Twice as brightly, half as long

The Province
Sunday, November 3, 1996
By Mike Roberts

He's been called an enigma and a genius, arrogant and unreliable. He's been spotted in soup lines and dumpsters; holding court in the classiest lounges and most exclusive music-awards parties.

And he's had more record labels than I've had hot dinners.

Bottom line: Vancouver's Art Bergmann writes some wickedly intelligent tunes and when he's on fire up on that stage, boy, does he burn.

Twice as brightly, for half as long; or at both ends? Pick your cliche, it's sure to apply to the smash-and-crash musical career of this local legend.

I ran into the 43-year-old tunesmith at Roughcuts & Soulrippers, a weekly jam session he's hosting at The Gate (1176 Granville St.) Monday nights. A strange gig for the solo-minded Bergmann, but a gig just the same. Rent's rent, he'd say.

Bergmann's career has been hard to follow. There were the early punk outfits -- The Shmorgs, the K-Tels, The Young Canadians -- followed by the dodgy solo career. Independents. Polygram. Sony. An up-and-down roller coaster of brilliance and excess that has left him, for the moment, without a record label and in serious need of a capital infusion.

Enter Toronto's TMP (The Music Publisher) and something that smells a little off to me.

TMP is a publishing and production outfit that "develops'' Canadian musical talent (Jane Siberry and Murray McLauchlan are on its roster). It entered into negotiations with Bergmann last month for the rights to his back catalogue.

"Suffice to say, (TMP prez Frank Davies) offered me a $1,000,'' says Bergmann, barely concealing his disgust with the paltry bid for a 135-song back catalogue.

"I didn't even dignify them with a response.''

A case of taking advantage of a guy when he's down? Frank Davies doesn't think so.

"He was looking for some help personally and all of that, financially and everything, and we thought we may be able to help. It was just a pity it never came to pass,'' says Davies from Toronto.

"Unfortunately he didn't own the rights he thought he did. Which was very disappointing, actually, to us and I think to him, too.''

Davies says the price an artist's publishing rights commands depends on name value and success level.

A thousand bucks for Bergmann? I'm sorry.

"I really wouldn't want to . . . get into detail on that 'cause that really would be Art's sort of private business and I wouldn't like to do that,'' says Davies of the deal's price tag.

The deal is off the table so whatever the details were, they've been lost to the scrap heap of Bergmann's failed deals. Still, when a guy like Art tells you he's been offered a $1,000 carrot stump from some TO outfit, you don't know whether to feel outraged, or merely sad.