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Viletones founder helped kick start a punk rock movement in Toronto

On May 4, 1977, Toronto punk rock pioneers the Viletones played the Colonial Underground, a basement club on Yonge Street. Singer and group founder Steven Leckie had previously typed up a manifesto criticizing the city's rock music elite as being antiquated. 'The war must start,' wrote the 19-year-old who controversially called himself Nazi Dog. 'The new order is the Viletones.' Wearing a sneer, black eyeliner, and gaffer's tape around his bare torso, Mr. Leckie sang Heinrich Himmler Was My Dad, slashed himself with the jagged edge of a broken beer glass and otherwise abandoned all decorum. Fans shouted, 'No more Beatles, no more Stones, we just want the Viletones,' but not everyone was on board. A week later, The Globe and Mail's weekly Fanfare section featured a photo of Mr. Leckie on the cover page accompanied by just two words: 'Ugly music.' Music writer Paul McGrath reported on the concert (which included another punk band, the Poles) with a tone of pearl-clutching and contempt reflected in the over-the-top headline: 'Not them! Not here!' Deeming the bands to be 'unnecessary,' Mr. McGrath described the Viletones as a spectacle, not musicians. 'The music is just background, a foil for a performance that is aesthetically, morally and politically as reactionary as a roller derby match,' he wrote. The Huns, in leather and safety pins, were at the border. It was the band's second ever show, and although the article was decidedly negative, Mr. Leckie saw the coverage as a sign the punk revolution had arrived in Toronto and that the Viletones were at the bleeding edge of the spear. 'We were number one in Toronto,' the singer would later say in Liz Worth's book on the city's punk beginnings, Treat Me Like Dirt. Mr. Leckie died on June 12. Lung cancer diagnosed in 2023 had spread to his liver. He was 67 and had been living with multiple sclerosis. The Torontonian was a leading figure in the city's first-wave punk scene sparked by the arrival of the U.S. stars the Ramones at the New Yorker Theatre in 1976. Bands such as the Viletones, the Diodes, the Mods and Hamilton's Teenage Head were inspired by the landmark concert. 'It was a race for Toronto punk bands to start doing shows,' said Toronto producer/musician and photographer Don Pyle. None of the other acts had a front man as charismatic and dramatic as Mr. Leckie, more an aggressive performance artist than a singer. Appearances by the Viletones suggested danger and incited violence. Mr. Lecke's intense two-chord anthem Screaming Fist was a rally call for an outsiders' community that excited some and frightened others. 'The Viletones pushed boundaries in a way you didn't see the other band's doing, and Steven took things to a whole different level,' Ms. Worth told The Globe. 'Punk was about making people feel uncomfortable. Steven did that, and I think he did it really well.' Juliette Powell, former Miss Canada and MuchMusic host turned tech critic, remembered for challenging biases Holocaust survivor David Schaffer shared his harrowing story in a graphic novel Mr. Leckie was the son of a businessman who seemingly inherited his father's marketing savvy. Founding the Viletones in 1976, he put guitarist Freddie Pompeii, drummer Mike Anderson and bassist Jackie Death in leather jackets emblazoned with the band's name immediately. 'They were putting it out there before they even played a note,' said musician Chris Haight, who replaced Mr. Death after just one show to form the classic, if short-lived, Viletones lineup. 'It created interest.' In 1977, the Viletones released the 7-inch single Screaming Fist, one of the first Canadian punk records. 'They were a perfect band for the burgeoning teenage angst of a 16- to 18-year old, and a great reason to go out on a Monday when you had school the next day,' said Mr. Pyle, who saw the original Viletones more than 70 times as a teenager. 'Screaming Fist set the template for the level of intensity outside the U.K. or the United States. There was nothing like the Viletones in Canada." In the summer of 1977, Mr. Leckie arranged a Canadian showcase at New York's punk mecca CBGB. He later explained that the Viletones had an 'American attitude' that set them apart from their Toronto counterparts: 'We didn't think, 'Oh, let's get a gig in Peterborough.'' The CBGB poster advertised a weekend of shows with California rockers the Cramps hosting 'three outrageous punk bands from Toronto, Canada,' the Viletones, the Diodes and Hamilton's Teenage Head. The 'Canadian invasion' drew notice from mainstream media including Variety magazine. Noted rock critic Lester Bangs would later write in The Village Voice that Mr. Leckie 'hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore.' Mr. Leckie was an image-conscious artist who courted the press and was given to self-mythologizing. About the trip to New York, he told one journalist that he had robbed gas stations on the way down to cover expenses. He was committed to chaos, prone to self-sabotage, and burned career bridges with an arsonist's enthusiasm. A typical antic was spending the advance money for a recording session before the band could get into the studio. 'He would do something to create some kind of falling out with the band or create some kind of drama that would cause things to go sideways,' Ms. Worth said. 'I don't know if he was afraid of success or if he was afraid of the vulnerability and the closeness it requires to work with people for a long period of time.' In 1978, Mr. Leckie's bandmates left him to form their own group, the Secrets. 'It just got to a point where it was a constant difficulty to work with the guy,' Mr. Haight said. 'But the three of us also wanted to expand musically. We didn't see ourselves playing Screaming Fist in five years." That same year, the Viletones released the five-song EP Look Back in Anger on its own label, Vile Records. Included was the song Swastika Girl. In a 2010 interview with Vice, Mr. Leckie explained that he was neither antisemitic nor pro-Nazi, and that in an era which saw punk rockers calling themselves Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Rat Scabies, he was simply upping the ante. 'I wanted to say to the '70s as a decade, tease them and say, 'Are you really liberal? Can you really take this?'' Mr. Leckie and a revamped Viletones played the famous Last Pogo concert at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern in 1978. Documented in two films by Colin Brunton, the show was something of a last hurrah for a punk movement that came fast and furious but soon fizzled. 'Steven tried to play hardball with me, asking for money that I didn't have,' Mr. Brunton recalled. 'He got over it, though. His ego would not allow him to not participate in what was being billed as the last punk show.' It was not until 1983 that the Viletones released their first full-length album, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, recorded live at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto. By that time, punk had fallen out of fashion in favour of new wave music. 'Steven planted his flag on that punk music hill and stayed there,' Mr. Brunton said. 'Others left. He did not.' In 1992, with the Viletones no longer active, Mr. Leckie and girlfriend Helene Maksoud opened Fleurs du Mal, a clothing boutique and gallery on Queen Street East named after an 1857 volume of verse by French poet Charles Baudelaire. The Viletones reunited occasionally, performing publicly as late as 2016. On his own, Mr. Leckie dabbled in rockabilly and art rock. He was preoccupied with his legacy from the beginning. 'All I wanted in '77 was to be thought of in the future,' he said in 2010. His wish was realized. The Viletones' Screaming Fist was referenced in William Gibson's dystopic sci-fi novel Neuromancer, and a computer virus was also named after the song. Some will remember Mr. Leckie as a complicated presence with a ferocious front who stirred up good trouble and bad. He frustrated those who believed his full potential wasn't realized. Concert promoter and film presenter Gary Topp knew Mr. Leckie as a teenager who came to see a Christmas afternoon screening of Marcel Carné's 1945 French romantic epic Children of Paradise at the New Yorker. 'He loved that film,' said Mr. Topp. 'He talked about it every time we spoke.' Mr. Topp views Mr. Leckie as a one-of-kind performer who enabled the punk genre in Canada to 'not only survive but grow,' and as an artist was constantly aware of his reputation. 'He wanted to be a rebel, and he wanted to be a legend, and he went full tilt to be that.' He was born at Scarborough General Hospital on Sept. 19, 1957. Though his birth certificate established him as Stephen Mitchell Leckie, he later insisted on the 'Steven' spelling. His father, David Leckie, was an executive with Benson & Hedges cigarettes in Montreal and an event producer in Toronto. His mother, the former Beverly Brewer, was a social worker with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and a pair of Toronto hospitals. He suffered from spinal meningitis at a young age. The divorce of his parents later was another blow for him and his brother and sister. 'We all had a tough time, as kids do, but we stuck together,' said Susan Leckie-Ponting, his sister. As a style-obsessed teen, he was enamored with David Bowie. 'People remember seeing Steven at glam shows with a Diamond Dogs-era haircut before he was in the Viletones,' Mr. Pyle said. 'He was very compelling.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' He began drinking alcohol before he was 15 and later participated in 12-step programs. He did not drink for at least 10 years before he died, according to his sister. Mr. Leckie served time in Mimico Correctional Centre and the Don Jail for petty theft. 'Both times I went to the jail with our father, who sat with him and read from the Bible,' his sister said. After Mr. Leckie's father died of COVID-19 in 2020, he became reclusive. His own health deteriorated. The twice-married musician had no children. He leaves his mother, Beverly McKnight; and siblings, Scott Leckie and Susan Leckie-Ponting. You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here. To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@