The Halifax Daily News
Friday, April 4, 1997
By Andy Pedersen
Even a Juno Award couldn't stop the inevitable for Art Bergmann. Shortly after Canada's pioneering punk won the country's top music prize for alternative rock last year -- for his Young Canadians record, What Fresh Hell Is This? -- his record company, Sony, stopped returning phone calls.
"They wouldn't tell me a god-damned thing for six or eight months,'' says Bergmann -- who performs in Halifax for the first time this weekend -- from his Toronto crash-pad.
Not even a terse letter?
"My lawyer had to beg for that, even.
"Before we finally got that, all I knew about it was rumor. They just left me twisting in the wind out there in Vancouver.''
Lots of famous Canadian acts have had deal-ending fights with a major label. Bergmann has had three. Through the course of his tumultuous, 20-year career, the hard-living punk has split with half of the world's six major labels: MCA, Polygram and, most recently, Sony.
"My mother thinks that's my fault,'' he says laconically, sounding as though he's fighting a cold.
There are plenty of people out there who would be inclined to agree with the 42-year-old's mom. Much like his songs and his music, Bergmann is an explosive, uncompromising and, some would say, troubled character. His heroin and alcohol abuse is as well-documented as his offstage, vitriolic antics.
"I don't trust people who don't drink,'' he states. "But all those stories are things out of my past that I use in my songs, but that all the journalists try to pick up on.
"But I don't think I've ever really had a serious problem.''
Likewise, Bergmann refuses to take the blame for his rocky label record.
"I'm not saying that I can't be nasty, but I don't put the boots to anybody until the knife's been twisted into my back,'' he says. "All my moves are strictly defensive.''
For example, he insists the Sony deal fell apart because he wasn't racking up the sales numbers the label had hoped for.
"The explanation, when I finally got one from them, was simply that I wasn't making enough money quickly enough,'' he says. (Just after signing Bergmann, Sony rep Michael Roth told Billboard magazine, "Art deserves to be heard. He's the real thing.'')
The Polygram deal frayed, Bergmann says, when the label refused to pay for a cross-Canada tour. All he says about the Duke Street/MCA deal is that "it was hopeless from the start.''
Thrice bitten, Bergmann is now shy. He swears he'll never again be tempted into a major-label deal.
"I just think these big labels have a problem marketing something that's real,'' he says. "It's hard to put the music I make into some niche.''
Aggressive, guitar-driven power punk probably doesn't miss the mark by too much.
But unlike groups such as Green Day and Offspring -- which both rode a pop/punk mix to the top of the charts a couple of years ago -- Bergmann's tunes are faithful to his punk roots, and harder to sell for it.
You won't find many catchy riffs or memorable hooks in his sonic blasts; and when you can decipher the lyrics, they probably won't put a spring in your step.
"They tell you there's no such thing as luck until you're so f---ed up you need a lawyer to come unstuck,'' he sings in Beatles in Hollywood. Or in Ms. Jones: "She's got the phone hooked right in my mainline. She gives me a loan. She's a walkin', talkin', shatterin', chatter-box jones.''
Deciphering those lyrics has become easier of late. Whether it's because he's growing up, has no choice financially, or simply because it's what he wants to do, Bergmann has been developing a solo, acoustic show.
"It's been working,'' he says. "People can hear most of the words that I'm singing, and it gives me a chance to break off and tell the audience where the songs are coming from, what their influences are.''
Filling a stage by himself took some getting used to.
"Actually, it was really scary the first couple of times I did it,'' he says. "Having a band is like having a facade, a mask almost.
"And to strip all of that away is like being naked. And since all of my songs are pretty honest -- brutally honest, sometimes -- it makes you feel even more vulnerable.''
Even acoustic, Bergmann dips into his vast song catalogue and pulls out tunes that were born and bred among ragged and frenetic punk-rock instrumentation. But even stripped down, he says such classics as Our Little Secrets and Guns and Heroin still work.
"I'm hoping that shows like these will help establish me as a songwriter in people's minds, instead of just an old punk,'' he says.
He promises some new tunes. They're tunes that he's written especially for acoustic treatment; a change in focus that is yielding surprising results.
"Lyrically, these things are more brutal than anything I've ever written,'' he says. "They're scaring even me.''
Not surprisingly, one of the songs he has been working on is about the music industry. "It's called Hung Out to Dry. It's pretty bleak.''
Bergmann is so taken with the acoustic shows he is going to record an acoustic album later this month. (It will be produced by Toronto's Peter Moore, who has worked in the past with the un-punk Cowboy Junkies).
"It's going to be a pretty sparse record compared to my others,'' he says. "It'll have songs from the past 10 years and some other weird stuff. Maybe a Beach Boys song. Maybe some Van Morrison. Just to show people my influences aren't always what they might think.''
A voracious reader (sometimes devouring as many as five books a week), Bergmann also has publication on his mind.
"I've got this idea to work on a book about my 20 years in the underground,'' he says. "It'll be full of stories and vignettes and graphics and photos from the rock 'n' roll side of my life. I'm just trying to get some seed money together to do it.''
Told that he'll be facing off with Bob Dylan for audience attention tonight, Bergmann laughs. "I'll do some Dylan covers if that's what people want to hear.''
Art Bergmann performs with The Skydiggers tonight and tomorrow at The Birdland Cabaret in Halifax. Showtime is 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $11 -- $9 in advance.
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