Allan Nicholls has only ever wanted to be in a band. From his days as a broke teenager growing up in the Saint-Laurent neighborhood of Montréal, wearing borrowed suits and knock-off Beatle boots, Nicholls’ favorite place to be was on a stage with some pals making music.
“It was never about fame or money or any of that kind of stuff,” Nicholls said in between bites of dim sum recently at a restaurant in Burlington, the city he’s lived in for the past seven or so years. With a wild shock of snow-white hair flaring out from under a black baseball cap and an almost permanent grin on his face, Nicholls maintains a youthful zeal despite his 80 years of age, especially when he’s talking rock and roll.
“If I’m really being honest,” Nicholls continued, “one of the reasons I love being in a band is that it’s a built-in audience. You’re all friends. You’re all laughing at each other’s in-jokes. And I recently realized in therapy that I’m a guy who does not like not being liked, you know what I mean?”
It’s safe to say Nicholls has found a variety of audiences in his long and winding career. He’s perhaps best known as an actor and filmmaker, appearing alongside Paul Newman in the classic 1977 hockey comedy Slap Shot, as well as in Robert Altman’s Nashville and Popeye. And he played both male lead roles in the Broadway musical Hair.
“J.B. and the Playboys was my first love.”
Allan Nicholls
But for Nicholls, it was always about the music. Before he started working with Altman on Oscar-winning projects and directing music videos for the likes of Meatloaf and Leonard Cohen, Nicholls fronted Canada’s original answer to the Beatles: J.B. and the Playboys. From its formation in 1963 until its breakup six years later, the quintet brought the sounds of the British Invasion to Canadian airwaves and stages, scoring moderate local hits and touring the country with the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. While the band never broke through to achieve a headlining level of fame, it was regionally beloved in its day.
Some bad business deals and a Broadway career beckoning for Nicholls ended J.B. and the Playboys’ quest for global stardom by 1969. But a funny thing happened more than half a century later: Nicholls got the band back together. And not just for a reunion gig or to trot out its greatest hits. Earlier this year, J.B. and the Playboys released 2025, an LP that comes 60 years after their self-titled debut.
“J.B. and the Playboys was my first love,” Nicholls said. “That never stops holding a place in your heart.”
He formed the band with guitarists Bill Hill and Andy Kaye, drummer Lorne Douglas West, and bassist Louis Atkins. Hill’s classic, crystal-clear tones evoke Dick Dale or the Ventures and underpinned much of the band’s sound. The Playboys — named after the American men’s lifestyle magazine Playboy, with “J.B.” being an inside joke among the band — arrived just before Beatlemania had fully gripped North America, only months before the Fab Four made their fateful 1964 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
With a mix of originals and early Beatles covers such as “Eight Days a Week,” they took Montréal by storm, playing high school dances, YMCA functions and eventually becoming a fixture at the Bonaventure Curling Club, one of the hottest rock clubs in the city in the ’60s. A local businessman who owned a cologne company took on the band of teenagers as their manager and had them fitted for suits, ready to become Canada’s next big thing.
After introducing their signature British Invasion-via-Canada sound on a handful of singles with the label RCA Victor, the lads found themselves touring the country in 1965 with the Rolling Stones, who were on the cusp of stardom and playing warm-up dates in Canada ahead of a U.S. tour.
“They were still trying to get to the next level,” Nicholls recalled of the Stones. “They were touring Canada in two station wagons, and we just followed them around to the gigs.”
Though the two bands didn’t hang out much, Nicholls does remember a particularly good show in Ottawa. As he and the Playboys left the stage and the Stones passed them on their way to headline, Mick Jagger pulled Nicholls aside to say a quick “Great job!” in his ear.
A brief tour with the Beach Boys followed that same year, but Nicholls was starting to worry that without a hit record, he and his nascent Playboys were letting their big chance pass them by.
“Onstage, we were so good, and we knew it,” he said. “But every time we went into the studio, we just couldn’t reproduce that magic. And we knew that if we didn’t get a record out soon, it would be a problem. But we just didn’t know what the hell we were doing.”
The band hooked up with several producers, including Gary Paxton, who had scored a No. 1 hit in 1962 for Bobby “Boris” Pickett with “Monster Mash.” Nothing stuck, so the Playboys flew to New York City in 1967 to cut their new record with producer Artie Kornfeld, who would later leave Capitol Records to cocreate the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.
Upon arriving at the studio, however, Nicholls and his bandmates discovered a crew of session musicians waiting to track the songs in their place. Even harmony vocals were handled by backing singers, leaving Nicholls’ voice the only contribution from the band itself on what was supposed to be its hit record. The sole track recorded, “Poster Man,” was eventually released under the name Carnival Connection, featuring only Nicholls from the band. The Playboys’ 1965 debut would remain their only record of the classic era, as the damage from the New York session was too much to overcome.
“It just sucked all the confidence and self-esteem out of us,” Nicholls admitted years later. “That pretty much finished the band off. Well, that and a lawsuit over being in debt from when our manager borrowed money under our name to buy some amps. But yeah, by ’69 we were essentially done.”
The band members went their separate ways, but Nicholls and Hill never lost touch or stopped making music. Hill started a recording studio in Montréal, finding success producing and mixing disco music. For Nicholls’ part, even as he worked in film, he still dreamed of playing in a band. He did a solo performance on a live broadcast for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1970, backed by guitarist Rick Derringer and his band the McCoys.
“I was still trying to be a rock star,” Nicholls said. “I just wanted to be in a band so, so bad.”
He would form other outfits over the years, including a Vermont band featuring members of the Grift. But nothing seemed to stick like his first love.
In 2019, while catching up with Hill over beer, Nicholls popped the question: “What if we got the band back together?” The next thing they knew, the two had recruited three new members — guitarist Ron Stutz, bassist Stuart Patterson and drummer R.D. Harris — and played the Hudson Music Festival in Québec.
The show was a success, but the pandemic hit only a few months later, shelving the resurgent project. Once the bandmates were able to play together again, Nicholls decided it was time to finally make the album they’d always wanted to. So the new-look J.B. and the Playboys headed to the hotel2tango studio in Montréal’s East End with former Arcade Fire member Howard Bilerman producing. They cut the nine tracks on 2025 in a week — a mix of old and new material, plus one cover — with a focus on capturing that perfect, late-’60s tone.
It’s almost shocking how vital the band still sounds, decades after recording its last note. A layer of ’60s pixie dust sits atop the songs, particularly on Hill’s pristine guitar work. And while there’s more grit and wear to Nicholls’ voice these days, he remains an engaging, energetic vocalist who fronts the band effortlessly, as if he were born to do it.
“When I heard the early mixes, I was ecstatic,” Nicholls said. “Honestly, it feels like this record is truly the first time we’ve sounded like we do onstage.”
Nicholls and his band have no illusions about restarting the British Invasion or making it big this go-round.
“Look, this whole thing is about legacy for me and the guys,” he said. “J.B. and the Playboys were a famous band in Canada. We’re not famous anymore, but we remember us, and this is us now. And isn’t that pretty cool in and of itself?”
What the future holds for the band is unclear to Nicholls, who maintains that he’s just happy to be playing music 62 years after forming J.B. and the Playboys. He can’t say if there will be a third record or if the band will play his adopted hometown of Burlington anytime soon — “Nobody knows who we were here!” he pointed out. But one thing he knows is that he’s not holding on to regrets.
“Do I look back and wonder, What if we stuck it out? What if we found a way to break out of Canada and become internationally successful? Sure, sometimes,” Nicholls admitted. “But not in some ‘what might have been’ kind of way. Because at the end of the day, every single decision in my career seems to come out of me just wanting to play in a band. That drive has steered me creatively, and it hasn’t let me down yet.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Playback | Allan Nicholls revives his ’60s rock band J.B. and the Playboys almost 60 years after they broke up”
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4 2025.
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