April Wine

April Wine came together in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1969, with the Henman brothers, David, Jimmy and Ritchie, alongside singer, guitarist and songwriter Myles Goodwyn, who would lead the band until his death in 2023. The Henmans drifted off in the early years, and by the late '70s the classic hard rock machine was in place: Goodwyn out front, Gary Moffet and Brian Greenway on guitars, Steve Lang on bass and Jerry Mercer on drums.

Their first taste of success came with On Record, the second album, which put covers of Elton John's "Bad Side of the Moon" and Hot Chocolate's "You Could Have Been a Lady" high up the Canadian charts. From there they became hugely popular at home, landing 21 different songs in the Top 40 at home and collecting Juno nominations for Group of the Year almost every year from 1975 to 1982.

First Glance, in 1978, carried the swaggering, riff-heavy "Roller", and "I Like to Rock" followed in 1980, songs that got them further abroad than they'd been. Across 16 studio albums they never quite cracked the rest of the world the way they owned Canada, but the Canadian Music Hall of Fame took them in in 2010.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.