Lighthouse Announces Anniversary Edition of Landmark 1971 Album One Fine Morning, Available November 7
Canadian rock legends Lighthouse will celebrate one of their most beloved and groundbreaking albums of their storied career with the release of One Fine Morning (Anniversary Edition), arriving November 7 via Anthem Records. Available on stunning limited edition three-colour-splatter vinyl, sun/moon vinyl, double CD and digitally. This is the first-ever fully remixed, remastered and expanded edition of the platinum-selling band’s breakthrough 1971 release.
One Fine Morning (Anniversary Edition) reawakens the energy and innovation that made the multi-JUNO Award-winning Lighthouse one of the most adventurous and influential bands of their era. Blending rock, jazz, and classical influences into a sound entirely their own, Lighthouse reshaped the possibilities of progressive rock, and their genre-blending sound and fearless creativity continues to inspire generations of artists. The original One Fine Morning album solidified Lighthouse as one of Canada’s most pioneering musical forces. The album earned the band worldwide attention, with the title track becoming a radio staple and remains one of the most celebrated songs in Canadian rock history.
“When we chat with our new and younger audiences at concerts and on social media, they ask for records and streaming of Lighthouse’s classic hits along with ‘extras’ that provide personal and historical perspective,” says founding Lighthouse band member Paul Hoffert. “This anniversary edition provides both. In 1970, producer Jimmy Ienner and lead singer Bob McBride helped focus our music, lyrics and orchestral rock into a more broadcast-friendly format that attracted a much wider fan base. We hope listeners enjoy hearing these songs and demos as much as we loved making them.”
Highlights of the upcoming Anniversary Edition include:
- The fully remixed and remastered One Fine Morning album – now with stunning new clarity;
- “All God’s Children,” a previously unheard song from the original studio recording sessions, co-written by band members Larry Smith and Academy Award-winning composer Howard Shore;
- Skip Prokop singing lead vocals on the demo versions of the hit songs “One Fine Morning” and “Sing, Sing, Sing;”
- A CBC live performance of “World’s Biggest Rock & Roll Band” from 1970;
- and previously unreleased demo versions of “Customs Man,” “I Can Find A Way,” “Ralphie’s Tune,” “Show Me The Way,” and “Old Man.”
Each track reflects a band in full flight, channeling the momentum that would carry them to international acclaim.
In recognition of their remarkable contributions to Canadian music, Skip Prokop, Paul Hoffert, Ralph Cole and Bob McBride were inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022, and the following year Lighthouse was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. Over 50 years after their breakthrough, Lighthouse continues to share and celebrate their legacy with fans across Canada on tour.
First off, care to introduce Lighthouse to our readers?
I founded Lighthouse with Skip Prokop in 1969. We were in our early twenties and both of us were already well-known performers in Canada and in the US. Skip was becoming a rock legend, having performed and recorded with Richie Havens, Peter, Paul, & Mary, The Mamas and Papas, SuperSession and his rock band – The Paupers. He was managed by Albert Grossman, who also managed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and a host of other rock & roll stars. I had my first LP, Jazz Routes of Paul Hoffert, released when I was 16, performed at jazz clubs, music festivals, and as a featured performer on network television. When I met Skip, I had already composed music scores for two feature films, dozens of television commercials, and an Off-Broadway musical that played for six months in Manhattan.
One evening I was in Manhattan and wandered into the Electric Circus, where Skip was performing with The Paupers. At intermission, we chatted briefly, and the next morning ended up accidentally sitting next to each other on a flight back to Canada. We chatted about the music business and why bands like The Beatles had to stop touring after they started using studio musicians – horns and strings – on their albums and could no longer reproduce their recordings live when they toured. We both had a passion for orchestral film scores and realized we might be able to put together a rock band with horns and strings that could record orchestral jazz-influenced rock songs and perform those recordings live in concert.
We got together in Toronto and wrote four songs as a demo and took it to New York to try to get a record deal. The first company we approached – Verve/MGM – loved our idea and our demo. They signed us on the spot – the same day we brought in the demo – and agreed to fly our new band (not yet in existence) to New York to record our first album and strongly promote it. They also paid Skip and me a signing bonus of $30,000 ($250,000 today). Skip then approached his management company to manage our band. Vinnie Fusco at the Albert Grossman agency loved our idea and signed us. So, although we didn’t yet have a band, we had a record deal and a promise of lots of gigs. Then Vinnie Fusco re-negotiated a new record deal for us with RCA that was worth about $1 million and included clauses that bought out the rights from Verve/MGM, paid for a touring truck and the design of a new sound system that would be capable of handling the 13 singers and instrumentalists that became “Lighthouse”. Also in the contract was a guarantee that RCA would promote our first US gig as a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. Immediately after our Carnegie Hall debut, Vinnie Fusco booked Lighthouse as the opening act for Jefferson Airplane, playing large arenas on a cross-US tour and generating the live reviews we needed to get more gigs. We played about one thousand concerts over our first three years as a band, mostly in the US and Canada but also Europe, where Lighthouse won the “Battle of the Horn Bands” at the Isle of Wight Music Festival over Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears, and in Japan, where we had a number #1 single.
Lighthouse sold lots of records – 9 gold and platinum records and a compilation disc (Oh What a Feeling) of Canadian hits that went diamond (one million records sold in Canada). Lighthouse won three JUNO Awards, was inducted into Canada’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Canada’s Walk of Fame, and Skip and I along with band members Bob McBride and Ralph Cole were inducted into Canada’s Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Lighthouse stopped recording and touring in 1975. Except for a brief reunion in 1982 for a weekend of concerts and the filming of a documentary, the band was dormant until 1990, when we decided to re-form with Dan Clancy as lead singer. That version has been performing and recording as Lighthouse for the past thirty-five years
The album is being released in multiple formats, including limited three-colour splatter vinyl. How important is the physical presentation to the band in this digital age, and which format do you think best captures the spirit of the album?
The format of physical recordings has changed over the years, and each change has affected the way we enjoy music. 78 rpm and 45 rpm records could only hold a few minutes of music – a single short song – so they were called “singles”. When the LP was invented, it could hold 15-20 minutes of music on each side, and this revolutionized the listening experience with the new concept of albums. Aside from giving the listener ten or more singles on a disc in the order that the artist preferred for listening, LPs were designed with cardboard sleeves that provided protection for the LP disc and also lots of room for text and images to describe the contents and sometimes include a booklet tucked into the disc sleeve. Compact discs continued the album concept. When streamed music began to take over from physical music sales, artists and listeners lost the ability to listen to albums.
The original spirit of the One Fine Morning album is best represented on CDs and LPs because they present the user with the 1971 version of the album along with extras that have never before been available.
Anthem and Lighthouse wanted this Anniversary edition to have the best fidelity available today, so we’ve used the latest AI processors to un-mix the original One Fine Morning album tracks into their components of drums, keyboards, bass, guitar, horns, strings and vocals. Then we increased the resolution and frequency response of the separated tracks and re-mixed them using today’s state-of-the-art studio equipment while matching the mixes of the originals. We were able to produce the best sounds of today using the best performances of yesterday. My bandmates and I love the sound of the new releases as well as the extra demo tracks, text, photos, and graphics.
In the 1970s, the price of vinyl skyrocketed because of the oil crisis, and record companies started pressing records with less vinyl – the typical vinyl “biscuit” weighed about 130 grams. This led to what we called the “Rice Krispies effect” – snap, crackle and pop. Those thinner records had more noise and were more prone to skipping grooves. Today’s disc pressing plants make premium pressings that typically use 180-200 grams of vinyl, and that’s what we’ve used. As you might expect, our CDs and LPs sound slightly different because they use different tech and different players. Both are top quality.
For fans who like to collect the physical discs as well as the music, we’re making available a limited edition of LPs that sound identical except that each individual disc is unique – just before the press comes down on the vinyl, a random number of coloured vinyl dots are sprinkled on the clear vinyl (called splatter vinyl) so that every limited edition disc is unique.
The discovery of “All God’s Children” is a major highlight. Can you shed light on why this track—co-written with Larry Smith and Academy Award winner Howard Shore—was left off the original 1971 release?
We chose Jimmy Ienner to produce the original One Fine Morning album and gave him complete control over which songs to include on the album, so unless a band member played on a demo, he has never heard it. I can reveal that when Ienner met with the band members to solicit demos, he told us all that he was looking for a big change in direction to make the Lighthouse tracks more radio-friendly. In 1971 that meant getting played on AM hit single formats – songs that were 2.5 – 3.5 minutes long without changes in tempo and structured as simple verse/bridge/chorus formats without extended intros, outros or choruses and generally no solos. Listening to “All God’s Children” today brings Ienner’s comments to mind. It’s a terrific song and, in today’s perspective, the fact that it’s long, changes tempos, starts and stops a few times, and has lots of instrumental solos wouldn’t be an issue in a world of streaming. But it’s my guess that Ienner left the song out because it didn’t fit with his concept for this album.
You’ve included a rare CBC live performance of “World’s Biggest Rock & Roll Band” from 1970. What does that particular track and performance represent about Lighthouse’s energy and ambition at the time?
In 1970, the same year that One Fine Morning was recorded, Lighthouse collaborated with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet company on a theatrical dance musical called Ballet High. In addition to the dancers, the members of Lighthouse were onstage performing the music while interacting with the dancers. At the beginning of the musical, Lighthouse’s portion of the stage started in the pit and slowly rose to stage height as we played an original song that we wrote, “World’s Biggest Rock & Roll Band”. The song was only performed live with the Ballet and once on television but never on a Lighthouse record, so we’ve included it as an extra for this package since it represents our headspace at that time.
Lighthouse was known for an electrifying stage presence. How difficult was it to translate the complex, multi-layered arrangements of the album into a dynamic and cohesive live show?
It was and still is difficult to translate Lighthouse’s multi-layered arrangements into a cohesive live show. In some ways, it’s like a classical orchestral performance. In a symphony orchestra, the conductor is constantly balancing the loudness and sound quality of the various orchestra sections, and in a Lighthouse performance our house mixer, who travels with us, provides a similar function and does an excellent job.
Looking ahead, do you feel that this remastered edition will change how a new generation of listeners perceives Lighthouse’s role in the history of Canadian rock?
Lighthouse continues to play many live concerts, and we have active websites, so we get feedback from fans. Many of our newer and younger fans are not familiar with our classic rock era albums and only know us from streaming tracks and live concerts. They’ve been asking for re-issues of our albums, many of which were gold and platinum. They’ve been asking about how and why we recorded and performed our albums, and when they might be re-issued. They’re also keen to get associated material that’s never been available before. When Anthem Records proposed this new anniversary double album commemorating the original One Fine Morning release, we were excited because it answers their requests.
Upcoming Shows:
February 5, 2026 – Guelph, ON – River Run Centre
February 21, 2026 – Pickering, ON – Pickering Casino – with the Five Man Electrical Band
April 1, 2026 – St. Catharines, ON – FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre