Jean-Marc Pisapia; Opening ‘The Box’ for Charity

Chances are that if you didn’t hear a song from The Box on the radio in the 1980s you either did not own a radio, or you were living under a rock.

Jean Marc Pisapia – founder, frontman and principal songwriter for The Box – started his musical career as a keyboard player in another popular Montreal band, Men Without Hats.

“I met Ivan (Doroschuk, frontman for Men Without Hats) just after college,” he recalls. “We immediately hit it off artistically. He told me one day he was starting a band called Men Without Hats, which I thought was a funny name for a band. Later, he asked me to play keyboards on the road with the band and off we went to tour the eastern US.

It was at an after-party in New York City that Pisapia realized that he was destined for rock ‘n’ roll.

“We were all standing around drinking and eating and I looked over and saw Deborah Harry (Blondie) and David Bowie. I thought, ‘this is something I could get used to’. I didn’t speak with them, but I knew immediately what I wanted to do with my life.”

Pisapia left Men Without Hats before their first album (and the enormous hit Safety Dance), but the success of Doroschuk’s band had an instant and direct impact on Jean-Marc and The Box’s future.

“We had the same manager as they did, and because all of these doors were opening for them, we just followed them through. If not for Ivan and his band it would have been much more difficult for The Box to get the kind of exposure that we did, and our success may not have come.”

And that success would come; between 1984 and 1990, The Box recorded and released four charting albums and ten charting singles.

“How many bands had a hit with every single they released? It seemed as if everything we did back then turned to gold…”

“To the point that I became very arrogant and cocky. If we put out a song and it wasn’t a hit, I thought that there was something wrong with the music industry. It couldn’t be me; my songs are all hits!”

In 1985 the band released four major singles; Must I Always Remember, Walk Away, My Dreams of You, and L’affaire Dumoutier – all became mainstays on mainstream radio. In particular, L’Affaire Dumoutier – a song about the murder of a girl by a man with a personality disorder – was groundbreaking in two ways; no pop-rock song had ever featured dialogue in a documentary manner, and no music video (to that point) had been filmed as a mini-movie.

“In 1987, we released Closer Together, which became our biggest selling and most commercially acclaimed album,” remembers Pisapia. “The songs Closer Together, Crying Out Loud For Love, and Ordinary People really cemented us as one of the top Canadian bands at the time.”

Hit after hit came with a cost, however, and 18 months of non-stop touring took its toll on the band. Burned out, they took six months away from music. By the time they had reassembled in 1990 for the original lineup’s final album (The Pleasure and The Pain) – the magic had disappeared and – ten years after forming – The Box dissolved.
“In 2002, I decided that our musical catalogue was too good to not introduce to new generations of fans. I put together a fresh lineup, and we have been touring nonstop ever since. We did a few new songs and albums, but the music business is not the same anymore; the days of big hits on radio and touring on that hit are over. Even the most seasoned music executive would be lying if they say they knew what was going on.”

You can still hear The Box in 2026 – even if you don’t have a radio or live under a rock. Such is the beauty of great songs and songwriting; they will find you before you find them.

The Box headline The Second Annual Concert for Catherine on November 7th at Macallans in Dorval. An annual concert in memory of Catherine Stamatakos, all proceeds go to the Teresa Delllar Palliative Care Residence.

Tickets are available HERE.

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