The Story of Art
Impact Magazine / March 1995 / by Mary Dickie

What if Art Bergmann had grown up in New York or Londoninstead of Vancouver? What if he’d had a record company that promoted himproperly? What if he’d kept his publishing rights? What if he’d been focusedand together and non-addictive and just a little bit lucky? Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to tell half of you whohe is, and the other half why he isn’t a big star – yet. But then would Artstill be Art?
 
Art Bergmann isn’t, of course, the only songwriter/performerin the world whose fame hasn’t kept pace with is talent. Look at Iggy Pop,perhaps Art’s biggest influence – if it weren’t for David Bowie rescuing himfrom that hospital, maybe he’d have disappeared and there’d be just a fewcognoscenti moaning about The Stooges. But Art occupies a special place asCanada’s great semi-lost rock star. Unfortunately, there’s never been a DavidBowie for Art – just a lot of disappointments, many brilliant songs, a niche asVancouver’s most venerable and beloved fuck-up and a bunch of rabid fans acrossthe country who turn up for his wild and often wonderful performances.
 
In a musical career that’s about to start its third decade,Art Bergmann has had a number of opportunities to fulfill his considerablepotential, but it’s never quite happened. Just take a list to Last Call, the compilation of Vancouver’s early punk scene putout by Zulu Records. Art’s numerous songwriting contributions – for his bandsthe K-Tels, The Young Canadians, Los Popularos, and Poisoned – stand out, andeven then his voice had that tired, desperate, cynical, pissed off, hurtlingqualitiy that graces everything he does. He eventually made two solo albums(the rather disappointing Crawl With Me and the excellent Sexual Roulette) for Toronto’s Duke Street Records and one strong self-titled on forPolygram. But both deals soured, and the consensus is that Art has never reallyreceived his due. Last year, after apparently quitting drugs and drinking, heturned up on Sony’s Neil Young tribute album Borrowed Tunes, doing a duet with One Free Fall of “Prisoners ofRock ‘N’ Roll” that was the best thing on the record. That led directly to adeal with Sony, which brings us to Art’s new album, What Fresh Hellis This?, and his latest chance at thegolden ring of commercial success.
 
Opinions are divided over the main culprit for Art’snumerous false starts: many, including Art, point to incompetent recordcompanies; others suggest that Art’s personality- addictive, argumentative,charming, and unpredictable – is as much to blame. But would he be as talenteda songwriter and as fascinating a performer if he weren’t so complicated?That’s the million-dollar question, but it seems at least initially that Sonyis prepared to promote the excellent What Fresh Hell is This? (a title borrowed, rather appropriately, fromDorothy Parker) despite Art’s perhaps understandable ambivalence about theirrelationship – even putting out the Iggy-esque, more than slightly bitter“Contract” as the album’s first single. After Art went through rehab, a tourlast fall with a new band went over well, but time will tell whether this dealwill last longer than the previous ones; as several people pointed out, recordcompanies are often excited about signing a real rock’n’roll rebel, but whenthey get a real rock’n’rollrebel, one that might pick a fight or break glass, they don’t like it much.
 
In any case, in Vancouver recently Art sat down to talkabout his history, which he says is “severely skewed. The bios are wrong, thefacts are wrong.” Art’s tale is best heard as a monologue with infrequentinterruptions and numerous side trips – as wayward and entertaining as the manhimself. We begin in suburban White Rock, BC, a few years before punk came tothe West Coast. “The Shmorgs was my band through the early ‘70s. We actuallyput out an album, there’s 600 in a basement somewhere. It was horriblymisdirected: I wasn’t very focused. We had songs that were like half an hourlong.
 
“I always played original music, and I couldn’t get a gig.In those days, you’d get a week in a bar, and we’d always get fired on thefirst night for not playing covers. So we did hall gigs, up and down the FraserValley, Vancouver Island, wherever people would take us. We had quite afollowing, actually, till ’76-’77 rolled around. That was The Monitors. JohnArmstrong, who writes for the Vancouver Sunnow, heard the Pistols and said, ‘Anybody can do this.’ I taught him how toplay guitar, screaming at him: ‘E! E! E! Just play E!’ He’d be noodling away.But John became Buck Cherry and a great songwriter in The Modernettes.
 
“After I heard the Pistols I moved to Vancouver and hookedup with DOA and The Pointed Sticks and Tim Ray – the Tom Verlaine of Vancouver– and all those people. We used to tour up and down the West Coast, when I wasindependent and getting things done. I always figured if I’d stayed independentand sold my own records, I’d be making money by now. The best DOA gigs were inSan Francisco. They just fuckin’ rocked! And The Dead Kennedys – Jello Biafra’sso pompous, though, the guy can’t shut up. Incredibly intelligent, but soamazingly correct. But where was I?
 
“We were The K-Tels [a trio including Jim Bescott and BarryTaylor], and we couldn’t get a gig – it was all disco everywhere. So we went tothe slimiest, scummiest, emptiest bar in town to play like a week for the dooror whatever. We worked at the Smilin’ Buddha, this awful hole with a bit ofhistory – Ike and Tina Turner had played there, and Jimi Hendrix. It was anactual cabaret, and it still had purple walls and 20 years of…you know,nightclub patrons, and the old grease in the kitchen, which was our dressingroom. But by the end of the week the place was packed, and then the Subhumansplayed there, and from then on it was packed every night. Until the owners camearound and made it a strip bar.
 
“I forget where we went after that, but we had to change ourname because K-Tel sued us for 50 grand for damage to the goodwill of theirname. I thought we could beat it in court, but it would have taken years andthousands of dollars, so we borrowed a name from this god-awful choir fromCalgary, the Young Canadians. We made a couple of records and blew up. Why?Well, the band was so heavy and intense and the bass player was manicdepressive…and I wanted to play with my friends in a band that spun its wheelsfrom the word go, Los Popularos. We actually made it to Toronto in this smokyold Oldsmobile that had all of our equipment and all of us in it, in 1982, andafter two weeks we had fans and girlfriends. We played at Larry’s Hideaway thenight of a hockey game and all these jocks came in and abused us ‘cause we wereinto weird hair and we had these dinner jackets that we like wore for the wholetour.
 
“Anyway, we put out an EP – that’s where ‘Guns And Heroin’[which is on the new album] comes from. And the drummer knew this guy who justgot out of jail and wanted to launder some money, and he spent six grand onthis EP. We had a frontman who was a really brilliant songwriter but hecouldn’t sing that great - Bill Shirt, he should be a novelist by now. Twosingers, lots of songwriters, too many cooks. It was all over the map, likeGang of Four mixed with ABBA. Anyway, this guy spent the money and a monthlater he thinks he’s going to make a million dollars selling records. There’sno explaining to this guy, he came to my place stoned on Quaaludes, demandinghis money back. About a month after he was at my house, he was on the frontpage, first degree murder. That’s about as close as I’ve come. Well, I cameclose recently, but that’s a secret for now.
 
“I really just wanted to be a rhythm guitar player and singbackups, you know, like the cool guys. But no one was really doing it right forme, so I kind of took it over. I had some money from a job, so I put it intorecording a cassette called Poisoned,and I put a band together and called it Poisoned, but after Poison came out inL.A., I went ‘No way, I can’t have any confusion with this bubblegum glamtrash,’ so we dumped the name. And Duke Street came along and offered me adeal, and my manager at the time, Sam Feldman, said, ‘Why don’t you just useyour name?’ And I fell for it. I hate these band names with so and so and…likeDoug & The Slugs,  Huey Lewis& The News. It makes for a lot of added pressure. We were the Showdogs fora while, and now…I don’t know what the hell we’re called. I like Shitstorm,though, which is kind of our sound.”
 
The first Duke Street album, Crawl With Me, was produced by John Cale, which sounded like agreat idea, but didn’t exactly turn out that way. “Oh, he’s such an asshole! Itwas supposed to be a marriage made in hell, and he didn’t want to hear anyguitar at all! It was awful. At six o’clock he had to go and play squash. This is the man who got busted crawling down thehall in the Chelsea Hotel with his wife’s underwear in his mouth, growling.Anyway, I was drinking at that point and he had these anti-abuse pamphlets out,and he was really snobby. I’d be tuning up, and he’s say, ‘Hurry up. I’m losinginterest!” It was like, ‘Fuck, I’m outta here.’ I just left the studio.
 
“I don’t like recording; I don’t like making videos; I don’teven like writing anymore, ‘cause it’s like turning myself inside out. I likeplaying live, that’s where it happens, it’s spontaneous, which is whatrock’n’roll is supposed to be.”
 
Maybe Cale should never have stopped drinking. “Well, that’swhat I think about a lot of people, like Paul Westerberg. 14 Songs – God, what happened? The Replacements were the bestrock’n’roll band of the ‘80s, after The Damned.
 
“These people’s most creative things seem to come from somebleak, despairing hole, you know? People say you can write when you’re happy,but I don’t think so. If you’re happy, what’s to write about? ‘FaithlesslyYours,’ well I was happy for a minute there…”
 
So what effect does going through rehab have on songwriting?“Oh, I’m not supposed to talk about that, because that’s all people will wantto talk about. There’s a lot more in these songs than that.
 
“But…I finally read something that kind of explained mybehaviour. I read the myth of the amateur musician who challenges Apollo to aduel and of course the god wins and the amateur’s punishment is that Apolloskins him alive. And of course after that he becomes a brilliant musician! AndI went, ‘Ahhh.’ Because if you go through the [rehab] process you strip yourwhole psyche and body, and it’s really painful. I’ve gotten to the point nowwhere I almost enjoy it, and that’s really sick.
 
“But the songs and lyrics come fast and furious. I did a lotof writing there. It opens up your receptors; you’re just raw. I really likethat feeling; if I can keep it up I won’t have to build up this shell aroundme. But now people go, ‘God, you used to be quiet for a while there, what’sgoing on?’ Well, you want to shut me up, you know what that entails, so pleasedon’t.”
 
After Crawl With Me came Sexual Roulette. “God damn, it wasa great album. At the time Duke Street was trying to sell itself or something.I showed up and there’s all these boxes. ‘What’s going on? People can’t findthis record anywhere, my Dad can’t even find it!’ I find out they’re going downand they’re a tax write-off for the parent company. It was a nightmare.”
 
Then there was the PolyGram nightmare, which developed whenthey wouldn’t support a tour to back up the close-to-hit single “FaithlesslyYours.” Art sighs. “Oh, they had a huge fight with Sam [Feldman]. They offeredto pay for half, but I already owed money to Sam, and it would have cost afortune and I would have owed more, and I said, ‘No, I don’t want to owe youany more money,’ and he said, ‘Fine,’ and got me out of the deal – no stringsattached, except they owned the record and didn’t promote it. We got to go toSpain to shoot three videos, which was cool – but we had to go with Corky Laing[PolyGram’s then A&R rep].”
 
Did Art feel like packing it in after the PolyGram debacle?“Oh, I always feel like packing it in. I just about did the other night. Westarted a video and it kinda didn’t work out and now we have to salvage it.It’s nobody’s fault – well, it’s a couple of people’s, mine and the director,we blew up at each other. But we’ve decided to co-operate and finish it.”
 
In any case, last year producer Chris Wardman talked Sonyinto putting Art together with One Free Fall for Borrowed Tunes, “and then Kevin Campbell at Sony talked [A&Rchief] Michael Roth into giving me an extra day in the studio, and I came upwith five songs in one day, and that got me the deal.”
 
Five songs in one day is pretty impressive. Is writingalways that easy? “I don’t have trouble with music coming into my head. It’sthe lyrics – it’s hard to come up with something new. I used to write tons ofsongs and I’d get sick of them and they’d never get recorded, so now I waittill the last minute, till I’m under severe pressure.
 
“For this album the lyrics were finished as I was doing thevocals, except for the ones I had done on the demos, and two are old songs –‘Guns And Heroin,’ and ‘Demolished’ used to be a song called ‘Black Hearts,’which we revamped into a stupid rock’n’roll song. The other six were written onthe spot, which was pretty scary. One song I wrote last-minute, on the floor.It ended up being ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ which I’m most proud of, ‘cause itall rhymes and it’s almost a pop song – except cryptic at the same time, whichI like. It makes me like a song longer. I don’t like lyric sheets for thatreason, but people insist. There’s Replacements songs I still don’t know halfof. You interpret it for yourself, which is cool. That’s why I hate Bryan Adamssongs; you know the hook before it even comes along. What’s the fun in that?”
 
Will there be a U.S. release for What Fresh Hell is This? “There’d better be! Actually, I’m more interested ina European deal, ‘cause  I want togo and play in Berlin. I can sing in German. If Nick Cave can do OK inGermany….I think I’d go over a lot better there than here. Canada seems sosmall, as far as people are concerned. I mean, give me your huddled masses,I’ll put ‘em in northern Ontario. What a bleak drive that is – likeinterplanetary travel without the cryogenics. In Berlin, there’s 90 live musicspots.”
 
Is Sony talking about it? “When you have a history of beingas crazy as I am…no, they’re not talking about it. They go, ‘We have to put itout in Canada first,’ and I go, ‘Why? Why?’ I’m trying to get all my old catalogueback and put that out. A guy from PolyGram is trying to release the PolyGramrecord in the States, so there’s hope on the horizon. I’m sure I’d find enoughfans to make a living in the States – unless they all want to hear Green Day orwhatever.”
 
So what, in a nutshell, is wrong with the Canadian musicindustry that someone like Art Bergmann could fall through the cracks so manytimes? “They try to clone American success, what they perceive as success, butno one has a fucking clue as to what makes a hit. What makes a hit is playing asong you think is good on the radio a few times, and people get used to it,maybe even grow to like it. If you don’t get that chance on the radio, you’redoomed. And people are chicken.”
 
In the end, Art doesn’t think he’s responsible at all forhis own disasters. “No, I don’t. I don’t miss shows, I play to the best of myability…My shows can be pretty out there sometimes. I like to take it to thisplace where you don’t know if I’m going to fall off or stay on or piss over theledge – which I’d rather, as opposed to falling off.
 
“Butsometimes, like all great bands, we’re going to break down. We only broke downonce this past tour, in Calgary. Our drummer actually left the stage to throwthe wrong person out of the nightclub, a [radio station] music director! Forthrowing bottles, and he hadn’t, and we fell apart on stage, and our guitarplayer thought he was playing Sonic Youth, and the keyboard player was fightingwith him, and I’m fighting with him…Then we got a review saying it wasthe most awesome show ever. So who knows?”