Onstage Offstage Read online

  I love Otis Redding, but I hadn’t ever really listened to the words to his hit ‘Try A Little Tenderness’ until I was sitting in a jazz club in Australia and heard this girl singing. She sang the words, ‘She may be weary, and women do get weary . . . ’ and I was mesmerized. It got me excited, and I started to come up with all these ideas about how to do the song. I thought it would be really cool to take ‘Tenderness’ and make it a beautiful ballad where every word is distinct, and you can feel the emotion of it. At the end, there’s this Redding-type thing happening where it goes, ‘You’ve got to squeeze her . . ./You’ve got to try and always please her . . . ’ and it builds up. That’s my favourite part. I wait for it.

  Then there was the wonderful Nina Simone song ‘Feeling Good’. When I brought it into the studio as a possibility for the record, David and Humberto said no. They didn’t get it. They didn’t think it would work. But I kept playing it through my iPod on the speakers and by the fifth day they had changed their minds. Suddenly they thought it was a great tune. Sometimes you have to listen to something a few times before you really hear it. I told them, ‘We’re three guys sitting here and we’re making records for a heck of a lot of women. We need to have a sensitive side.’

  My girlfriend at the time, Debbie, would be sitting there too, and we’d ask her what she thought. She would hear a song and most of them either made her cry or got her in the mood for love, if you know what I mean. It’s so nice to have a female point of view in the studio. We surveyed a lot of other girlfriends, wives and women from the label or my manager’s office. Their feedback was vital. And they all gave ‘Feeling Good’ the big thumbs-up. It turned out to be one of my most popular covers. The crowds go wild for it to this day.

  It was with the second album that I really came into my own as a songwriter. I’d been messing around writing songs since I was a teenager on my dad’s fishing boat. But humming a melody to yourself is very different from performing it in a studio with fellow musicians who throw in chords and lyrics and brainstorm with you about how to shape it. And to hear your own song on the radio is to feel like a true artist, somebody who has something to say to the world. It’s one thing to be an interpretive artist, which I am, and proudly too, but I’ll always need to write my own songs. I seem to have a knack for coming up with melodies, which has made the process flow quite naturally.

  ‘Home’ was the first single I’d ever written, and is still my biggest hit. The song was used in a Debra Messing movie called The Wedding Date, and it was the only original track on It’s Time. I was in Italy and I was on tour, and I was feeling really good about my life. But I had been on the road for about seven months, and I hadn’t seen Debbie in ages. One day I was in the shower and I started singing, ‘Another summer day has come and gone away/In Paris and Rome/But I want to go home . . . ’ It came really easily. I love pretty melodies, and the words to this song are so simple. Then I got to the point where I realized that it was becoming autobiographical. I got to the bridge and thought, I’m getting so close to this song, I’m having a hard time being objective. I called David’s daughter Amy Foster, who’s a songwriter. She has a really lively, upbeat personality and a razor sharp wit – she’s a real Canadian. We’d written a bunch of songs together already and she’s a great lyricist.

  I said I needed a nice bridge that was honest. ‘I feel that what I write is corny because I’m writing about my own life. I don’t feel bad for myself, I don’t pity myself, but I need it to come across that I’m a guy who misses home. I miss the love of my life.’ Amy came up with some great lyrics, just little things that made the difference for me, stuff like, ‘I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life/ that I just stepped outside’. Then I added, ‘And I know just why you couldn’t come along/ This was not your dream . . .’ and she wrote a line that really helped me: ‘Another aeroplane/another sunny place/I’m lucky I know/ and I want to go home.’ She called me and insisted that we needed to say this, that it had to be my story, not some generic version.

  When she sang it to me over the phone, I thought, God, that’s what I wanted to say. That’s perfect. I love it that she writes lyrics that aren’t cliché.

  My musical director Alan Chang punched out some of the chords for the song.

  I had more original material I could have put on the record, but I didn’t use it because I needed to keep the continuity of sound with the previous album. I wanted to grow as an artist, but I didn’t want to alienate my new audience. ‘Home’ is a different-sounding song from the rest on the album. It’s got a country twang to it.

  When I make an artistic decision, I conduct a poll. I go around and ask people for their feedback. My management team will ask me, ‘Why do you care?’ I respond that I care more about what the average person thinks than some executive at a record company. It’s the fans who buy the records. I want to know what they think.

  After I wrote ‘Home,’ I brought the song with me into a Warner Bros Records meeting and said, ‘Listen to this song I wrote.’ I played it for them and they went ballistic. I’d thought ‘Feeling Good’ should be the first single, but they put out ‘Home’ instead. Jo Faloona, who used to work at my record label and is now on my management team, explained to me that if you have a strong song, then a handful of stations will add you every week. Our first day, we had eighteen stations add the song. The power of radio had opened doors for me. I was suddenly sitting with a number-one hit, and it was my first original song. Today, the album has sold six million copies, and it’s all because of ‘Home’.

  The record label wanted a video for it, which I made in Vancouver at the beautiful old Orpheum Theatre. All of a sudden, the song was getting airplay all over the world. It still gets used as the soundtrack to sad stories about guys who’ve gone off to war and miss their families, that type of thing. I think we all relate to it because we all know what it’s like to be homesick. It’s one of the worst feelings. I know about that as well as anybody, because I’m only home for a few weeks a year.

  For a good part of my life I’m either getting ready to go on stage, I’m on stage, or I’m winding down after being on stage. When I perform, I worry about my audiences. It matters a lot to me what they think, what they want. It always has, even in those early years. I’ve always liked to tease the men in my audience for wanting to be somewhere else, as if they were dragged along to a screening of the Sex and the City movie or something.

  My fans know that I like to joke around. I regard myself as more of an entertainer than a singer, and not too many singers incorporate actual stand- up comedy into their set lists, but I’m comfortable doing it, and I really think it adds a lot to the show. People come and see me to feel good, to have fun. I’m not a navel-gazing singer-songwriter type who requires his audience to sit rapt and pay close attention. I want them dancing in the aisles, whooping it up, laughing, clapping, making out with their dates, if it moves them. The jokes are a natural fit.

  I might be the most accessible artist around. I love interacting with the crowd, and at every show I get off my pedestal, which is the stage, and go right down into the audience to mingle with everybody. I love seeing the faces of my fans up close. I can’t do it as much any more because of my crazy schedule, but I used to stand outside my bus and sign autographs for an hour. I’d have members of my crew telling me to get on the bus and I’d tell them to leave me alone. If I don’t have time to sign autographs afterwards, I’ll sign them during the show, or for an hour beforehand. I sign hundreds of CD covers to make them just a little more personal. I tell you, I still can’t get over the fact that people pay to see me – and I probably never will.

  It reminds me of a guy I met when I was starting out, a Canadian artist named Johnny Favourite. He was doing better than I was at the time, but he said, ‘Kid, I’m telling you, you’re the one. Wait till you experience the joy of going on stage when people have paid hard-earned money to see you. It will make it all so easy.’ I never forgot what he said to me, and it turn
ed out to be absolutely true.

  One day, not long after It’s Time was released, I was watching TV, and Tony Bennett was on a talk-show. The interviewer asked him if he had any opinion on the new singers out there. At first he said it would be unfair to say he had a favourite. Then he said, ‘No. Michael Bublé is my favourite. He makes these songs his own. He can sing.’

  Well, that comment just blew me away. It beat out anything that any critic could say about my music. This is a guy who’s the real deal. You can’t get more authentic than Tony Bennett. So for him to be telling people that they should embrace me, that I am the one carrying the torch – well, it doesn’t get more thrilling than that. That’s exactly how I want to be seen, what I want my legacy to be. I want to be the guy who carries the torch and makes his musical heroes proud. What better legacy could there be?

  But I had to be my own man and take charge artistically if I was to make a go of this career thing. Also, I wanted to be responsible for my own album. If it went on to sell ten copies, I’d take the blame and say it was my own fault rather than blame somebody else. I needed to do the third record my way.

  Making it Big

  By the time I got to my third album, my life had become bigger, faster and a lot more complicated.

  I was calling the shots, to some extent, but there was another exciting offshoot of my success around this time: I could afford to give my family the kind of presents that were life-changing – for example, I could help my sister financially so that she could stay at home with her children, which was a huge boost to her quality of life. I was really proud to make my success a part of their lives and legacy, not just my own.

  But there was another side to fame, and it was a lot darker. I was going through a difficult adjustment period in my life. I had craved success, but I hadn’t realized the impact of it.

  Suddenly a lot of people seemed to be paying attention to me, and with that newfound fame came a lot of responsibility and adjustment.

  During the making of the third album, I was doing a video for my single ‘Everything’. I had been on set since four a.m., it was now around six p.m., and I was in my trailer sleeping because I had a fifteen-minute break before getting back to work. Bruce called and said that Tony Bennett was not well and he’d had to pull out of his American Idol performance. The show’s producers wanted me to replace him. My first concern was that Tony was ill. When I found out he had a cold, my next concern became a serious case of stage fright. I was terrified.

  I have spent a lot of my career being terrified. But I love my job so much and hunger for it so much that it overrides the terror. I have a friend who had to MC at a wedding. He called me and said he was so nervous he was having an anxiety attack. I said, ‘Dude, that’s my life.’ It often happens to me. If I know I have to go on American Idol or some other live TV show, I get scared. I’m asking myself, ‘Can I do it? What if I’m so nervous I pass out or throw up? What if I forget the words?’ However, in my live concert shows, I’m backstage kicking a ball around, I’m so comfortable before I go on stage. There’s a big difference between television and concert performance: the interaction I have with the audience. At a live show, if I forget the words, I can just joke with the audience and win them over so that they’ll forgive me. On television, in front of fifty million faceless people, I don’t have that luxury. You either nail it or blow it completely. I’ve seen entertainers really blow it on live programmes and I feel so badly for them because it hurts just to see it. It’s for that reason that I won’t sing national anthems at sports games.

  When I get to interact with my audience from the stage and have actual conversations by jumping into the crowd, I’m a happy man. I’m in my comfort zone. I feel like one of them, like the brother, the boyfriend, the husband. I know how they’re feeling and I can relate to them. I think of myself as a real guy’s guy who somehow ended up wearing a suit and singing love ballads.

  Also, if I screw up in a live TV performance I’ll hear about it from my friends and family. My performance on American Idol was not one of my best. I was so nervous some people thought I was drunk. When I called my mother, she just said, ‘You looked nervous.’ I wish people could meet me and sit with me because they would quickly see that I’m not some croony boy who sings croony love songs: I’m not confident enough to be that. When I look in the mirror, I still see an insecure fourteen-year-old who’s eager to please. Unlike Frank or Dean, or any of those boys who sang the songs before me, I’m anything but cool.

  Let me give you an example. It was around this time that I was nominated for a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for my live release Caught In the Act. I’d been nominated the year before for my second album It’s Time, but I’d lost to Tony Bennett, who, as I’ve already established, is my idol. The category is untelevised, so the awards are presented in a separate ceremony. A Canadian reporter interviewed me, and asked me how I felt about the Grammy nomination. I commented that it was unfair that the category wasn’t televised. Then, in good-natured ribbing to my competitor Tony, I jokingly said something like, ‘Hey, Tony’s going to win anyway, why would I go?’

  I was referring to the fact that Tony had won more times than anyone else ever in the history of the category, and also, if anybody deserved to win again, it was Tony. To my horror, the reporter wrote it as if I’d made the comment seriously. It made me look like an ungrateful jerk, and I was horrified me to think that Tony might read it and think I was being disrespectful. The thought of unintentionally insulting him nearly destroyed me. I worry enough about unintentionally insensitive remarks I make to people I don’t idolize. When I apologize to them days later, they don’t even know what I’m talking about. You can imagine how I’d beat myself up about insulting my music hero. Tony and I have had many discussions, and I think he likes that I have a strong understanding and appreciation of the history of this music, this genre. I’m not just in it for the cheap thrill of nostalgia. I feel like a student with the master when I’m with Tony, and I see myself carrying on the tradition of the masters who came before me.

  The night my comment went public, I lost a lot of sleep and, as a result, I became wary of speaking with the media. I had clearly made a sarcastic comment, which was my nature. If a reporter was going to take me literally when I did this, what hope did I have of surviving the fame game? I’m far too thin- skinned to be raked over the media coals in that way. I had my management issue the following statement: ‘I’m extremely honoured to have been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category. I did indeed make my feelings known that the category should be broadcast live during the award ceremony. This category honours the interpreters of some of the greatest songs ever written. There are millions of people like me who love and respect this music. I jokingly said that Tony Bennett is going to win anyway, so why should I go? This is not sour grapes. I worship, love and respect Tony Bennett. He is my idol. I voted for him and he deserves to win.’

  That year Tony won the Grammy, and at the ceremony we had a nice chat. He told me to be careful, not to feel like I had to fight the battle on behalf of all the vocalists who felt the category should be televised. He mentioned that his friend Frank Sinatra had made a similar comment and paid the price of backlash for it. He asked me if I felt honoured to be nominated. I said, ‘Of course!’ And he told me that I should only ever talk about the honour I felt because anything else would sound ungrateful. Throughout my life, I’ve absorbed a lot of wisdom from older, more experienced guys. I took Tony’s gentle advice the same way — I ate it up.

  As it turned out, my third album, Call Me Irresponsible, would win the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album the next year. I simply said I was honoured.

  When I began making Call Me Irresponsible, I decided I was ready to take full responsibility for calling the shots. I’d earned it. I wanted to include a couple of my own songs, and record live, in the studio, like in the old days of Sinatra. I was very proud of my first record, but i
t didn’t feel like mine. David Foster and Humberto Gatica had had to make very simple choices with it because we had budget restrictions. They said, ‘Let’s just sell this record and get you out there. Then you can worry about your ego or your pride or your art.’ That was totally fair. After all, I was new to the business. Who was I to start making demands? With the second one, It’s Time, I took a little more control. I started to put my foot down about certain things and made it more my own record.

  By now I’d won five Juno Awards, which are Canada’s version of the American Grammys and the UK’s Brit Awards. I had a huge hit with ‘Home’ from the second album. I had gone from a one-truck tour to a five-truck tour with a thirteen-piece band.

  On the third album, I wrote and released two more songs that would become hits, ‘Lost’ and ‘Everything’. I was proving myself as a songwriter, even though a lot of people would continue to think I was only covering other people’s songs. I remember I was on my dad’s boat, in his cabin. We had double bunks. I was in the bottom one, writing down the words to a song: ‘I miss the way that you walk/the way that you talk/ I miss the way that you smile/ I haven’t seen it for a while.’ It was so terrible and cheesy. I was so young, and it was probably the first song I wrote.

  I even sold a few for chump change that were used in low-budget movies. They weren’t always my greatest work, that’s for sure. But those early songs helped me hone my songwriting chops and prepared me for professional-calibre songwriting once I’d got a major-label deal. That doesn’t mean songwriting comes easily to me. If you ask my co-writers, they’ll tell you I can make it a long, arduous process because I agonize over every note and every word. I compose the melodies, and other songwriters help me write the lyrics and different chord parts. Most of my songs have been written with David’s daughter Amy Foster, who, as I’ve said, helped me write the lyrics for ‘Home’, but also for ‘Everything’ and, from my fourth album, ‘Hold On’ and ‘Haven’t Met You Yet’. They’ve all been hits.