#54: Catch 22 by Nick Gilder

City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CKCK
Peak Month: May 1981
Peak Position in Regina ~ #13
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Catch 22”
Lyrics: “Catch 22”

Nick Gilder was born in London, England, in 1951. In his childhood he moved to Canada and grew up in Vancouver. In the summer of 1973, when he was 22 years old, vocalist Gilder and fellow former high school classmate and guitarist, Jim McCulloch, founded a band called Rasputin. John Booth on drums, Bud Marr on bass and Dan Gaudin on keyboards rounded out the band. Shortly afterward they took the name Sweeney Todd. Their name was inspired by the 1846-47 Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance credited to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. The main antagonist of the story is Sweeney Todd, “the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. Todd is a barber who murders his customers and turns their bodies over to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies and sells them at her pie shop. A Sweeney Todd stage play by Stephen Sondheim appeared on Broadway in 1979.

In 1975 Sweeney Todd got a contract with London Records. Their self-titled debut album was released that summer. It featured the release of “Rock and Roll Story” as the first single. They followed it up with “Sweeney Todd Folder” released while the band was in the middle of a cross-Canada tour. But it was the release of “Roxy Roller” that made Sweeney Todd instant household names. eventually topping the Canadian charts. The tune held the #1 spot in the Canadian RPM singles charts for three weeks in June-July 1976. “Roxy Roller” went on to win Sweeney Todd a Juno Award for “Best Selling Single” in 1977.

Meanwhile, Nick Gilder released a solo single in late summer 1976 titled “She’s A Star (In Her Own Right)”. Gilder next recorded a solo version of “Roxy Roller” which in February 1977 became a Top Ten hit in Melbourne, Australia, spending seven weeks in the Top Ten – including three at #4.

In the summer of 1978 Gilder’s single “Hot Child In The City” began to climb up the charts on local AM-Top 40 stations. on CHUM-AM in Toronto, the single spent 23 weeks on the CHUM Top 30, including eleven weeks in the Top Ten and four weeks at #2. It was kept out of the top spot by Kenny Loggin’s “Whenever I Call You Friend”. “Hot Child In The City” also spent eleven weeks in the Top Ten on CKLW in Windsor (ON). It climbed to number-one in Harrisburg (PA), Easton (PA), Allentown (PA), Tucson (AZ), Bozeman (MT), Springfield (MA), Chicago, Honolulu, Houston, Buffalo (NY), Utica (NY), New York City, Burbank (CA), Los Angeles, San Diego, Tacoma (WA), Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul, La Cross (WI), Akron (OH), Youngstown (OH), Kansas City (MO), Denver, Oklahoma City (OK), Tampa (FL), Portland (OR), and Sarasota (FL). Gilder performed “Hot Child In The City” on American Bandstand on September 2, 1978, and on The Mike Douglas Show on August 29, 1978, and again on November 16, 1978. In Canada, “Hot Child In The City” became the #7 charted song of 1978.

At the Juno Awards, based on the recording of “Hot Child In The City”, Nick Gilder won awards for both Song of the Year and Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year. “Hot Child In The City” has been featured as part of the soundtrack for a number of films and TV sitcom episodes.

In November 1978 Gilder wrote a song titled “Here Comes The Night” for his City Nights album. (This wasn’t a cover of the 1965 song with the same title by Them). Late spring 1979, Nick Gilder had a minor hit in several radio markets in Canada and the USA titled “Rock Me”. He returned to perform on American Bandstand in ’79. And in 1981 Gilder released “Catch 22”.

NIck Gilder and Jim McCulloch co-wrote “Catch 22”. McCulloch was a bandmate with Gilder in Sweeney Todd. He was a session musician for Toni Basil’s hit “Mickey”. In the 1961 Joseph Heller novel, Catch 22, a ‘Catch 22’ is a problem of logic. In this case it is a problem for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule. For example, losing something is typically a conventional problem; to solve it, one looks for the lost item until one finds it. But if the thing lost is one’s glasses, one cannot see to look for them – a Catch-22. The term “Catch-22” is also used more broadly to mean a tricky problem or a no-win or absurd situation.

In the book, Catch 22, the problem in a military situation. Heller described it this way: “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. (Lieutenant) Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to, but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”

In the song, the ‘Catch 22’ seems to be the sexual attraction the guy has for his love interest. But she makes “calculated moves” and needs to be “in control” of the relationship. She leaves him dangling and he begs her to “try even if you have to lie to be sincere.” Sometimes he wants to walk away from the relationship. But he is drawn to her “stimulant face.”

“Catch 22” peaked at #9 in Saskatoon (SK), #13 in Regina (SK), and #18 in Hamilton (ON).

Between 1977 and 1999 Nick Gilder released eight studio albums. In addition to his own recordings, Nick Gilder has written songs recorded by Pat Benetar, Toni Basil, Bette Midler, Scandal, Patty Smyth, Joe Cocker and others. He lives in Vancouver.

January 2, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
Nick Gilder, “Nick Gilder bio,” Canadian Bands.com
Nick Gilder, “Sweeney Todd bio,” Canadian Bands.com
Steve Newton, “30 years ago: Nick Gilder on his new LP and his “ironic” replacement in Sweeney Todd,” Georgia Straight, Vancouver, BC, October 16, 2015.
“Nick Gilder Interview,” American Bandstand, August 11, 1979.
Nick Gilder, “The Warrior“, Wikipedia.org.

Top 40 CKCK 620-AM Regina (SK) May 1, 1981