Written by John Stewart
Steve DeMarchi would deliver a parcel for Prestige Couriers in the late 80s and the hit single When I’m With You would come on the radio. “They’d have CHUM-AM on. The song would play and I’d say ‘that’s me on the radio.’ They’d look at me and say ‘Sure it is.’ Just put the box over in the corner, you idiot.”
It was indeed Steve playing guitar and singing on Sheriff’s 1983 #1 Canadian hit. A couple of years later the band was out of work as punk and new wave changed the musical landscape overnight.
DeMarchi and lead vocalist Freddy Curci took jobs as couriers, while they awaited the chance to deliver more hits. In the meantime, they invested $70,000 in a 16-track studio in the basement of the DeMarchi home on Avongate Dr. in Mississauga.
DeMarchi and his talented multi-instrumentalist brother Dennis and Curci recorded a whole album in case they got another chance. A group of touring music executives in town for a convention couldn’t believe how much sound the trio were able to get out of 16 tracks, when 48 was the norm for professional studios.
One day, out of the blue, Capitol Records president Dean Cameron called saying “you’re going to have a hit.”
A Las Vegas DJ had started playing When I’m With You for a guess-the-band contest. The song took flight again, climbing into the top 10.
DeMarchi and Curci quit the courier business, headed off to do multiple American radio interviews.
They hooked up with three founding members of Seattle’s Heart to form Alias, a reference to the fact they were composite version of Sheriff and Heart under another name. One of the songs they’d written at the DeMarchi home while couriers, More Than Words Can Say eventually hit #2 on Billboard’s top 100 and #1 on the adult contemporary chart.
Steve’s two biggest hits are in rotation in “classic” radio formats, have been used in numerous TV ads, including on the Super Bowl, and are part of Time/Life music compilations sold round the globe. Alias’ death was as unexpected as its birth. The record started to do well – then grunge and alt hit and the bottom fell out – again.
DeMarchi has since toured the world, working as a side musician for The Cranberries. Steve well remembers the night Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts knocked on the dressing room door to introduce themselves and say “welcome to the tour.”
He spent two years helping lead singer Dolores O’Riordan write and record her solo record, part of which was recorded at Metalworks on Mavis Rd. While Alanis Morissette was singing background vocals on a Freddy Curci cover of Brown-Eyed Girl, she asked Steve what it was like to have a #1 hit record. He got to ask her the same question a few years later at an awards show in Europe.
Steve DeMarchi has played everywhere from the Mississauga Belle, the Locomotion and Superstars in his hometown to the Vatican, where he played with The Cranberries before 200,000 people at Christmas celebrations that featured an 85-piece orchestra.
He’s also appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and more than a half-dozen times on the version hated by Jay Leno. He even played the Nobel Prize concert when he and The Cranberries shared a stage with Shania Twain and Phil Collins.
“That’s something I never would have dreamed of as a kid playing the local bars around here,” he says.
All of that has earned Steve a well-earned place on Mississauga’s Music Walk of Fame.