Bergmann living down his reputation

Canadian rock legend tries a mellower sound

The Toronto Star
Thursday, October 15, 1998
By Ben Rayner

Knock around any business long enough and you'll be rewarded with a Reputation.

Such is the honour of Art Bergmann, who - after something like 35 years in the rock 'n' roll maelstrom - is definitely in the running for CanRock iconhood, albeit on a modest scale.

And that Reputation precedes him: One of those punk-before-there-was-punk guys. Surly. Unpredictable. Record-label nightmare. Drugs. Bit of a nutter, really. Etcetera.

This blinding autumn afternoon, though, Bergmann - perched, smoking and slightly flu-ridden, on a stamp-sized College St. patio - is not the miasma of rock legends I'd been led to expect. Just a perfectly likable, if slightly rumpled and curmudgeonly, middle-aged ("I'm 400," he says) musician.

"It's amazing. People make up stories and badmouth me," says Bergmann, mumbling into his coffee. "I've never missed a show, I don't think.

"I'm a consummate professional."

A smirk. But seriously, he adds, he'd prefer to cede his walking-disaster title to someone who can pull it off with a little more enthusiasm than he's willing to muster these days.

"I like to sit back and watch the younger guys now," he says, "See if they can pull it off."

Bergmann - who's been grinding out snarling, hard-edged rock songs since he began his career during the early '70s with Vancouver bands like the K-Tels and The Young Canadians - should buck a few more expectations with the release this week of his new album, Design Flaw.

A collection of songs he's penned over the past decade (plus a cover of Gram Parsons' "Sin City"), it was recorded acoustically in Toronto producer Peter Moore's kitchen last year, with guitarist Chris Spedding dropping a few electric textures into the mix.

The record gets a proper unveiling tonight when Bergmann performs with Spedding at Rancho Relaxo (300 College St.).

"It's a little dreary," Bergmann says of the album. "It's 4 a.m. music."

Design Flaw's unplugged approach grew out of the sporadic acoustic sets Bergmann performed over the past couple years, during an extended sabbatical from the music business.

Although he's never really enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with any record label, Bergmann hit the wall when Sony Canada dumped him after 1995's acclaimed What Fresh Hell Is This? - especially since the disc snared a Juno for best alternative album.

"I just decided to quit everything for a while, quit the business for a while," recalls Bergmann, who was eventually lured to Ontario from Vancouver to play some low-overhead acoustic dates.

He never left.

"I came out here for a couple of shows and had no reason to go back," he says. "So I said to my wife: 'You feel like being Gypsies for a while?' "

At one point, someone suggested Bergmann record one of his solo shows, and the seed was planted for Design Flaw. The album - which is being released on punk-reissue label Other People's Music - contains older material, in part because he wanted to do a career overview. But Bergmann's distaste for the music industry had effectively sapped him of the desire to compose any new songs.

"I'm starting to write now, thank God," he says. "I thought it was gone - I killed a couple of Muses for a while.

"The whole destructive lifestyle was best for me. My best stuff came from a hangover."

The acoustic-troubadour thing is temporary, says Bergmann, who pledges to return to full, caustic, noisy form once he scrapes up enough cash to bring his band back to Toronto.

"I'm going out west right away," he says. "I'm going to meet up with a couple of members of my band and play a few shows - get really loud for a couple of weeks. Then hopefully I can afford to get the guys out here.

"We'll see if I can prance around like a fucking gigolo, like Steven Tyler. God, I hate that shit. Go away."