David Farrell started his career as a 17-year-old music fan, conning his way into a hotel room occupied by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He went on to chronicle the Canadian music business, writing in both Canada and the United States. Mr. Farrell started The Record, a weekly publication that tracked everything from record reviews and industry gossip to charts of the hits.
The Record became a crucial trade voice for the music industry in Canada over the next two decades, Billboard Canada wrote in its tribute to Mr. Farrell, who died in Amherst, N.S., on Dec. 19 at the age of 73. Mr. Farrell started an annual event that became Canadian Music Week, where in 2018 he was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame. He was a one-off, an eccentric who became the voice of Canada’s music industry. “He was a great man and a force in the Canadian music scene,” said Bruce Allen, a manager who worked with artists such Bryan Adams and Michael Bublé. “I loved his passion, admired his writing and he was always my first call if I wanted to get my message out to the industry.” David Charles Farrell was born Jan. 25, 1951, in Ladysmith, B.C., on Vancouver Island, the first child of British immigrants, Ann (neé Belinfante) and Edward (Ted) Farrell, both journalists. They had met in the late 1940s in postwar occupied Germany, where they were writing for a British armed forces publication. Life was bleak in Britain, with wartime rationing of food and other goods, so in 1948 the couple moved to Canada. David was born a few years later. In 1954, the year rationing ended, David was three years old and they went back to Britain. A decade later the family returned to Canada permanently. “My brother was the only one of the five of us who was born in Canada and the only one of us who kept his English accent,” Dominic Farrell, David’s younger brother, sai