May 15, 2025, the day Glass Tiger was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in Calgary at Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, was the very same day 40 years prior that the Canadian pop band started writing their debut single and biggest career hit, “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” which went to No. 1 on The Record’s chart in Canada and No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
That cool bit of trivia was shared with the group by the song’s co-writer and producer, Jim Vallance, who keeps meticulous records and posts his song diaries and memories on his website.
“Because he’s such an organized guy, he said he had a copy of his day-timer from 1985 and it was to the day that Alan, Al, and myself were at his house writing ‘Don’t Forget Me.’ It’s crazy,” marvels Glass Tiger keyboardist Sam Reid, who has a digital photo of Vallance’s calendar with “write Tiger” circled on May 16. The pivotal moment actually happened early, when the band stopped into his studio the night before and got unexpectedly inspired.
“Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)”—winner of the 1986 Single of the Year at the Juno Awards—was the lead song from Glass Tiger’s 1986 debut album, The Thin Red Line, which went four-times-platinum in Canada, gold in the U.S., and was declared Album of the Year at the Junos. That year, Glass Tiger was also named Most Promising Group of the Year, and they were. In 1989, they graduated to Entertainer of the Year.
The following year, they won single of the year again for “Someday,” which they wrote in the same Vallance session as “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone).” “Someday” was another smash for the band in Canada and the U.S., No. 14 and No. 7, respectively.
The band—keyboardist Reid, frontman Alan Frew, guitarist Al Connelly, bassist Wayne Parker, and drummer Michael Hanson—were on a roll that made them the most successful Canadian pop band of the ’80s and early ’90s. Frew, Connelly, and Reid remain in Glass Tiger today, along with drummer Chris McNeill, bassist Tom Lewis, and backing vocalist Carmela Long.
Photo courtesy of Glass Tiger.
Talking with NMC Amplify via Zoom, Reid and Frew vividly recall that writing session with Vallance, who was enjoying staggering global success with his songwriting partner, Bryan Adams, with his 1983 breakthrough album, Cuts Like A Knife, and 1985 follow-up, Reckless. Along came Glass Tiger — a newly signed band on Capitol Records in Canada and Manhattan Records in the U.S.—needing an outside perspective from a proven writer.
As Vallance posted on his website, “I was initially hired by Capitol Records to help with musical arrangements on Glass Tiger’s first album, working with the material they’d already written — but I ended up producing the album and writing a few songs with the band as well.”
After working with them for a day in the spring of 1985 in their home base of Newmarket, Ont., “rehearsing with the band, working on arrangements, and suggesting improvements,” Vallance writes, Reid, Frew, and Connelly “flew to Vancouver with instructions from Capitol Records A&R-man Deane Cameron to write a ‘hit single’ for their upcoming album.”
Reid remembers: “The local paper covered it, and they have a photograph of us at the airport. It’s the three of us, first time on a plane heading to Jim’s house. Incredibly nervous. He’s the big songwriter; we’re the kids. How is this going to unfold?”
On Vallance’s blog, he writes that after picking them up at the airport, he brought them back to his house just to “have a cup of tea, get acquainted, and talk about the direction we might take with our songwriting in the week ahead.” But that meeting turned into an impromptu spark of creativity.
“During a quick tour of my studio, Sam casually noodled a few notes on one of my keyboards, and the next thing you know we were writing a song! In less than an hour we came up with the beginnings of a very strong idea. Not bad for the first day … right off the plane! I printed a cassette tape so they could listen to it overnight, and I dropped them off at their hotel.”
Frew recalls that when Vallance asked them what they were listening to, it was the music of the times— Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, and Simple Minds—so they threw on some of that to get inspired. Reid says Vallance had “a very calm approach” and a comfortable recording studio, so any nerves disappeared.
“It was basically a studio in the round. ‘So, what do you want to play?’ ‘Oh, I’ll play that keyboard over there,’ and [Vallance] picks up a bass. And Alan’s got his little recorder and a microphone in the corner, and Al just grabs his guitar. And before you know it, that first day, it just clicked, and we wrote ‘Don’t Forget Me’ and ‘Someday’ in the same day.”
Frew acknowledges that stories do change a little over time, but remembers they were listening to Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and Vallance perked up over the shuffle beat.
“He fired up a little shuffle beat on his drum machine and then we started tinkering and one of the main things that jumped out was Al’s little guitar line, diddly ding, ding, da ding, da ding, ding.
“And, if memory serves, one of the first things I did was I started singing, ‘don’t forget me when I’m gone,’ as if it was a verse. Vallance very cleverly said, ‘Oh, I really like that line. Let’s hold that back.’ I’m not sure how far along we got with it, but then we left with a cassette,” says Frew.
The next day, the three returned to his home studio and got to work. With Vallance encouraging them to use “don’t forget me when I’m gone” for the chorus, Frew came up with the new opening line: “You take my breath away / Love thinks it’s here to stay.” He doesn’t remember why or how.
“There’s never really any rhyme or reason to that,” says Frew. “We knew we had a really upbeat, bright, cheerful three minutes. You’re not trying to change the world; you’re trying to allow people to groove to it and have fun with it and dance to it. So why it would be ‘you take my breath away / love thinks it’s here to stay?’ I don’t know. I was just emoting. I’m not sure what I was going through personally,” he laughs. “I don’t think it’s one of those kinds of songs; I think it just floats in from the universe.
“I wish I could give you a really great convoluted, wonderful story about how the lyrics came about, but as Sam can attest to many things we’ve done together, the music almost certainly comes first with us all the time. Then the la-la-la melody comes next and then you refine the lyrics at the end. Sam’s got the original demos and sometimes I get repetitive, and I just sing the same thing over and over again, but it’s really because I’m looking for the melody.”
Reid adds: “I happen to know that what Alan just said is correct. One of the things that Jim Vallance, as a regular order of business, when he was writing, he always ran a live cassette in the room and at the end of four or five days of writing with him, he gave me that cassette and I still have it and it runs in real time. So, I can absolutely hear the keyboard going and the little drum machine and Alan singing the chorus over the verse and then la-la-la-ing a little bit. You can hear it evolve. You know exactly in real time how the song transpired.”
Frew thinks Capitol’s other A&R guy, Tim Trombley, and Glass Tiger’s American manager flew out to Vancouver to listen to the “as close to the final product” as it was at that time.
“I remember the second verse with that little harmony coming in that sounded like the Everly Brothers from my era and that’s when I thought, ‘Wow, this is really catchy.’ Did I know it was going to be what it became? No.”
Frew distinctly remembers arriving back in Toronto and going to see the late musician Kenny MacLean’s band The Deserters with the cassette in his pocket. There, he met Platinum Blonde’s frontman Mark Holmes for the first time.
“Platinum Blonde had launched a little bit ahead of us and with all due respect, I knew I had this little gem in my pocket and I didn’t talk about it, but it came out and, of course, it surged right up the charts and we ended up winning the Single of the Year and Album of the Year and Best New Group. And we were up against Bryan Adams, Platinum Blonde, Rush, Corey Hart. And that was a big deal for us, crash through that contingent of brilliant artists.”
The song was tracked at Toronto’s Sounds Interchange with overdubs at Phase One and Eastern, the band says. Frew actually cut the majority of his vocals for The Thin Red Line album back at Vallance’s studio, Distorto, in his hallway, except for the background vocals on “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” which featured Adams.
How did Adams, a massive international star at that point with the success of his fourth album Reckless, end up as a guest vocalist on the track?
Reid believes Adams was in town for the Junos and was at the studio while Vallance was producing the album.
“I know that Bryan and I were getting to know each other in one corner of the studio, drinking a few Heinekens, when Jim turns around and says, ‘Why don’t you guys go on the microphone together?’” recounts Frew. “So, Bryan and I were thinking, ‘Okay, that’d be a good laugh.’ But my question is was it contrived by Jim having Bryan in the studio, thinking ahead like that? Or did it remain just the couple of guys having a few beers and going on a microphone? What do you think, Sam?” he asks his bandmate.
“I wasn’t at that session, but I do remember it being quite casual,” says Reid. “My gut feeling is that it wasn’t contrived. It was just a lightning strike and one of those things that just happened. I don’t think Jim was banking on it because the song was done, except the horn parts aren’t part of the first demo and are a big part of that song.”
After they sang, Frew and Adams went to the Duke of Kent pub for some more beers and the next day to a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game.
“So, it really was very casual,” says Frew. “You’re probably right, Sam, it would be Jim watching the two of us get along.”
Vallance ended up producing Glass Tiger’s sophomore album too, 1988 triple-platinum Diamond Sun, but then decided to stick to songwriting. The band’s third album, 1991’s Simple Mission, featuring “My Town” with Rod Stewart, also went platinum. They broke up in 1993 for a decade, but after reuniting, they have continued performing to this day and released compilation albums, live recordings, and brand new music.
Now, exactly 40 years after penning the song that started it all, Glass Tiger now stands immortalized in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
