Peter Goddard

Peter Goddard was a pupil of Margaret Butler (piano) at the RCMT and of Mieczyslaw Kolinski (musicology) and Gustav Ciamaga (electronic music) at the University of Toronto. He played piano in a succession of Toronto rock groups, then in 1966 began his career as a journalist. He was pop music critic 1966-7 for The Globe and Mail, 1968-71 for the Toronto Telegram and 1972-88 for the Toronto Star. He remained after 1988 with the Star in other editorial capacities. Goddard received a Juno Award in 1972 as journalist of the year.

Goddard also wrote for many magazines (Maclean's, Saturday Night, RPM, Canadian Composer, etc) and was the author of the biography Frank Sinatra (Don Mills, Ont, 1973) and the novel The Sounding (Toronto 1988), and co-author with Ronnie Hawkins of Ronnie Hawkins: Last of the Good Old Boys (Toronto 1989). With the Toronto photographer Philip Kamin, Goddard collaborated on 10 books, published 1982-6 in Toronto, documenting concert tours during the early and mid-1980s by the Rolling Stones, the Who, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Genesis, Michael Jackson, the Police, Van Halen, the Cars, and Cyndi Lauper. Goddard also edited The Video Hits Book (Toronto 1986, for the CBC-TV series'Video Hits') and with Kamin co-edited the collection of essays Shakin' All Over: The Rock'N' Roll Years in Canada (Toronto 1989).