Onstage Offstage Read online

  And then a funny thing happened.

  I got a break.

  My bank account was almost drained when Jeffrey Latimer called me about a corporate event he was doing. He wanted to hire everybody who’d been in Forever Swing. It was good money, maybe three thousand dollars. I figured I could use it to pay my last rent cheque and buy a plane ticket home to Vancouver. I planned to call it quits. Enough was enough. It was time for me to get a proper job.

  At the corporate gig, I met this guy named Michael McSweeney, who was assistant to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Like I said, I’d play any gig at this juncture in my life, including weddings. Michael suggested I sing at the wedding of Brian Mulroney’s daughter Caroline. I gave him one of my CDs, which he passed along to the Mulroneys. I got the gig, which was great, but then I found out that producer David Foster was going to be in the crowd. That changed everything.

  For the uninitiated, David is a giant among music producers. He’s produced Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Michael and Janet Jackson — some of the biggest-selling names in music. He also happens to be from the west coast of Canada, like me. It was like the stars were lining up, and I was so thrilled I waived my performance fee. I told the Mulroneys I would perform for free, and I think that made them realize how badly I wanted to succeed. They couldn’t have been nicer people.

  At the wedding, Brian Mulroney encouraged David to pay attention to my singing. I heard later that Foster had been reluctant to listen carefully to the likes of a lowly wedding singer, but he came around – especially when he saw what a big hit I was with the audience. David told me later that Mulroney had said to him, ‘You’re not going to believe this kid.’ Meanwhile, David was thinking, This is the last thing I want to do at a wedding, see some singer. But, thankfully, he loved what he heard. I believe he used the word ‘transfixed’.

  I saw it as the break I so desperately needed. David couldn’t make any promises, but he told me that if I was willing to move to Los Angeles, he’d introduce me to important people and help me to make connections. He might have come to regret those words, because I took him up on it immediately. I called Bev and said, ‘We’re going to LA.’

  David put me up at his house in Los Angeles while I performed at parties that he lined up – Bev travelled back and forth between Vancouver and LA. He was inducting me into his Hollywood world. He was good to me. He’d have dinner parties with famous people so I could meet them, and he’d take me along to parties and events that might help me further my career. I played private parties and charity events for audiences with faces as famous and varied as Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, Muhammad Ali, Alice Cooper and Olivia Newton-John. The idea was to generate buzz throughout the industry and get people talking. I was terrified the whole time I performed for these people, but I was so desperate for a break that I pushed myself every step of the way. After I’d performed, I’d make a point of shaking everybody’s hand and saying a few words of appreciation. I believe it’s important to let people know who you are, to relate to them on a human level, no matter how famous or important they might be. At the end of the day, we all relate to each other as human beings, not as dollar signs or famous faces.

  Back in Canada, I’d just spent seven years playing every wedding and dingy club in Vancouver and Toronto. Here I was, in Los Angeles, twenty-six years old, and so close to making the dream a reality that I could taste it. I wasn’t about to settle into a career playing wedding parties for David’s LA pals. I was hungry, and desperate for something to happen. In hindsight, I must have been an irritating pest, but what can I say? Sometimes you have to listen to that old adage about the squeaky wheel getting all the attention.

  When I wasn’t hounding David for a record deal, Bev was hounding him for me. David had made it painfully clear that he couldn’t guarantee any kind of deal. In fact, he said at one point he’d never sign me. He said, ‘You’re great, I think you’re marvellous, but I don’t think that commercially I would know how to make it work. I don’t think the company knows how to make this work. I will help you. You are on my radar. And if I can help you get gigs, or introduce you to people, I will do that.’

  He lived up to his promise. He really did. He introduced me to just about everybody he knew. He coached me, counselled me, and became one of my closest friends. It’s just that I still held out hope he could get me a record deal. I knew if I could get a deal, I could make records and people could finally hear me and decide for themselves if I was worthy. All of the celebrities who I’d played for liked me. Why wouldn’t the public embrace me too?

  David had told his friend Paul Anka all about me, and Paul expressed an interest in meeting the boy wonder who’d made an impression on the Hollywood party scene. I remember my first meeting with him. It was fall 2001, a week after 9/11. How could I forget the timing? David called me and asked me to play a benefit that comedian talk-show host Jay Leno was doing for Las Vegas casino workers who were hit hard in the aftermath of the atrocity because tourism was at an all-time low. We went to Vegas and I opened for Leno for two nights. I was so stoked that I partied till four or five a.m. when I finished the second night. I got absolutely wasted.

  I had just gone to sleep when David woke me up with an early-morning phone call. He told me to get down to the MGM Grand Hotel to meet Paul Anka. I’ll be honest: I was pretty hung-over and dazed, but Bev and I made our way to the MGM Grand, and we were soon seated in Paul’s luxury suite, across from the legendary man himself. David was there too. Bev was almost vibrating, she was so nervous. She’d been a lifelong Paul Anka fan and here was her idol sitting in front of her, asking me to sing. With David at the piano, I sang Paul’s mega-hit, which Frank Sinatra had made famous, ‘My Way'. A couple of lines into the song, Paul said to David, ‘This kid is great. Let’s help him.’

  And so began my friendship with Paul Anka. He said he’d help finance the record so that we’d have something to sell to a major label. David figured we needed about half a million dollars for the project. Around this time he tried to shape my image a bit. He suggested I change my name because he worried that they might call me ‘Bubble’. But I pointed out that if someone with a clunky name like Christina Aguilera could have a successful career, surely ‘Bublé’ could stand up. He relented.

  He also advised me to lose some of my baby fat. Hey, I’m Italian and I like my food. I especially like McDonald’s burgers and I can eat several a day. I also like to cook. It’s always been a challenge for me to turn down carbohydrate- laden food. I don’t eat for sustenance, I eat because I love the taste of pepperoni pizza and a McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I savour the food. For me, it’s not about putting energy into my body, it’s the enjoyment of eating. There’s a reason that my name is now on the menu of a pizza joint in my hometown of Burnaby, BC.

  Anyway, I started watching my diet and working out. David gave me other great advice. He told me to change my hair, ditch the cliché dinner jackets and polish my act. He wanted me to be more sophisticated, like a Brad Pitt-style movie star, not some schmaltzy lounge singer. He wanted me to be cool and suave, not the dork I really am.

  I listened. I ate up every word that David told me. This guy is the winner of sixteen Grammys. He has written hit music and collaborated with Céline Dion, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Chicago and Paul McCartney, and almost the entire mainstream radio roll-call of the 1980s and 1990s. He’d been in his own rock band in the 1970s, before focusing on songwriting and producing. He also kept a constant eye out for hot young talent. He’d just signed a young protégé named Josh Groban, the classical music/pop crossover, to his 143 Records imprint on Warner Bros Records, and Groban was taking off. That was what I wanted. I knew that David got his kicks helping mentor young, hungry talent. He wasn’t in it for the money or fame any more. He liked the challenge of grooming talented junior singers for stardom. He told me he wasn’t satisfied with his career so far in that department. By
the time he’d worked with someone like Whitney Houston, for example, she’d already made a big name for herself. Same with Natalie Cole and Michael Jackson. He wanted to build careers from the ground up, and I wanted him to do that for me.

  David was noncommittal – quite rightly. He knew it would be a challenge to get a deal for an artist who sang covers of the American songbook, especially when the recording industry was in a serious nosedive. People weren’t buying records like they used to. And I don’t make the kind of music that would sell through word-of-mouth downloads on the Internet. The music I make requires old-fashioned record-label marketing and distribution to reach my cross- generational audience.

  I recorded some songs at David’s Malibu recording studio, with David and producer-mixer Humberto Gatica, David’s long-time friend and collaborator. Between the two of them, they’ve won more than thirty Grammys. They are giants in the business, so it’s an understatement to say I was in good hands. We recorded ‘Moondance’, ‘Kissing A Fool’ and ‘Fever’. They sounded great, and I was stoked. But I still didn’t have a record deal. I needed to shop the demos around, show them off.

  One night I was feeling particularly dejected that the demos might not go anywhere, that it was all for naught. Humberto told me to talk to David again, to really make my case for those recordings. It wasn’t until I played yet another celebrity party — this one an anniversary event for Kenny G and his wife — that David decided to come through for me. Before the show, I pulled him aside and pleaded with him to go to Warner Bros and get me a shot at a record deal. I said, ‘Please – I think what we do together could be magical. I think there’s a void in the market. I think we can do this. Please take me – give me a shot . . . If they say no, I’ll never bug you again. And if they just don’t get it I won’t bug you again. But these demos are magical.’

  Of course, now I look back, I realize those demos are nothing like a full-on David Foster production. For budgetary reasons, they’d had to keep it simple. But to me, it was better than anything I’d heard before. He looked at me and I could see him processing it.

  The next night he called me and said, ‘Let’s see what a twenty-six-year-old knows about the record business.’ Those were his words exactly. Exactly. And he said, ‘We’re going to go to Warner Bros. I’m going to take you down. We’re going to meet everybody. You’re going to meet Tom Whalley.’

  You know how they say, ‘Be careful what you wish for’? Well, this was that moment for me. Finally I had pushed my way into a meeting with the top brass at Warner Bros Records, Tom Whalley. I was suddenly terrified. Meeting Tom Whalley turned out to be the best and worst day of my life. If I thought performing in front of celebrities was scary, I quickly discovered that performing in front of the chairman and CEO of Warner Bros Records was nothing short of a personal nightmare. My anxiety was through the roof. I was literally shaking. That tells you something about my nature. I may look comfortable onstage or on a television show, but I have fought long and hard with my own personal demons to get where I am – every step of the way. I am not a naturally brave person. I am, however, determined.

  My nervousness must have been obvious to every executive sitting in the boardroom at Warner. Everyone was warm and friendly, and I’m sure they all felt for me. Here’s the weird thing about the record industry when you’re just starting out. They make you do awful things, like sing a cappella in a boardroom, under hideous fluorescent lights, to a group of office people who don’t have a clue who you are and may not care. I had to perform for this group of sympathetic- looking executives who only knew they’d been pulled away from their work to see some cocky kid from Canada who thought he could be a singer. I was trying so hard to be myself, trying to look hungry without looking desperate. Afterwards, they said, ‘Okay, Tom has five minutes to talk with you.’

  It was like a scene out of a movie. I watched Tom Whalley walk down the hallway and he had a person on each side of him, barking orders and scheduling things. It was like The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep’s character comes blowing in, surrounded by assistants. He sat down in his office and he had no expression on his face. He said, ‘Hi, Bublé. Sit down.’ And then he said, ‘Why should I sign you? We have Sinatra on Reprise already.’ Reprise under the Warner Bros Records umbrella: they own part of the Sinatra catalogue. He’d made his point.

  Now it was my turn to make mine. I told him, ‘With all due respect, Mr Whalley, Sinatra is gone. I’m sure he didn’t want to have the music buried with him. There’s a void in the market and there’s room for me. I’ll kill for you. I’ll work my ass off. Listen to these demos. I’m not telling you I know anything about the record business, I just know this could be big. We could make this massive.’

  And he gave me no reaction, nothing discernible. I have no clue what he thought of me, if he believed me, whether he really liked the demos he heard or not. He only told me he understood this kind of music.

  I walked out thinking I’d just seen my chance come and go. I didn’t feel bad – just numb, terrified, nervous, scared, exhilarated.

  I don’t think David knew what had happened, either. He had just had success with Josh Groban at Warner, which gave him leverage to make the case for another young male singer. But when you sign an act, you throw almost a million dollars out of the window right there. It’s a really big risk. David stuck his neck out for me.

  No matter what happens in my life, what David says to me, or if we get into an argument, I will always be loyal to him. I will never forget what he did for me. I will never forget the way that he put himself in a precarious position, business- wise, for me.

  You want to know how anxious I was after that meeting? I called my grandpa Mitch and asked him to fly down to LA and stay with me. So he did. He flew down to hold my hand through one of the most stressful times in my life, while I waited to see what Mr Whalley had in store for me. There I stood, at that moment in life when it all comes down to a phone call. And it would be a phone call like no other.

  An agonizing six days later, I was on the treadmill in the basement gym at my apartment building. The doors opened. My grandpa walked in with Bev right behind him. Both of them were crying. They told me to call David right away. He had good news.

  I was shaking. Just shaking. Every bit of my heart was in my gut. I picked up the phone and called him, and he said, ‘Hey, Mike, hey, man. I want you to feel safe because you have a great family and I want to welcome you to Warner. Congratulations on being my new act. We love you. And your journey is just beginning. Welcome.’

  That was it. It was 2002, I was twenty-six years old, and after ten years of playing weddings and dives, I had a record deal. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. I was to be signed with David’s 143 Records label, which is part of Reprise. We wouldn’t need Paul to find us investors, after all.

  It was time to make a record. David assembled a bunch of session players, including a rhythm section and four horns. With my money from the record deal, I rented a luxury apartment in a posh neighbourhood called Westwood. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I slept on an air mattress and used a cardboard box for a table. Bev continued to fly back and forth between LA and Vancouver.

  I spent my days at David’s recording studio in Malibu. With David and Humberto at my side, I spent five months recording classics like ‘Come Fly With Me’, ‘For Once In My Life’, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, ‘You’ll Never Know’, ‘All of Me’, as well as David’s recommendations – George Michael’s ‘Kissing A Fool’, the Bee Gees’ ‘How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?’ and Queen’s ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’. We also included Paul’s classic, ‘Put Your Head On My Shoulder’. Paul helped with the song selection and guided me as an artist. David was there for the daily grind of the recordings.

  David was tough on me in a good way. He pushed me to deliver. Paul was also really good to me in a tough-love sort of way. Those guys had decades of experience in the music business. They were self-made su
ccess stories and they’d won tons of awards and accolades. I have tremendous respect for them and I soaked up everything they taught me. In those early days, I was like a puppy looking for training.

  Bev realized that she couldn’t manage me on her own: we needed to find either a co-manager or someone with more experience to take over. David called his former manager Bruce Allen, who’s based in Vancouver and responsible for building the careers of legendary rock acts Bryan Adams, Loverboy, Bachman Turner Overdrive and country star Martina McBride. He had also revitalized the career of Canadian superstar Anne Murray. Bruce has become a legend in the industry. He’s a well-known workaholic, who represents his clients with the intensity of an angry pit bull. He’s also a music aficionado and hardcore Elvis Presley fan. I wanted him for my manager. Besides, we hit it off. Bev knew that Bruce had the connections and experience to see me through to the next stage of my career. From Bruce’s perspective, I had Warner Bros Records backing me, which would make his job easier.

  Of course, Bev stayed on until I made the transition to Bruce’s management team. It was an emotional time. Everybody on my new team adored Bev, including publicist Liz Rosenberg, who works with Madonna. She came on board and is with me to this day. As for Bev, she’ll always be the key person who launched my career, as well as a dear friend who’s more like a member of my family. She gave up a big chunk of her life for me, and I will always be grateful to her.

  I’ve been lucky that the people around me have proven to be so intensely loyal and hardworking. Bruce cares about the longevity of my career. He’s not in the record business: he’s in the career business. He has a personal attachment, a belief. Even when we’re having our usual arguments, I always know that if I was fighting a war, there is no one I’d rather have beside me than Bruce. In this business, you need a manager like that.

  When our record was finished, we played it in David’s office at Warner Bros. My grandpa was there, of course, and he said, ‘Gee, what do you think? Can we sell twenty or thirty copies?’