Former McGill Music student Frank Mills is best known as the composer of a bonafide Canadian treasure: the song Music Box Dancer. An infectiously cheery piano piece, it became a blockbuster hit in 1978 and remains beloved throughout the world.
Yet his biggest musical success is at odds with his McGill experience, during which he struggled with unimaginable loss. As a result, “the campus became my home, and the students became my family. I’m not sure I would’ve survived – I wouldn’t be here – if it wasn’t for McGill.”
Mills’ early years were idyllic. Raised in the Montreal suburbs, he grew up in a house filled with music and finished high school as valedictorian. Life turned upside down when both his parents passed away just as he was beginning his studies as a McGill pre-med student.
“I was rudderless and on my own,” says Mills. “I sank into a deep depression and went from an A student to a D student.” He was about to quit and join the navy when a friend in Music convinced him that he was simply in the wrong faculty. He aced the Music entrance exam and began studying composition, inspired equally by Bach and Beethoven as he was by Bo Diddley and Ray Charles.
Yet his mental health struggles continued. “Simply getting through the day was difficult,” he recalls. “And while I loved composition, I was more interested in the commercial side of music than the academic side.” After two years he left, hopeful that he had “enough tools under my belt to write songs.”
They served him well. He arranged his first two albums, “and I attribute a lot of that to McGill.” He went on to release 26 albums; 16 went platinum. “I’ve hosted television specials, won three JUNO awards, two SOCAN awards, and a Grammy nomination. It’s been a very rewarding career.”
Now retired from songwriting and performing, Mills has turned his attention to his eponymous McGill scholarship.
He established the Frank Mills Scholarship in 1988, and it’s still awarded annually to a deserving student in the Schulich School of Music for excellence in performance and/or composition. “I want to help others attend university, and I have a soft spot for musicians. Music is not easy to break into, and it’s not easy to find success: its years of writing and practicing, which sometimes realizes no great monetary accomplishment.”
It’s currently a partial scholarship, but he’s arranged a bequest that will augment its funding and provide full student tuition. “When it began, I was not in a position to [cover full tuition]. But it’s something I wanted to do, and I’m happy to say I’ve been successful enough over the years to make it happen.”
“It’s a ‘thank you’ for getting me through a dark time. If I have any regrets in life, it is that I did not earn my Bachelor of Music at McGill. It’s a special school in a special city, and I’m forever grateful for my time there.”
The Frank Mills Scholarship will ultimately serve as his legacy – alongside the enduring popularity of Music Box Dancer, of course. “I think I’ve written better songs, but it’s worked out very well for me,” says Mills, laughing. “The whole world loves that song. And I wrote it!”
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