Fans of Canuck hard rock are no doubt familiar with CONEY HATCH, who released a trio of successful albums in the ‘80s, namely Coney Hatch (1982), Outta Hand (1983) and Friction (1985).

If the records don’t ring a bell, the band’s hits do - ‘Hey Operator’, ‘Monkey Bars’, ‘Devil’s Deck’, ‘Don’t Say Make Me’ and ‘Fantasy’ among many others that embraced a certain gritty, bar-room appeal and struck a chord with melodic hard rock fans around the world. Coney Hatch officially broke up in 1985 and the leaders of the band - Carl Dixon (vocalist and guitarist) and Andy Curran (vocalist and bassist) - went on to varying degrees of success. Early in BW&BK;’s history we caught up with Dixon as he had just released his 1993 solo album, One. We had lost touch with the man, although he had found success in resurrecting the career of the Guess Who – post-RANDY BACHMAN and BURTON CUMMINGS - another long story. More recently Dixon had temporarily relocated to Australia where his daughter Lauren is currently playing Stevie Lake on The Saddle Club, an Australian children’s television series based on the books written by Bonnie Bryant. And this is where his life-altering tale begins. One fateful day in Melbourne, a mental lapse while he was driving home for dinner nearly cost him his life. The story emerges as a true-to-life Six Million Dollar Man episode (“We can rebuild him”), and Aussie doctors did just that, but left the bionics out of the equation.

Dixon fills in the why-where-how blanks: “I was visiting my family - my daughter is one of the stars of the show. I had a couple of songs on the series and I guess they will be part of the albums from the series at some point. But the day I got injured, I had driven into Melbourne to spend the day in the studio, working on a track for my daughter’s show and I was on the way home to have dinner with the family when this happened. It was one of those crazy things where I was this Canadian in Australia and it appears that I forgot what side of the road to be on for one minute. They are on the other side (compared to Canada) there. Somebody came flying around the corner at high speed when I was on the wrong side. He was on the right side, but there was no way to avoid it. Judging by the scene of the accident and the speeds that were involved, they figured I had about one second to react. He had about two seconds. With that extra bit of time, he tried to avoid me, but instead ended up going right up the front of my car and driving over top of me with his SUV and crushing it down on top of me. I had about 50 separate injuries from that.”

Dixon’s memories from the accident are scattered at best. “I have what they call PTA - post-trama amnesia,” the quiet-spoken musician explains. “I remember nothing from that evening when I got onto the highway at Melbourne and the accident happening about an hour after that. It was pretty serious and bad and there was lots of gore and blood and mayhem. First of all they thought I was going to die. Then they thought they’d have to amputate my right arm and my left leg. And my wife convinced them to give it the ol’ college try because she was there. I stayed conscious for about an hour and a half as they extricated me from the wreckage. They felt if I had stopped talking and given in, I probably would’ve died before they got me out of the car. I was gushing blood and was ripped apart. I guess I had the will to keep babbling and keep myself awake. There was a lot of surgery the first day - 19 hours. And the next day another 17 hours to put me back together.”

“I did lose an eye unfortunately, and there’s some chunks missing here and there, but I should recover pretty close to the way I used to be. I still have some work to do on my legs. I’m still on crutches to walk, but they are getting stronger and stronger and I should be able to get rid of the crutches by mid to late November and start practicing proper walking at that point. I was going to physio three hours a day in Australia and then I got to crutches before I left. I’ve been getting everywhere by crutches since mid-August. It’s not convenient or fast, but I’ve got one leg that’s working fine, and the other is still aching. Both legs were broken, one of them very badly and the other not as badly, but it’s still aching now. And I had some serious damage to my right arm, but I can still play guitar. By about two months ago I was able to play for a couple of hours at a time in a couple of small shows that I did. I played shows in the hospital as sort of a thank you. As for playing now, I’m about 98% recovered. I couldn’t grip a pick for the first while, but I can do just about everything I was doing up until the accident.”

How did the Australia health system cooperate? Given the fact that there is a benefit being put together, there must be some lingering costs from the tragedy?

“You see the funny thing is, and I didn’t know this until I got hurt, you do all that hard work when you are in rehab and physio - nobody pays you for that. I haven’t had a pay cheque for quite a while and that’s where things have fallen down. There were costs from having the family split from Australia and Canada. Costs of living there. The main thing is, everything mounted in our real life while I was on my back, not able to make any money.”

It’s amazing we are even talking right now.

“It is, because I got whacked on the head and it swelled up bigger than a basketball and they had to drill a hole in it to let the swelling fluid out. Just an amazing amount of medical stuff. Even four months later I was finding out things that happened to me that I hadn’t known before. There were just so many injuries, they concentrated on the ones that would make a difference in me staying alive. It’s an amazing thing to go through and come out the other side. The lesson I learned - well, I’ve learned many lessons - is how much the body wants to be well and how much it will heal itself if you give it a chance. I stayed very healthy all my life. I wasn’t a typical drug-taking, drink-swilling rocker. I always stayed healthy and didn’t touch drugs ever and never smoked and hardly drank and always stayed in good shape. And the doctor said that the fact I was in such great fitness was the main reason I survived. I learned that you give yourself a chance by staying healthy and also that the body will do everything to restore itself to good health if you rest and give it the chance.”

Dixon’s strength and will to live permits this conversation as he most certainly is aware that extreme luck is a big factor.

“You know what’s funny, I had some of the people in the industry talk to me while I was in the hospital and they said ‘Man, this really shook me up; I thought you were invincible.’ And I told a friend here in Haliburton that story and he said ‘Look at you - you are invincible! You are here!’”

Tomorrow (Thursday October 30th) at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto, HELIX, ANDY CURRAN & SOHO 69, BRIGHTON ROCK and RUSS DWARF will perform a concert to benefit Dixon and his family. Andy Curran along with Brighton Rock has assembled their original line-ups. Both Brighton Rock and Andy Curran & Soho 69 have not appeared live in over a decade. Joining Curran will be his original drummer Glenn Milchem now of BLUE RODEO who will help Andy perform songs from his Coney Hatch catalog and beyond.

No doubt Dixon is happy that the Toronto music community has banded together for his cause. “I’m thrilled. This gesture by my really good friend Andy and my peers and contemporaries - almost all of them are friends of mine from different bands and the techs that are helping - light guys, sound guys, production manager. All of them, we all go back a long way and have many stories to tell and many happy experiences together. So for them to extend themselves for this, for me and my family is very touching and I’m thrilled and delighted and grateful.”

Can we expect a Coney Hatch reunion at this show? Will you be performing?

“I will be at the event. I will say a few words of thank you. There won’t be a Coney Hatch reunion as such. We will all be there. Beyond that I don’t want to say. There’s a possibility to do some Coney Hatch shows next year because we are all at loose ends now."

How do you intend to pay future bills once fully recovered?

“I’m working on a new album, which was interrupted when I had this accident. I’m aiming for February to have it all wrapped up. And I’ll be starting to do some solo acoustic shows and some band shows with my own backing band whenever I can beginning at the end of November into December. I can sit on stool to do that even if my legs aren’t ready yet. But I’ve got to get back to work.”