There’s a lot to the story, not just for locals but also anyone interested in the Canadian music scene, the music industry in the '80s, or the creative process in general

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How did a graphic designer from Toronto who couldn’t really play music, and wasn’t a conventional singer, convince five seasoned Vancouver musicians to build a band around him?

That was one of the questions Aaron Chapman wanted to answer while writing Real Enough: The Unlikely Story of Doug and the Slugs, the Vancouver historian’s new book with Slugs keyboardist Simon Kendall.

“I remember asking Simon and John (Burton, Slugs guitarist), ‘Was he some kind of idiot savant?’” Chapman said. “And everyone basically said there was something in the lyrics. Something in the voice. Something in what he brought to the table. There was magic there from the very beginning.”

During its ’80s heyday, the six-piece racked up a string of Canadian hits and became a staple on MuchMusic and even, to fill airtime, HBO. Fun, tongue-in-cheek videos — storyboarded by Doug Bennett — for sardonic pop songs like Real Enough, Day By Day, and Who Knows How were just what the self-important medium needed.

The origins of the band lay in Vancouver’s Westside, where Bennett met a group of musicians who were growing tired of playing cover songs in downtown dives. The rest is the stuff of Vancouver music scene legend.

Peter McCulloch, who went on to found local music promotion company Timbre Concerts, bankrolled the band’s first single, the self-released and infinitely catchy Too Bad. Sam Feldman, who later would manage some of the biggest musical acts in the country, mortgaged his home so they could record their first full album, 1979’s Cognac and Bologna. Drew Burns, owner of the Commodore Ballroom, swore that a band with a name like theirs would never grace his storied stage. Not long after, the Slugs were selling out the esteemed downtown venue on a regular basis.

Of course, the band was not without its internal divisions. Bennett, in particular, could be a somewhat difficult personality — a “thin-skinned rhinoceros,” in Kendall’s words. The same ego that fuelled exuberant and participatory live performances could also be turned against his bandmates. Add to this the eternal struggle to make a living as a musician in Canada and, not to put too fine a point on it, Bennett’s heavy drinking and you had a combustible situation.

But, though the band never broke big, the Doug and the Slugs story is still very much a success story, Chapman says.

“Growing up in Vancouver, for me, Doug and the Slugs were something to aspire to. I wanted to play music. I wanted to be in bands. The idea of selling out the Commodore for multiple nights seemed enormous to me. Becoming the Rolling Stones felt like buying a lottery ticket. The Slugs felt attainable, and they were a little offbeat too. They weren’t a conventional commercial act. To me, they were absolutely successful.”

There’s a lot to the story, not just for locals but also anyone interested in the Canadian music scene, the music industry in the ’80s, or the creative process in general. This might account for Doug and the Slugs and Me, a 2022 documentary that covers some of this territory, and another book, Doug and the Slugs: 50,000 Slug Fans Can’t Be Wrong, a 2023 self-published memoir by Kendall’s bandmate John Burton.

Real Enough, which rose to No. 4 in the B.C. Bestsellers list, adds more perspective to the story, including Chapman’s historical contextualizing, Kendall’s reflections, and, via journals Bennett kept, more of the singer’s own words. (In her 2022 doc, director Teresa Alfeld also drew on the diaries.)

“One of the things that surprised me was the amount of self-reflection,” Kendall said. “There was real introspection about his creative process and his drinking. That surprised me because Doug’s public persona was all bravado.”

All told, the band released six albums of defiantly unclassifiable pop before disbanding in the early ’90s. Bennett, who passed away in 2004 at 53, lived to have one final kick at the can when the band reunited for a couple of 25th anniversary shows. Since 2009, the Slugs have continued to play occasional live shows, with Ted Okos on lead vocals.

Coming off the writing of the book, Chapman was left with a lingering thought.

Bennett, he says, should have had a second act. “I could easily have seen him as a television presenter, a game show host, a talk show host. There was definitely something unique about him.”