Darryl Salach, founder and editor of The Toronto Quarterly, recently conducted an interview with Irving Layton's son, Max, concerning the release of his new CD, Heartbeat Of Time, as well as his years growing up in Montreal with his father. He agreed to allow us the pleasure of bringing it to you person-to-personally . . .
— Judith Fitzgerald
By Darryl Salach
Max Layton, born in Montreal in 1946, is the eldest son of well-known Canadian poet Irving Layton. His parents split up when he was 13; his mother, Betty Sutherland, and his sister, Naomi, moved out to California. Max stayed with his father and stepmother in a downtown Montreal apartment until his final year of high school. At 16, he took up residence in a rooming house with alcoholics, a 60-year-old prostitute and a WWI veteran who coughed all night.
After graduating high school, Max spent some time with his mother at an anarchist commune in Big Sur before hitch-hiking off to British Columbia to work in a lumber camp on Vancouver Island. It took him 10 years to graduate from Concordia University in Montreal with a BA in English and Philosophy. He married briefly along the way, fathered a child, Jessica, and worked in more lumber camps or at other odd jobs right across Canada (playing his guitar in coffee houses and on street corners whenever he got the chance).
Layton then settled in Toronto, married the love of his life, Sharon, and ventured into a wide range of different vocations from a founding partnership (and subsequently selling his share) in a BookCity outlet, managing a subsidiary of McClelland & Stewart and becoming a bank VP. He then headed back to school to earn his English MA from the University of Toronto. Now, he teaches English at a high school in Mississauga.
A few years ago while driving home, Layton noticed that the telephone poles had an inexplicable curve to them and, after nearly crashing his car a few weeks later, he realized he was rapidly going blind. Unable to work, drive or read, Layton found himself sitting in a dark room doing the only thing he could still do: strum on his old guitar and write many of the songs that appear on his new CD, Heartbeat of Time.
DS: Congratulations on the release of Heartbeat of Time. How personal are the songs on this record and would you describe this project as being cathartic in many ways?
ML: Most of the songs were written during a very difficult time — about six months — when I thought I was going to go completely blind. I already couldn't drive or work or read or even watch TV, so I did the only thing I still could do: I picked up my guitar and, to my astonishment, songs came pouring out. Some of the songs are deeply personal, some less so, but all the songs were cathartic, at least for me — luminous moments in a dark and lonely room.
DS: When did the idea of putting a CD together come about and how long was the process of writing the music?
ML: Making a CD became a real possibility when I realized that, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, my eyesight was coming back. I felt like someone who had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and somehow stumbled out into the sunlight on the other side. I felt as though, in the dark, I had "seen" something worth remembering, worth recording, if you'll forgive the pun. I knew I had more than enough songs for a CD but it took at least another six months to hone and practise and choose the right ones.
DS: How's your eyesight today? What's the official diagnosis?
