three generations. There’s the first generation of fans. So, a Prism concert will be ‘an evening with Prism’ in their minds. It’s like, ‘okay darling, dinner and a show. And then we’ll be home by 11. Time enough to take our pills and get to bed.’ Then there’s the middle fans who may have discovered us in the 1990s. And for them a show might mean hiring a babysitter or leaving the younger kids home with the oldest. And I’m not taking anything away from that next generation. Some of those fans know as much about the Prism story and the lyrics to the third verse of each song as I do. I can look out there and see them all singing along to the second and third verse. I’m just their pal onstage,” he said.
“That first generation of fans, the older ones, they’re showing up to most anything we do. If it’s a three-day outdoor festival, they’ll bring their lawn chairs and they’ll sleep in the Winnebago. The middle fans, who may have discovered us in the 1990s or early 2000s, they’re younger and you can catch their vibe. And then there’s the really younger one who might even still be in their teens or very early 20s. And they don’t seem to know how old I am, and they obviously don’t care. They just know the music. They know it and must like it enough to show up and know that it’s us. So, it’s an entire cake mix. There may be someone who was tagging along with a friend and just liked the vibe, or someone else will come who will all of a sudden remember all these songs of ours that they used to hear. I get that comment all the time when I’m at the merch table. They’ll say, ‘I knew all those songs, but I didn’t know all those songs were by you guys.’ And I do try to talk to the younger ones as well. And you’ll get ones who say, ‘my dad was a huge fan of yours and I learned everything.’ Or older brothers and sisters had the records. And then of course, as you’ve said, terrestrial radio. And while lots of people say it’s dead, it keeps a lot of music from our era alive. And it’s funny because it’s not always the songs that you might think. I mean, we’re kind of stuck with ‘Spaceship Superstar’ being our second national anthem for the rest of our lives. But what are you going to do?
“’Armageddon is another one, but being seven minutes long, it’s played a little bit less. It is funny how terrestrial radio will jump on two or three songs from your catalogue, and they’ll just spin them for three or four years. ‘Young and Restless’ gets a lot of terrestrial play. And ‘Flying’ was one of the top two or three most played songs in the United States in 1978, so that kind of washes across the border up here too.”
Returning to the subject of Big Black Sky, the 2008 album, and the last one the band has released, Harlow said there are songs on that album that still fit in well with the Prism back catalog, and ones that are even often requested from fans.
“There was a song called ‘Ya Bother Me,’ which we played live for a while. And then there was a Middle Eastern thing, ‘Tangiers.’ People still ask about that, although we haven’t done it in a while. It had a cool sitar thing going on. There’s actually been some talk within the band of bringing it back, which would be for longer, headlining shows. For the shows we’re doing opening for Nazareth with Helix, it’s pretty much just going to be the greatest hits.
“There’s a bit of an irony thing there there’s an attitude, especially a radio attitude, where they say, ‘what, a new album by an old band? Who cares? I’ve got all your old records. I don’t need to hear what you’re doing now.’ I mean, that’s just not us, that’s universal for most bands. So [the band’s manager, another iconic name on the Canadian musical landscape] Bruce Allen advised me in 2008, he said that I would have got more mileage out of that album had I just called it an Al Harlow solo album because then it wouldn’t carry any expectations or baggage that has to live up to some kind of extension of Prism. So, there’s always going to be that push pull when it comes to releasing new music,” he said.
“I sincerely want to take Prism back into the studio. I think it would be a very healthy thing to do and make it meaningful. I’m not saying we would imitate ourselves or make sure that it’s always the same keyboard sound, but that it would have that unique Prism character. When my solo album came out, there were a couple of tracks on there where I thought, oh my goodness, I’m wearing my Prism boots right now. Like, I was bringing a sensibility to the arrangements. One of those is a song called ‘Meet Me in the Sky,’ and it’s got a groove, and it rolls, but there’s a certain airiness about it that has that Prism vibe.”
The Prism story has been one of perseverance, particularly from the band’s fans, and Harlow himself. He is enjoying the band’s continued popularity, even if it’s not reaching the heights that it did from 1977 to 1981. But, it must be said, for 40 years there has been a question that has been lingering in the hearts and minds of long-time Prism fans. What would have happened had Tabak not been hit by a car while riding his bike, subsequently suffering an aneurysm and dying so suddenly and tragically during the Christmas season of 1984. The instantly recognizable voice of the band would have rejoined Harlow, Mitchell, Hall and Norton, wrote new music, and perhaps picked up right where they left off as bona fide rock sensations in Canada, and growing in recognition and commercial success south of the border in the U.S. How many more brilliant and memorable songs would have been written and recorded that would join the many still populating classic rock radio today? Would they have become worldwide sensations? Would iconic British hard rockers Nazareth be opening for Prism on their current tour instead of the reverse?
“Capital ‘Y’ yes, we would have had a reunion, because we were putting the original band back together just as Ron died. We took the Christmas week off and Ron was coming to my place to spend the holidays. It was still a close enough time to our heyday that we had labels interested, and Capital Records, who had dropped us the year before, maybe have revised and continued on with our contract. At that moment, the labels were actually knocking on our door, not the other way around. Right after New Year’s in January of 1985, we were just going to resume with Ron on vocals. We’ve wondered what might have happened many times. It’s something that we’ve repeated to ourselves individually on more than one occasion. Before Rocket passed, we had plenty of time to reflect on it again. Nowadays bands take much longer breaks. There was not much time between when Henry came in and then leaving and then bringing Ron back in and having the original band. But it was enough time to be older and wiser, all of us. To this day, John Hall and I have reflected in the simplest terms that had Ron not passed away and we just resumed, we could have easily picked up the momentum where we left off and there would have been at least 10 more years, and there would have been 10 more albums. What a sobering thought, eh? But it’s like, what if Pete Best had been a better drummer and stayed in the Beatles?” Harlow said, before talking about Tabak’s original run with the band, and how one veteran American artist took the young, inexperienced lead singer, who had jumped from clubs to arenas practically overnight, and helped him find his form and confidence on stage.
“Bruce Allen was managing us and then picked up Bryan Adams as a client. And there was a really, really short period of time, early on when Ron was kind of struggling to rise to the occasion. He was learning because as The Seeds of Time, Rocket, Lindsay, John and I had already done some big gigs. We already had some mileage. Ron was younger than us and was quite inexperienced. When we started doing our first big world tour with Meatloaf, when he was really exploding on the scene with Bat Out of Hell, Meatloaf, or Michael Lee Aday because a really good mentor to Ron. Ron really learned a lot of his stagecraft because he had Meatloaf teaching him, which was very cool. So, he got better, but before he did, there was like a five-minute period where Ron was very uncomfortable, and Bruce was going to stick Bryan in as lead singer of Prism. Fortunately for everybody, that idea lasted only about five minutes.”
Currently, alongside Harlow is keyboardist Marc Gladstone, who joined in 2010, longtime drummer Gary Grace [22 years in the band] and bassist Greg Cox, who was introduced into the fold earlier this year.
“Gary Grace is a monster. He is a top instructor and clinic guy. I’m so proud to say now we have Greg Cox, who just joined the band on bass and he’s also an absolute killer lead guitar player. So now on ‘Take Me Away’ which has dual guitars, which on the record was both me, now he can step up and play some lead guitar too, so how cool is that? I’m really pumped about where we’re going to be able to go with all this. And Mark Gladstone on keys, he’s actually a cousin of John Hall, our original keyboard player. Mark has done tons of session work and he and his wife Shirelle have the Stone Poets band, and they put me to shame. They put out albums as regularly as I wish I was doing,” he said with a chuckle.
For information on shows and other Prism news and updates, visit https://prism.ca.
- 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.
