TORONTO – Kevan Staples, the co-founder of the groundbreaking avant-garde Toronto rock band Rough Trade, has died at 75 years old.
His bandmate Carole Pope and two friends confirmed Staples died on Sunday, though his cause of death was not immediately available.
Staples co-wrote Rough Trade’s songs, including their sexually charged 1980 breakout “High School Confidential,” which appeared on their second album “Avoid Freud.”
The tale of unrequited lesbian lust caused a stir at the time, and some radio stations called for an edited version without the saucy lyrics. The song ultimately climbed the Canadian charts and was nominated for single of the year at the Juno Awards.
Staples, who often served as Rough Trade’s guitarist, left an impact through more than just one song. He helped pen the band’s other well-known tracks, which include “All Touch,” “Crimes of Passion,” “Birds of a Feather” and “Fashion Victim.”
“There wouldn’t have been a Rough Trade without him,” Pope wrote in email to The Canadian Press on Tuesday.
“He wasn’t afraid to experiment as a musician. He created innovative keyboard and guitar sounds that made our music come alive.”
Music manager Bernie Finkelstein, who signed Rough Trade to his label True North Records, credits the band with inspiring everyone from Peaches to Madonna with their blend of grit and style.
“Kevan was the most elegant man in the music business, in my opinion,” Finkelstein said in an interview.
“If the music business in 1980 had a Fred Astaire, it was Kevan Staples. (He) was very funny, very intelligent, a terrific musician and a lovely human being.”
Staples and Pope met in 1968 at an audition for another band. Their mutual fascination made them instant friends, and they performed together around Toronto’s Yorkville folk scene, experimenting with a blend of sex, politics, and pop music.
The band went through various iterations over the next several years before landing on their identity as an art-rock duo, with a stage presence that welcomed elements of bondage and burlesque. Rough Trade’s name was derived from gay slang.
Before mainstream success, their 1977 live musical “Restless Underwear” played a single night at Massey Hall with Pope as the centrepiece and an assist from U.S. female impersonator Divine, known for John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos,” a film that was banned in parts of Canada at the time.
Toronto Star critic Peter Goddard described the show as having “a tacky set complete with salmon-coloured palm trees and a bed covered in bright red satin upon which rested a penis-shaped pillow.”
While its stay in Toronto was brief, the show was resurrected for a run in New York a few years later.
By then, Rough Trade had found its groove playing multiple nights per week at Toronto clubs, most notably a gay bar called the Chimney, tucked above the Gasworks on Yonge Street.
Radio disc jockey David Marsden remembers the first time he saw Rough Trade perform at the spot in the late 1970s, when he was at local station CHUM-FM.
“I was up there one night playing backgammon with a friend of mine, and this band came on and just blew my mind,” he said.
“He was the shy guy behind this woman who was very, very demonstrative.”
But Marsden insists Staples’s influence shouldn’t be understated simply because Pope held the most attention on stage.
“Kevan played a role equally important,” he added.
After that night, Marsden was entranced by the ways they pushed boundaries.
“If you read the lyrics for ‘High School Confidential,’ it was pure hardcore sex,” he said.
Those titillations made him one of Rough Trade’s biggest advocates, and he later encouraged radio to put “High School Confidential” into rotation.
Pop chart success didn’t dull Rough Trade’s sharp edges, however.
In 1980, the band appeared in the disjointed Canadian horror film “Deadline,” playing a new wave punk act enlisted by a Nazi scientist to test sound technology that caused explosive diarrhea.
Such provocative choices seemed to win over famous admirers in the arts scene.
Filmmaker William Friedkin featured their song “Shakedown” in his controversial 1980 film “Cruising,” which starred Al Pacino as a cop infiltrating New York’s underground gay club scene to find a serial killer.
Actor Tim Curry covered “Birds of a Feather” on his 1978 debut album “Read My Lips,” and Dusty Springfield later sang their songs “Soft Core” and “I Am Curious” on 1982’s “White Heat.”
But the record industry was less smitten with Rough Trade’s aesthetic and message. They struggled to find success stateside and soon discovered the political climate of the mid-1980s wasn’t a place they could thrive with the reputation they had built.
Already, they had garnered headlines for a performance on the 1982 Juno Awards where Pope grabbed her crotch while singing the “cream my jeans” line of “High School Confidential.” She credited that moment with landing their first record deal with True North, but noted it also attracted negative attention.
Staples said the controversies didn’t help them.
“The stories didn’t do us any good,” Staples told the Star as he promoted their end-of-the-road tour Deep Six in ‘86.
“Rough Trade had become an albatross for us. It haunted us.”
After Rough Trade disbanded, Staples found an active career writing music for Canadian documentaries and TV series.
He and Pope continued to work together on and off. They were inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2023, and marked their 50th anniversary with a show at the Phoenix Concert Theatre that same week.
Also that year, Pope and Staples told The Canadian Press they were seeking financing to produce a stage musical inspired by Rough Trade songs.
They described it as a New York-set story about a young activist at the centre of the AIDS crisis, and said Canadian Broadway star Chilina Kennedy was attached to play a young Pope.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2025.
