Madness or Art?

The Calgary Herald
Thursday, May 17, 1990
By Alison Mayes

If a sex-and-violence record labeling system ever comes into force in Canada, they might as well slap a warning sticker right over Art Bergmann's mouth.

While other songwriters cruise life's well-lit avenues for inspiration, Bergmann lurches through its alleyways and sniffs around in its gutters.

"If I wasn't in music I probably would be into some weird form of terrorism or something," admits the Vancouver bad boy. His new album Sexual Roulette confronts such messy horrors as AIDS, madness, drug-addled knife fights and suicide by razorblade and hanging.

Yet it's intelligent, darkly funny and you can dance to it. And the ex-punker who snarls this stuff against gritty, guitar-driven rock 'n' roll is no empty-head banger.

Articulate, well-read, troubled by human suffering, he writes lyrics that grope for answers in a hostile world. Take, for instance, the references to Nazi atrocities on both the new album and his 1988 debut, Crawl With Me.

"One of the most lasting images of the 20th century will be that Holocaust," he says by telephone in a nicotine whisper, "and it bugs me every day just to feel I'm related to those people who did that. It just overwhelms me; I don't know how or why anyone could do that to somebody else."

Listeners who would prefer to avoid "depressing" topics aren't on Bergmann's wavelength. "You gotta face facts sooner or later, and the basic fact is death for all of us," he says. "I think it's something everybody thinks about...and I think there's a lot of humor in there, myself, when you face these facts and learn to laugh at them."

Bergmann, who says he wishes he could believe in God, grew up digging the Stones, the Kinks, the Who and the Sex Pistols while being raised by "really religious" Mennonite parents outside Vancouver.

At one point his family ran a church-sponsored foster home. "I'd hang out with all the juvenile delinquents and go out and do LSD with them," he remembers, "and get in supreme shit."

He managed good marks even as he was taking strolls on the wild side and dating girls he describes as crazies and psychopaths. After high school he continued his "research" of the social underbelly and played with bands including the Schmorgs, the K- Tels, the Young Canadians, Los Popularos and Poisoned.

What's the lure of the street? "Down at the bottom things are really black and white. People have to do certain things to survive.... Like the guy from My Empty House (on Crawl With Me), he shoots his family, you know, and I find it much more interesting than a basic love song that's been written 40 times."

It was a Bergmann demo recorded with Poisoned in 1984 that caught the attention of John Cale, co-founder of the Velvet Underground. Four years later Bergmann found himself recording Crawl With Me with Cale producing. Though the album was well received, prompting comparisons to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, there were complaints that the singer's angry power had been sanitized in the studio.

"I don't think (Cale) was that interested in guitars, which is sort of my main forte - rhythm guitars really loud," Bergmann says. "I was intimidated by doing a first album in a strange city...and then John Cale walks into the whole recipe, and he's a pretty influential figure.... I let him sort of take over, which I shouldn't have done."

For Sexual Roulette, Bergmann relied on his instincts and found an easy rapport with producer Chris Wardman (Chalk Cirle, Neo A4).

"Half the songs were written before we went in the studio, but the other half I tried to leave open and just go for a feel. I think you should record what happens right there on the spot."

The title tune is a confrontational look at the risk of AIDS: "This is my body/ What's on your mind/ Are you giving me something/ I'll get in five years' time?"

Other tracks conjure up a Barfly-style watering hole ("Just a couple of flies/ On a lowly cowpie"); a hospital room where one unstable lover contemplates unplugging the other's life support system ("Maybe later/ We'll get together/ And have a relapse"); and a rock band's tacky expedition to Vegas ("Wayne Newton doesn't want us to be late.")

Bergmann notes with some amazement that "weird heavy rock" radio stations are playing the crazily upbeat Bound For Vegas. Radio has generally been hesitant about his material.

"The programming and record company people in Canada are just too chicken; they're just music chickens," he sighs.

A notoriously uninhibited live performer (he hinted that a tour with The Pursuit of Happiness may be in the works), Bergmann says he tries to maintain the edge - the unpredictability and danger - of genuine rock 'n' roll.

"Rock 'n' roll is like a big battle for me between good and evil, and that's the way it should be. Rock 'n' roll is instant gratification - or it should be on a good night anyway."