Music journalist traces the historical past of Alberta-based songwriter Artwork Bergmann in The Longest Suicide
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Partway by way of Jason Schneider’s new e book, The Longest Suicide: The Approved Biography of Artwork Bergmann, we get a glimpse of a low level within the profession of Artwork Bergmann.
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It was 1992. Regardless of having earned a fame as one of many nation’s most uncompromising and gifted songwriters, Bergmann was having a nasty yr. By some major-label problems involving mergers and a changing-of-the-guard, he was all however deserted by Polygram Data not lengthy after the corporate had launched his promising 1991 self-titled third album. He not had a full-time band and was unable to tour. He was additionally recovering from heroin dependancy.
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Round that point, Bergmann was supplied a less-than-prestigious spot on a multi-act tour nationwide tour known as Huge, Dangerous & Groovy, the place he would begrudgingly play a solo set on electrical guitar. It was headlined by Bootsauce, a Crimson Sizzling Chilli Peppers-wannabe band from Montreal. Initially, Bergmann was imagined to journey with the act, however on the time he was unfairly thought-about a “drunken junkie” and “dangerous affect” so was compelled to seek out different strategies to get from metropolis to metropolis. That often concerned taking a Greyhound bus at some ungodly hour. Issues got here to a head close to Regina when Bergmann was kicked off the Greyhound for having an open bottle of wine. His solely possibility was to hitchhike. Someplace on the Trans-Canada Freeway, he was noticed on the facet of the street by up-and-coming Toronto act Lowest of the Low’s lead singer Ron Hawkins, who caught a glimpse of Bergmann because the band’s van whizzed previous in the wrong way.
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It nearly appears too completely symbolic to be utterly plausible. Bergmann truly made reference to the incident, albeit considerably jokingly, in a 2021 interview with Postmedia lower than a yr after being appointed to the Order of Canada for his “indelible contributions to the Canadian punk music scene.”
However the story is 100 per cent true.
As Hawkins later instructed Schneider, it was as if the Canadian music {industry} was actually “kicking (Bergmann) down the freeway.”
“After we’re speaking highs and lows, that was positively one other one of many main lows,” says Schneider, who will probably be becoming a member of Artwork Bergmann on Tuesday, Dec. 6 for a Wordfest occasion at Memorial Park Library. “To get to that hitchhiking story particularly, I used to be actually glad I obtained to speak to Ron Hawkins. He completely corroborated it.”
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The Longest Suicide is a licensed biography, which implies Bergmann more-or-less had ultimate say on content material. He even supplied the title, which Schneider sees as a wry reference to the singer-songwriter’s fame for profession self-sabotage. Nevertheless it was Schneider who did the work, interviewing not solely Bergmann however quite a few his contemporaries, associates and the music-industry people who contributed to or have been first-hand witnesses to his profession. That features Sherri Decembrini, who was Bergmann’s spouse for greater than 30 years.
The ensuing image of Bergmann isn’t of a gifted prima donna who squandered quite a few possibilities for a profitable profession, however a hard-working musician who inherited the work ethic of his Mennonite father however in the end was a sufferer of an {industry} that lacked creativeness and didn’t know what to do with him.
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“As I used to be placing the narrative collectively, I did really feel it was vital to point out how the enterprise labored throughout that point within the ’80s and ’90s,” Schneider says. “Artwork was given lots of possibilities by individuals and, certain, the dependancy a part of it didn’t assist him in any respect. However, on the identical time, he wasn’t a music-video star and he didn’t write songs tailor-made to the radio. However everybody he ever labored with (will say) what an ideal songwriter he was, it was only a matter of his materials being too uncooked and truthful for mainstream tastes. In some methods, he didn’t assist himself by not totally taking part in the sport they needed him to play or being manipulated in that means. He all the time stated he was keen to strive, however that was by no means actually within the playing cards for him.”
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Schneider already had a little bit of a head begin on the analysis. For the previous 5 years, he has served as Bergmann’s publicist. He first met the singer-songwriter in 1996 when he approached him at a Queen Avenue bar in Toronto whereas researching what would turn into 2001’s Have Not Been the Identical: The Canrock Renaissance, 1985 to 1995, which he co-wrote with Ian A.D. Jack and Michael Barclay. Bergmann was nonetheless at an expert low level. He had been dropped by one other main label, Sony, after the discharge of 1995’s What Recent Hell Is This? and had fallen again into dependancy. He and Decembrini have been residing in Toronto and he was taking part in solo reveals in bars throughout Ontario to largely detached audiences.
“It was an odd time,” Schneider says. “I used to be terrified for that first assembly. He was doing these solo reveals round southern Ontario, simply taking part in to audiences who didn’t know who he was or simply didn’t actually care. I had seen a few his reveals the place he was simply off the chain and throwing glasses round. That was in my thoughts after I first met him. However that first interview we did was nice.”
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They stayed in contact, with Schneider writing about him at any time when he might for the Toronto-based alt-monthly Exclaim! In 2020, after Bergmann was appointed to the Order of Canada, Schneider felt the time was proper to place his long-gestating plan to jot down a biography into motion. He performed quite a few interviews with Bergmann, who moved to a rural space outdoors of Airdrie in 2005. The Longest Suicide traces Bergmann’s Mennonite household roots earlier than telling the story of the singer-songwriter’s early years in British Columbia, his days main pioneering Vancouver punk bands such because the Ok-Tels (later modified to The Younger Canadians), his solo profession, addictions, well being issues, self-imposed exile in rural Alberta and the artistic resurgence that led to the discharge of a few of his finest work. That features 2021’s Late Stage Empire Dementia, which he recorded in Calgary with native producers Lorrie Matheson and Russell Broom.
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One of many e book’s precious belongings is Schneider’s thorough and insightful research of Bergmann’s songs. Whereas not all of it’s excellent – a lot is written in regards to the keyboard-heavy sounds on the 1988 album, Crawl With Me, which discovered Bergmann being mismatched with the producer John Cale, the previous Velvet Underground multi-instrumentalist – it shines a light-weight on a constantly robust and infrequently missed physique of labor.
Schneider says the story appeared destined to have “a comparatively joyful ending.” Bergmann was within the Order of Canada, he was again to creating unbelievable music and residing fortunately in rural Alberta with Decembrini. The manuscript was kind of completed when his spouse died abruptly in March 2022. The dying is briefly talked about on the finish of the e book as are the lyrics to Bergmann’s achingly lovely Demise of a Siren, which he wrote about her a couple of months after her dying.
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“It was a matter of displaying Sherri as a lot dignity as doable,” Schneider says. “She was Artwork’s rock for the 30 years they have been married. She was his protector. She was his caregiver. She was every thing for him. As soon as Sherri comes into the story, I needed to painting their relationship as a real love story, which it was. Getting to speak to Sherri final yr for the e book, she was extremely open in speaking about every thing. I couldn’t have written the e book with out her participation.”
Artwork Bergmann, Jason Schneider and Calgary journalist Mary-Lynn Wardle will probably be in dialog on Dec. 6 for a Wordfest occasion at Memorial Park Library. It begins at 7 p.m.
