Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (3 page)

Black Sabbath also left a huge impression on the boy. On a whim, Murray traded his copy of Alice Cooper’s
Killer,
which was also released in 1971, for
Master of Reality.
“Victoria being what it is, we didn’t get those records until 1972,” laments Acton. Although both albums are regarded as masterpieces of hard rock, it was the latter LP that made such an impact on young Mr. Acton. Though the DayGlo Abortions would later parody Black Sabbath in “Acting Like Black Sabbath,” that group played a major role in the development of the DayGlos’ sound.
“Master of Reality
still blows my mind,” says the guitar player, shaking his head in respect. “Zappa and Lennon are my main influences,” he claims, even though the DayGlos owe an equal or greater debt to Sabbath.

In fact, Black Sabbath was so important to Murray that he stopped listening to rock music when vocalist Ozzy Osbourne quit or was fired from the group. “I became a real music snob after that,” recalls the guitarist. “I refused to go see AC/DC with Bon Scott singing at the Victoria Memorial Arena because I didn’t listen to rock music.” The ant-snorting Ozzy Osbourne probably would have appreciated the gesture of solidarity had he known, even though Acton later deeply regretted missing the AC/DC show. Rather than ruin his eardrums with heavy metal, Murray turned, of all things, to jazz fusion, and soon found The Mahavishnu Orchestra, who also became a major influence. There was something about jazz fusion that appealed to the disillusioned youth, and he marveled at the complexity of the arrangements. Perhaps nothing could be further from punk rock than jazz fusion, yet somehow Acton would learn to incorporate both elements in his own music. It is the combination of Mahavishnu-like minor chord riffs executed with Black Sabbath-like power that separates the DayGlo Abortions from their crossover brethren. Very few bands can claim such diverse influences.

Getting back to the story, Murray was lonely without his chums in the Ivy Street Gang. The DayGlo Abortions were still in the distant future, and the boy needed other diversions to occupy his time. Murray started Grade Five, doing his best to adapt to his new surroundings. The Caucasians at his new school ignored young Acton for the most part, and he found it easier to make friends with the Aboriginal students. “We lived just down the road from the reserve, and the Natives were friendlier,” recalls the singer. At this point in his life the youth was unfamiliar with people of different ethnic persuasions, and had never witnessed racism up close. “The only black man I could remember was a guy named Virgil in a movie called
In the Heat of the Night.
The racism was scary and strange and very disturbing,” says Murray, thinking back forty years. The boy saw the way white people treated Aboriginals at his school and was not impressed. “It blew my mind—I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” says the singer, still in disbelief. Instead of cozying up to the white kids, he joined a hockey team composed primarily of Aboriginals. “They were good hockey players,” says Acton of his teammates. He was comfortable with them.

Murray’s grades at Lampson Street School were passable, but he did not fit in. Further, the boy’s allegiance with the Aboriginal students made the transition difficult. “That alienated me from the mainstream right off the bat,” says Acton, not without rancour. He soon teamed up with a Métis boy named Jim Steveneau, and they began breaking into houses on the way to school. The young burglars started with vacant houses but soon graduated to occupied residences, breaking in when the occupants were away to steal what they could. One lucky score yielded $300 cash, which the pre-pubescent pirates quickly squandered on new bicycles and an entire season of hockey cards. Emboldened, the young criminals began sneaking into homes while the residents were asleep. Jim and Murray were eventually caught, and Murray received community service and probation. At eleven years of age, it seemed that the boy was well on his way to a life of crime. He also started smoking pot and dropping LSD that year.

As is often the case, Murray was introduced to marijuana by an older child. The female, an associate of Jim Steveneau’s, was almost an adult. Murray recalls being offered the joint and thinking,
why not?
Grass back then was nowhere near as potent as it is today, and Acton says he smoked weed on a number of occasions before it had any real effect. The girl who gave Murray his first toke has apparently turned into a “crazy wino lady,” and he still sees her around.

Jim Steveneau, several years older than Murray, had a tendency to bully smaller children, and the younger boy knew that Jim was not a good role model. “I didn’t like the guy very much,” says Murray, even though the two hung out regularly. The guitarist says that he ran with Jim mostly because his intuition warned him to stay away. “Somebody told me when I was really young that if you practice listening to the voice in your head you can almost read minds and predict the future. I heard the voice and went in the opposite direction,” says Murray, recalling decisions made many years ago. Even if Murray had been capable of predicting the future, it is unlikely that he could have foreseen the towering highs and crashing lows that would become so commonplace for his band the DayGlo Abortions.

Anyway, Murray and Jim eventually had a falling out after Jim broke into Murray’s house when the Actons were out of town, proving that his intuition had been right. The angry youth retaliated by burglarizing Jim’s house and trashing the place. In the months to follow, Murray was careful to avoid his ex-partner in crime. Jim would surely be looking to mess him up.

As a result, the future bandleader continued to scrape by at Lampson Street School and his grades were surprisingly good, all things considered. “I must have broken records, at times, for having the poorest attendance,” remembers Murray. “Or at least until my daughter Mekare came along. She’s been blowing my records out of the water.” Despite all this, Murray limped along, somehow managing to remain both in school and out of juvenile hall. One might guess that luck played no small part in this.

Eventually, Jim Steveneau and Murray reconciled their friendship just long enough to get themselves in serious trouble. Accused of mugging a younger student, they were summoned to the principal’s office. The suspects argued their case but were expelled from school nevertheless. Murray and Jim were so outraged that they stormed down to the police station and tried to have the principal arrested for “homosexual rape.” The cops, naturally, laughed at the kids and sent them packing. As it turned out, Jim actually
had
robbed the student. He took the loot from a secret compartment in his shoe and the boys bought chocolate bars. The money, however, could not buy the students another chance at Lampson Street. Not only was young Mr. Acton expelled from the school, but he was also banned from the entire public school system. His luck had finally run out.

Had Murray followed his intuition and avoided Jim Steveneau, he might never have been sent to St. Michael’s University School, the private boys’ school where he met Jesus Bonehead aka Brian Whitehead. Because Murray purposely ignored his “inner voice,” he set into motion a chain of events that led to the formation of the DayGlo Abortions. By moving towards the chaos, Murray had, in effect, chosen his own destiny.

“St. Michael’s was all about being bad,” remembers the DayGlos frontman. As a consequence of that poor behaviour, Murray claims to have done eight hours of hard labour every Saturday and Sunday the entire time he attended the school. “They were into full-on corporal punishment,” he says, with the weary resignation of someone who has accepted the folly of his ways. From digging holes and filling them back in again, to sweeping the parking lot with a tiny broom, no task was too onerous or difficult for our boy. The deputy headmaster apparently saw something in Murray and wanted to “cure” him of his rebellious ways. Good not only at academics but at sports as well, the boy could have been a top student. Sadly, for the deputy headmaster, that was not to be. Murray and a cohort named David Waddington became a target for the misguided educator, who did everything he could to break the recalcitrant students. “David was the worst kid in the school, even worse than me,” Acton remembers. “He was bad to the bone.”

Drugs were not yet a priority, but LSD was cheap and readily available. Powerful white blotter and good microdots were everywhere. Unlike today’s mild “acid,” this stuff produced vivid hallucinations and twelve-hour trips. “One of the things kids today are missing are good hallucinogenic drugs. A good LSD trip is something that every kid should experience at least once. It breaks down boundaries and makes magic possible,” insists Acton. Timothy Leary would have agreed wholeheartedly.

In Grade Seven, the juvenile who would later be known as Jesus Bonehead transferred to St. Michael’s School from Vernon, BC. Murray noticed Brian Whitehead immediately because students from Vernon wore slightly different uniforms, making them easy for the local boys to identify. “None of the Vernon Prep guys fit in that well. They were a bit rougher around the edges,” remembers Acton. Below average height and slight of stature, Brian seemed even more uncomfortable than his fellow transferees, and perhaps Murray subconsciously gravitated towards the outsider. “I remember Brian looking around the classroom,” Murray says, recalling the student’s unease.

Brian Whitehead was born in Winnipeg on December 22nd, 1959, and his father was stationed at the same air force base as Murray’s father was. The men knew each other but they did not eventually become friends the way Brian and Murray did. Although it wasn’t until the next year in Grade Eight that the two began to spend much time together, the unholy allegiance had begun.

St. Michael’s School boasted high academic standards, but it also housed students that didn’t fit the public school system. Brian Whitehead’s father, though he had left his wife years earlier, was good enough to set up a trust fund for the boy. Brian grew up believing his father had died in a fiery plane crash, but through a friend of Murray’s father who was in the same squadron as Mr. Whitehead, the boy eventually learned that his dad had simply bailed. Brian’s mother had substance abuse problems, so his father’s decision to leave the family is sad but unsurprising. Murray’s parents stayed together but paid three to five thousand dollars a year for their son’s tuition, which was a lot of money, especially back then. “They weren’t happy about it, but they always worried that I would grow up to be what I am, so they paid the money,” says Acton. Though he never did finish high school, the guitarist went on to earn a diploma in electronics. What self-respecting musician needed an education? All Murray needed was his guitar.

The singer claims that he was served his first beer at age thirteen in “an old wino bar” called The Station Hotel where Market Square in Victoria is now located. Apparently the server wasn’t put off by the fact that the students were still wearing their school uniforms. Since this was three or four days before Christmas, Acton invited several local barflies home for the festive meal. Murray’s mother, a fine Christian, did everything she could to make the guests comfortable, and was pleased at her son’s gesture of generosity. Her son, however, was not overflowing with the milk of human kindness and just wanted to ruin Christmas dinner. A cousin of Murray’s was a nurse, and one of the slightly inebriated ruffians asked her what she would do if he overdosed at the table and started to turn blue. When the nurse told him that she would administer Narcan, the old pirate rasped, “No, no! What you do is shoot a big syringe full of ice water right into the neck! That works every time!” At this point, Murray could barely restrain himself and was practically rolling on the floor. The Actons still talk about that meal.

Murray and Brian advanced to the senior school in Grade Eight. The youths ended up in the same homeroom, where they bonded after school with grass and music. There was no such thing as punk rock in 1975, so Brian’s social worker took the youths to a Grateful Dead concert. “Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen supported the Dead, and they were actually pretty rockin’,” the guitarist recalls, adding that he doesn’t want anyone to think that he ever liked the Grateful Dead. “I hope I never hear ‘Truckin” again,” he cracks.

Around this time, Murray and Brian met Spud aka Trevor Hagen near the bus depot in downtown Victoria. Bus depots everywhere commonly attract a lower element, and Victoria is no exception. Trevor, who was slightly older and a bit of a juvenile delinquent, immediately hit it off with Murray and Brian. Disco was at its glittery height, and there were several clubs in the area that the teenagers frequented when they could afford to do so. Evidently, bartenders were not as diligent in asking for ID as they are nowadays. The boys already had a taste for the nightlife, even if it involved disco music.

Trevor Hagen was born in Creston, British Columbia on September 2nd 1958, and moved to Victoria with his mother, four sisters, and three brothers when he was six. Ad, Trevor’s father, had passed away from Lou Gehrig’s Disease when the boy was four, leaving his wife Miros to the raise the kids alone. A woman of lesser fortitude might have put some of the children into foster care, but Miros could not bring herself to break up the family. As a result, the cupboards were not bursting with food, and luxuries were almost non-existent. Still, the rambunctious brood was relatively happy and well-adjusted, especially given the tight financial situation. Miros worked several jobs to keep a roof over their heads, which left Trevor almost completely unsupervised and free to do as he pleased. The boy was a DayGlo Abortion in training.

When Trevor was twelve, his mother, with assistance from her employers the federal government, scraped together enough money to buy a house on Gorge View Drive in Victoria. The migration was finally over. Despite the shortage of money in the Hagen household, Trevor got along well with his siblings for the most part, and feels that the family pulled closer together with the passing of Mr. Hagen. “The older kids looked out for the younger ones, so I had a lot of people taking care of me,” Trevor remembers. He was especially close to Lorne, the second youngest child. Tragically, Lorne (aka Gator) died in a 2007 motorcycle accident. For Trevor the loss is still very painful, and only time will ease the suffering.