1984: Rear window

Vancouver Sun
Thursday, June 8, 2000
By Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

In May 1989, my clematis montana 'Rubens' was in bloom. Art Bergmann arrived on his 10-speed, all suntanned and sweaty in a muscle shirt. He had never looked so good. I served him some iced tea and then asked him to pose under the clematis. It occurred to me that he looked like Julio Iglesias, but with hair.

The reek of rotting onions was overpowering as my daughter Ale, 14, and I climbed the stairs of a warehouse on Railway Street and Gore one late evening of another May, in 1984. A makeshift recording studio had been installed on the fourth floor. Bergmann and friends, the cream of the best alternative scene rock bands of the day (among them my friends Gord Nicholl, Randy Carpenter and Nick Jones) were recording 10 songs. Carpenter had called me with the tip that my favourite Bergmann song Yellow Pages -- "Sticking knives in our backs and giving it a twist'' -- was on for that evening.

Not having grown up with rock 'n' roll, I belatedly shared with my daughter the teen thrill of hearing a great song, over and over. It was fun watching Bergmann play guitar and Carpenter and Jones on back-up vocals. The recording engineer, Cec English, seemed to be impervious to all the excitement as he methodically and unemotionally flicked switches. Only later did I find out that he was in great pain. The night before, he and Bergmann (fuelled by an over-consumption of Jim Beam) had kicked a police car outside the Oasis Club. English had a broken foot.

Later in 1984, I photographed Bergmann at the "Snake Pit,'' a house on East Broadway and Renfrew that he shared with Tony Baloney and other musicians. One of the resulting photographs is from what I would call Art's "wasted Keith Richards period.''

But I prefer to remember him as he looks on the cover of the CD Vultura Freeway, available now at audiomonster.com and soon in music stores. Those 10 songs that I had heard back in 1984, until now available only on the original cassette, have been lovingly brought back by local rocker Chris Houston and Audio Monster's Greg Corcoran. When Houston asked me some months back if I had "happy photos of Art,'' I thought of Bergmann under the clematis on a hot afternoon.

Borrowing from the title song, Vultura Freeway (up there with The Clash's London Calling for a song meant for driving fast on a hot summer day), "it's not summer but it's hot today,'' you can bet that it will be hot tonight and Friday when Bergmann performs at the Marine Club.