Outspoken artist Mendelson Joe blended music and artwork with activism

It shocked nobody who knew him that Mendelson Joe would select to die totally on his personal phrases.

In a Feb. 7 put up on his web site titled “That’s It People,” the prolific, self-taught musician, painter and activist who had superior Parkinson’s illness, wrote: “I’ve ended my job as multi-media artist with the supply of MAID (Medical Help in Dying).” Unable to withstand a final probability to advocate his beliefs, he added: “I see MAID as an indication of a civilized society. To be born Canadian is a good blessing. We now have free speech. We now have healthcare. We now have MAID. Thanks, Canada.” Mr. Joe was 78.

These closest to him keep in mind a novel man, unwavering in his views and blunt in delivering them. However those self same pals additionally cite his kindness, loyalty and humour. “The very last thing Joe stated to me was ‘Till we meet once more, bon appétit,” recalled Dr. Philip Berger, who joined him at quite a few political demonstrations. “Whilst he was going through demise, he made me chortle. I’ve identified Joe for 47 years and he was at all times like that, balancing his attribute inflexibility with one thing wry, witty or simply plain foolish.”

He introduced the identical steadiness to his music and work. Starting together with his well-liked blues-rock band McKenna Mendelson Mainline, co-founded with guitarist Mike McKenna, and all through his lengthy solo profession, Mr. Joe wrote songs that had been easy, direct and to the purpose. However they had been at all times political and playful on the similar time. His 1984 best hits assortment, The Title of the Sport Ain’t Schmaltz, included a slam on legal professionals known as They Will Take Your Pants.

Mr. Joe’s brightly colored work, usually described as primitive or naïve in fashion, additionally had an edge. A few of his attractive landscapes carried messages warning about nuclear power or environmental destruction. His portraits, particularly these of politicians he discovered reprehensible, could possibly be viciously caustic. Of all Mr. Joe’s many work, his most well-known – by far – is his portrait of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, with buttocks for a face and an anus for a mouth.

Business success eluded Mr. Joe, though the output and worth of his paintings (he started portray in 1975) picked up after he left Toronto in 2000 and settled in Emsdale, Ont., close to his beloved Algonquin Park. “Joe was his personal worst enemy,” famous author David Hayes, a bassist on a few of Mr. Joe’s recordings. “He simply wouldn’t play the sport.”

Ray Danniels, longtime supervisor of Rush and proprietor of Anthem Information, agreed. “I attempted managing Joe for some time and launched a few his albums, till I spotted he was by no means going to compromise to succeed in a wider viewers. However he actually made himself identified to lots of people.”

Mr. Joe’s notoriety unfold far and extensive, as a lot for his one-man protests and tireless letter-writing to editors, politicians and media personalities as for his artwork. Amongst these posting affectionate tributes on social media following the information of his demise had been comic Rick Mercer, Canada’s United Nations consultant Bob Rae and Rush’s Geddy Lee, who had inspired Mr. Danniels to signal Mr. Joe within the first place. “Joe has left the planet,” wrote Mr. Lee on Instagram. “He was an outspoken, big-thinking human, really a large. R.I.P. my good friend.”

Birrel Josef Mendelson was born in Toronto on July 30, 1944, the second little one of Harry Mendelson, a lawyer, and his homemaker spouse, Elsie. (He adopted the reversed stage title of Mendelson Joe in 1975.) In his autobiography Alien: The Unusual Life and Instances of Mendelson Joe, Mr. Joe described his father as having a “merciless nature” and each of his mother and father as chainsmokers and alcoholics. After the household moved to Maple, a rural group north of Toronto he picked up his sister’s discarded guitar and fell in love with music.

After graduating from Richmond Hill Excessive Faculty, Mr. Joe, by then standing over six ft tall and weighing 225 kilos, enrolled on the College of Toronto and pursued soccer and music whereas incomes his Bachelor of Arts diploma. Earlier than lengthy, he was performing in Yorkville coffeehouses, singing people and blues solo and performing within the Outdated Higher Canada Ragtime Mama Jugband. He met and married Lea, nicknamed Flea, in 1966 and earned cash making leather-based belts and vests for the Mr. Informal clothes retailer.

A categorised advert in 1968 led Mr. Joe to Mr. McKenna and the 2 shaped the notorious blues-rock band that bore their names. With Mr. Joe on lead vocals and guitar, the group toured England and Australia and recorded a number of albums, together with its acclaimed debut, Stink, which featured his music Beltmaker. But it surely was Mainline’s Bump ‘n’ Grind Revue, first held in early 1972 and reprised on New Yr’s Eve 1973 at Toronto’s Victory Burlesque theatre, that made the largest stink.

Because the band carried out its raunchy blues with its members wearing drag, dancers with names like Mom Superior and Heaven Lee stripped right down to their Mainline G-strings. Martin Melhuish, in Zoo journal, described Mr. Joe as a “hulking, bearded type, clad in a black slip with gartered black nylons, bulging silk underwear, hair in a pony tail, a pair of unbuckled work boots and sufficient make-up on his face to trigger a bounce within the worth of Helena Rubinstein inventory.” Scandalous for the occasions, the Bump ‘n’ Grind was filmed by a younger Moses Znaimer for TVOntario.

The rest of the Seventies was tumultuous for Mr. Joe, who give up Mainline twice, claiming band politics and the music enterprise had been driving him loopy, went by way of a divorce and launched three solo albums. He additionally met a brand new love, a stripper named Annie Smith he known as “Nurse Annie” and thought of his soulmate, till they parted methods in 1981.

Portray stored the heartbroken Mr. Joe sane. From a crowded storefront studio on Ossington Avenue, he painted consistently whereas persevering with to write down and document music. Laurie Brown had not but launched into her broadcasting profession when she answered Mr. Joe’s long-running categorised advert that learn: “Nude feminine fashions needed. No hanky panky.”

“I’d heard about him and needed to be taught his story – perhaps it was the budding interviewer in me,” recollects Ms. Brown, who went on to develop into a MuchMusic VJ after which a CBC radio host. “My posing for him didn’t begin off nude,” she added. “It started with him portray my portrait, attending to know one another and me feeling safe. For those who had been a lady in his studio, there was nobody you possibly can really feel extra revered by than Joe.”

His appreciation of ladies (two exhibitions, The That means of Life and 24 Nipples, centered on the feminine breast) went past the inventive. Mr. Joe was unequivocal that girls are the one hope for the world. He additionally painted a sequence known as Working Girls that included over 300 portraits of ladies from all walks of life, all clothed – ”even the individuals who work within the intercourse commerce,” he identified in Alien.

Considered one of Mr. Joe’s portraits featured Denise Bellamy, whom he had befriended when she was a lawyer. “Joe at all times thought I ought to develop into a decide,” Ms. Bellamy recollects, “as a result of he stated I had lots of frequent sense. It was a part of his agency perception that half the judges, in actual fact half of the positions of energy in our society, must be held by girls.” Ms. Bellamy grew to become a decide in Ontario’s Supreme Court docket of Justice in 1997 and Mr. Joe painted a second portrait of her. But it surely didn’t cease there.

“Joe requested me to ship him judgments after I’d written them,” Ms. Bellamy defined. “Typically he agreed with me, however different occasions he took nice exception to them and needed to argue.” She added: “He actually stored me trustworthy and on my toes. I liked that about him.” That sentiment is shared by many recipients of his letters and postcards.

Together with portray and making music, Mr. Joe by no means stopped crusading for a greater world. He banned smoking at his concert events (the primary Toronto musician to take action), as soon as held a 100-day starvation strike to protest the Darlington nuclear reactor and, along with Lisa Cherniak, co-founded the Artists Towards Racism group in 1992. “He had no use for racists,” confirmed good friend and fellow artist-activist Anne Hansen, “sycophants, liars, hypocrites or dinner events. The bane of his existence was public indifference to the collective human plight.”

In 1992, the Canada Council awarded Mr. Joe a $32,000 grant to color a sequence known as Liars, portraits of people who betray the general public belief. Together with Mr. Mulroney, Mike Harris, Stephen Harper, Preston Manning and Stockwell Day are among the many featured politicians. Just lately, he painted a sinister-looking portrait of Ontario’s premier, titled Doug, the Thug, Ford.

“Joe could possibly be very judgmental about what folks did and what they made from their careers,” stated musician John Oswald, who performed saxophone on a few of Mr. Joe’s recordings and as soon as danced with him in a efficiency of Swan Lake, with huge Joe wearing a tutu with feather dusters gaffer-taped to his forearms for wings. “Politicians are one factor, however there have been musicians Joe could be extremely obsessed with – till he condemned the alternatives they made.”

Singer Gwen Swick agrees. “I as soon as fearful about what I’d do if an organization needed to make use of one among my songs in a industrial,” she stated. “I spotted I’d by no means be capable of do it as a result of I’d have to elucidate it to Joe, and that,” provides Ms. Swick with amusing, “could be too tough.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Joe acknowledged his personal foibles and contradictions, admitting to being a hypocrite for crusading in regards to the setting whereas using his beloved bikes. By no means treasured in his alternative of phrases, he known as himself and different artists “whores,” and their brokers and publicists “pimps,” a lot to the embarrassment of some.

However that honesty was additionally what many admired in regards to the artist, who launched over 30 albums and produced hundreds of work, a few of that are held by the Portrait Gallery of Canada and the Canada Council Artwork Financial institution. “Joe was the true deal, somebody who at all times spoke his thoughts and by no means compromised,” Ms. Brown stated. “He’s a reminder to artists to keep away from mediocrity, keep true to themselves and by no means fear what others assume.”

Mr. Joe was predeceased by his sister, Cybil. He leaves his spouse and agent, Karen Robinson, and nephews, Dorian, Eric and Jeremy Younger.