The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 9, 1988
By John Mackie
'Checking out the limits of human behavior is a pretty dangerous game," says Art Bergmann. "Flirting with insanity, flirting with dangerous, slimy people just for something to write about . . . I sometimes feel like I'm using people, using people's deaths for a song."
Welcome to the twisted world of Art Bergmann, chronicler of life at the bottom of the social scale. Murder, suicide, incest, junkies - no subject is taboo for the 34-year-old king of Vancouver's musical underground. The darkness of his lyrics is matched by his music, driving, passionate, savage rock and roll that explodes through his raw, gut-wrenching vocals and fiery, piercing guitar playing. "It's as if he claws at the guitar when he plays it," says producer John Cale, who has just helped Bergmann to his first big record contract.
Bergmann's lyrical obsessions and musical intensity reflect his life, which has been lived dangerously close to the edge until just recently. He has had his battles with the bottle, and knows more about drug abuse than Nancy Reagan. "Yeah, I've taken it too far," says Bergmann of his self-destructive lifestyle. "I've played with it, and it's played with me. But I've always had the power to turn it on or off."
His songs and lifestyle created a reputation for unpredictability that endeared him to fans and critics but scared off the Canadian music industry, which likes its artists to come in neatly designed, controllable packages. And as the years went by and he still was unable to bust out of Vancouver, his music grew even rawer, his lyrics even darker, compromise be damned.
"I was like in a tunnel, digging the wrong way," says Bergmann. "The songs were, 'ah, what can I write about now - ah, here's one, further, further, somewhere left of nihilism.' "
But last year he hooked up with manager Sam Feldman, a respected figure in national music circles who has looked after the careers of Doug and the Slugs, Headpins and Trooper. With Feldman's solid industry contacts, Bergmann scored a deal with Duke Street, the Toronto independent label that signed and nurtured Jane Siberry and Chalk Circle. Former Velvet Underground member John Cale signed on as producer, and Bergmann entered Toronto's Manta Sound studios in March to produce his first full length solo album, Crawl With Me.
The result was released this week, and should finally establish Bergmann as Canada's answer to Lou Reed, Paul Westerberg or Graham Parker. Producer Cale stripped the songs down to their hard core, which has its down side (there aren't as many guitar solos as long-time fans would like) but does a great job of putting Bergmann's lyrics and melodies front and centre.
And no Canadian rocker has ever written songs like Art Bergmann. Our Little Secret uses a light, bouncy pop arrangement (complete with la-la-la backing vocals) to disguise a warped little tale of incest. "The song is kind of weird, 'cause it's like the brother talking (to his sister) about his secret, and they're lovers or something," explains Bergmann. "That's how I figured it out, anyway."
Crawl With Me is "your basic love song, with a few religious and drug references thrown in." My Empty House is a riveting rocker about a victim of the Social Credit government's restraint program who's laid off and loses everything, then snaps and shoots his wife. "I just tried to identify with the man who did it, does it, the man who would do it, the man in that frame of mind. Ever thought of shooting up a shopping mall at Christmas?"
Twisted lyrics
Death is a recurrent theme in his lyrics - "I think everybody thinks about it every day. Dying. Worms. I've chosen life. Remember that great scene in Under The Volcano, Albert Finney? 'I choose Helllll!' God, that's scary" - and sometimes, the lyric gets so twisted Bergmann doesn't quite know what they're about himself ("the Most Wanted Man In Town, I think I'd better send that to Charlie Manson, I think he could explain it").
His subject matter is a far cry from Bergmann's childhood in Cloverdale. "I had a very happy childhood," he recalls. "I don't know what happened." His parents were God-fearing Mennonites, but young Art grew up agnostic ("I like using a lot of religious imagery, (but) I don't believe any of it - I was taught all of it, it's like voodoo to me").
Inspired by the sounds of the '60s on the radio, he picked up the guitar at 13, about the same time his parents began to run a foster home in Abbotsford and Bergmann discovered it was more fun to be a bad boy than a good one. "I used to go out with these crazy juvenile delinquents and do acid with them and stuff . . . come home and catch hell from my parents. 'Don't smoke dope with those kids!' Fistfights in the kitchen . . ."
His initial forays into music were with the Mount Lehman Grease Band and the Shmorgs, legendary in the Surrey/White Rock area for their raunchy music (the Mount Lehman Grease Band's big hit was "a paen to masturbation") and their wild parties (former Modernette Buck Cherry recalls one evening ending with a young man jumping onstage nude to lead the band through Jumping Jack Flash). In a bizarre turn of events, Bergmann's main cohort in the Schmorgs, David Mitchell, quit music and went Socred, releasing a rather flattering biography of former Socred Premier W.A.C. Bennett a couple of years back.
Bergmann quit music for a year after the Shmorgs broke up (the band did release an album posthumously), but when punk rock hit in 1978, he jumped in, head first. He formed the K-Tels, a brilliant trio that recorded two classic EPs and one single during the heyday of the punk era. The band changed their name to the Young Canadians after K-Tel International threatened to sue. "They wanted 50 grand in damage to the goodwill of their name. I figured we could have won in court, but it would have taken about four years and a million bucks to win, so we ceased and desisted."
His next band was the punk supergroup Los Popularos, which had all the makings of a great band, but never really jelled. After three years he went solo, and he has been fronting his own band ever since. "It's such a heavy burden to take control, but that's what I eventually had to do, 'cause I was never satisfied with the way people's voices projected," he says. "I don't think I'm a great singer, but I know how to sing my songs the way nobody else can."
It was Bergmann's songs that first caught the ear of producer Cale. In Vancouver to work with the Scramblers, someone flipped a Bergmann demo tape in the car tape deck as Cale was on his way to the airport. By the time they reached Richmond, Cale had decided to do the project.
Nervous breakdown
"There is a strong streak of humanity in what he was singing about," says Cale, who wanted to bring out the "variety" in Bergmann's songwriting. "There's depth there . . . something that will give him longevity."
Cale also helped convince Bergmann to tone down his lifestyle, which was in one of its wilder stages immediately prior to the album sessions.
"It's like a nervous breakdown on that tape," says Bergmann. "It sort of all came to a head with this album. People convinced me that I don't need to live the way I lived for a long time any more, waking me up . . . I had sort of hit the wall, hit the bottom trying to make this record.
"I realised that I've got enough material to last me the rest of my life, I don't have to feel that (awful). The cynicism in my marrow was pretty volatile at the time. I feel pretty good about myself now . . . I'm actually almost happy."
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