This was the year that I would finally get my teaching practice off the ground and my wife to be, Lynda Cowgill, moved over from England to be with me.

Due to the success of "Good to the Last Drop" and "Midnight Express" that I wrote with Marc Ribler, I was encouraged by my manager Bill Seip to continue the relationship. Every 2 or 3 months I would fly to New York where Marc would pick me up and take me to his place in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn. We would have these intense writing sessions that would last all day long and sometimes until five in the morning. Once, after an especially long day, I fell asleep in the bathtub and woke up some hours later with all the water drained out of the tub!

At the same time my relationship with Paul Hackman was becoming strained. It was nothing personal we were still great friends in that regard. The tension between us was due once again to the inordinate amount of time it was taking us to put together the next album. It was killing us. I felt my life was on hold waiting for Paul to come up with licks, so it became an agreement between Paul and my self that he would work on the Helix album while I worked on my own solo project with Marc. When Paul had the material, we would get together and finish it off. Through it all we were still playing, but the dates were starting to dry up.

Later on in the year we ended up playing for the Much Music Video Awards show and, the following day, recording a new version of our national anthem "O Canada" for which we received a citation from the Governor General Ray Hatyshyn.

Phil Kates also won "Best Director for a Heavy Metal Video" award for "Running Wild in the 21st Century".

Another high point of the year was the Helix reunion show at the infamous Lulu's Road House in Kitchener, Ontario. This was a huge success which saw former members Keith Zurbrigg and Bruce Arnold come back and celebrate with us for a night.