Red Rider

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This article is about the rock band. For the comic strip and fictional cowboy, see Red Ryder.

Red Rider
Origin	Ontario, Canada
Genre(s)	Rock
Years active	1979 – 1989, 2002-present
Label(s)	Capitol
Members
Tom Cochrane Ken Greer Jeff Jones
Former members
Rob Baker Peter Boynton

Red Rider was a Canadian rock band popular in the 1980s. While the band achieved great success in Canada, they never managed to break through in the US market, at least not in the Billboard Top 40.

In 1978, Tom Cochrane joined up with Rob Baker on drums, Jeff Jones on bass, Peter Boynton on keyboards and Ken Greer to form Red Rider. They were signed to Capitol Records and released their first album Don't Fight It in 1980. With the singles "White Hot" and "Don't Fight It", the album quickly reached gold status. Their second album As Far as Siam was released in 1981 and featured the hit "Lunatic Fringe" which was used in the 1985 movie Vision Quest and which is now a mainstay classic on American rock stations. Two other tracks, "Cowboys in Hong Kong" and "What Have You Got To Do" were featured in an episode of Miami Vice which helped push the album to platinum. Boynton was replaced by keyboardist Steve Sexton on Red Rider's third album Neruda, released in 1983. The track "Napoleon Sheds His Skin" would become one of the more popular songs from the album.

For their 1984 album Breaking Curfew, John Webster replaced Sexton on keyboards. The album did not sell as well as Neruda and a dispute with Capitol Records over the future direction of the band resulted in Red Rider being dropped from the record label later in 1984.

The band subsequently signed with RCA. In what became a strong signal regarding the future of the band, they officially became known as Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, and released their self-titled fifth album in 1986.

In 1987, Capitol released a compilation CD titled Over 60 Minutes with Red Rider, covering the band's first four albums.

In the fall of 1988, the band released their sixth album Victory Day which contained the track "Big League", about a boy's dream of playing in the National Hockey League. The song was featured in a segment on CBC Television's Hockey Night in Canada.

Red Rider's final album, The Symphony Sessions, was released in 1989 and saw the band performing with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, as Procol Harum had done seventeen years before. Cochrane's solo career was taking off and the band broke up shortly after the album was released.

The three-CD box set Ashes to Diamonds, which includes material by both Red Rider and Cochrane as a solo artist, was released in 1993. Professional wrestler Kurt Angle uses an instrumental version of Lunatic Fringe as his entrance music in TNA.

Cochrane, Greer and Jones reunited in 2002, and have been touring as Tom Cochrane and Red Rider since.