Tom Cochrane- Mad Mad World 35th Anniversary

When you are playing your Telecaster electric guitar out on the vast Canadian wheatfields in the central part of that country, finding an outlet to plug into can be a challenge, but it turns out that was the least of the hurdles veteran singer/songwriter Tom Cochrane had to overcome in his Mad Mad World  thirty-five years ago.

Like so many of his countrymen & women, veteran songwriter and frontman for Red Rider Tom Cochrane didn’t need a driver license or visa or passport to cross the border. Tom needed airplay on the majority of American rock radio stations, which were so important in the last half of the twentieth century in order to establish and maintain a musical career. Red Rider albums As Far as Siam and Neruda featuring Tom Cochrane’s songs and singing had received considerable US airplay in the early Eighties with “Lunatic Fringe” and “Power”; a 1986 eponymously-titled effort yielded the infectious “Boy Inside the Man”; and the following year’s Victory Day was loaded with  strong songs and performances including “Big League”, “Calling America”, and the title song.

The tumblers all clicked for Tom Cochrane with the September 1991 (2/92 in the US) release of Mad Mad World containing the Billboard #6 earworm “Life is a Highway”, driving initial sales of over 500,000 copies in the US alone. Tom Cochrane is my guest In the Studio on the thirty-fifth anniversary of Mad Mad World. –Redbeard