NEW BUFFALO -Michael Bolton is the Michael Corleone of the soft pop world - just when you think he's out, he pulls you back in.
The multi-Grammy Award-winning singer who has sold more than 53 million records and scored multiple hit songs, including "When a Man Loves a Woman," "How am I Supposed to Live Without You," "Time, Love and Tenderness," "How Can We Be Lovers," and many others, has recently been spreading an excess of good cheer in his hip new holiday commercials for Honda.
Earlier this year, the 60-year-old crooner released "Ain't No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville USA," which reconnected him to his love for Motown music and for the city of Detroit itself. Now, his Los Angeles-based production company is filming a documentary about the resurgence and recovery of the Motor City as well.
Bolton, whose holiday tour includes Saturday's concert at Four Winds Casino's Silver Creek Center, spoke to us in an email interview earlier this week about the documentary, those Honda commercials, and his long-lasting music career.
Q: I wanted to start off by asking about your current stage show. What has your set list been looking like lately and what can we expect to hear when you play Four Winds here in New Buffalo?
A: Our show consists of an entire journey through not only the hits well known from my career, but the songs and music that inspired me as a developing artist as well. We're blessed with an audience who tend to appreciate the range of music influenced by artists in my younger days from Ray Charles and Otis Redding to Luciano Pavarotti as well as Bob Dylan and B.B. King. My love and continuing passion for what I loved since I was 10 years old feeds and fuels my touring and, believe it or not, my growth and evolution as a singer, writer, producer and recording artist. So the audience can expect a full concert of new songs, greatest hits, a few duets, classics, and even a classical aria or two.
Q: I've been enjoying your Honda commercials. They certainly seem to play up the holiday joy. How did the spots come about and what can you tell me about shooting them and the response they've gotten?
A: The response has been incredible. Everywhere I go, everyone so far seems to love them. We had a great team who made Christmas happen in October in Southern California. My booking agency, CAA, brought the project to me and we all agreed it would be fun. And it was but some really hard work ... long hours in a studio, early morning call times, late nights and the environment was crazy - 80 degrees outside in beautiful Orange County then suddenly, transformation: snowflakes and winter wonderland everywhere.
Q: I read somewhere that your career actually started in a metal band, Blackjack. So when did you decide to go from that, and opening for Ozzy Osbourne, to writing the soft rock ballads you are most known for?
A: Actually my first three hits as an artist were more R&B than rock because I made a promise to the head of the label (Al Teller) to shift gears and keep the songs I was writing and giving away to other artists for my own album. Those first hits - "That's What Love Is All About," the Otis Redding classic "Dock Of The Bay," and "Soul Provider" - were all over R&B radio. The rock years were in the late '70s and ended in '85. Opening for Ozzy was unforgettable and he was such a great guy with a great heart. Sharon was out there as well and they were very gracious people even way back then.
The transition from rock, though, was something that naturally evolved. (Al Teller) was right and had seen the great response to the first hit I wrote for another artist "How am I Supposed to Live Without You," and as time went on, the leather pants and hard rock days evolved into the various genres I love and record now.
I loved blues as a teenager and rock as well as American rhythm and blues, but my appreciation for many genres of music helped me become a better songwriter. I found that the songs I was writing and giving to other artists, which were ballads and R&B songs, were being appreciated much more than the rock direction I had been taking. I was enjoying singing on the demo tapes of songs that were more about emotional subject matter than the "wall of sound" that came with rock. It became about the stories the songs could tell for me - and clearly for a big audience around the world, thankfully.
Q: Your first major hit as a songwriter was co-writing "How am I Supposed to Live Without You" for Laura Branigan. Can you talk about how that changed your career?
A: Well, the power of the song comes from the fact that is was written from a true place and at some point in everyone's life they are going to experience something similar, even if it doesn't apply to their primary relationship, we all have to cope with our losses in life. And that's what makes us human beings. So the common denominator in the song is the emotional resonance.
This song was a hit twice. First by Laura Branigan in '83 and then again by me on the CD "Soul Provider" in '90 and still to this day I aim the mic out into the audience in any country - Thailand, Argentina, China, South Africa, Iceland, Poland, Italy - and they sing me the words, and I mean all of the words, verses and choruses. Something in the song resonates melodically and thematically in such a way that it just gets into your skin and stays there.
In '83, Laura's recording of "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" was playing on radio stations everywhere. The fact that a song I'd co-written was soaring up the charts lifted my spirits because, at the same time, my own single "Fool's Game" was losing steam. Laura sang "How Am I" as a pop ballad, very much as I'd performed it on the demo. ... When I released it as an artist in '90, it revealed (to me) what a huge No. 1 single can do. ... (It) got me my first Grammy for Best Male Pop Performance, and delivered my "overnight" success story - a story which actually had begun when I was 16 years old, and took 18 years to come to fruition.
Q: Earlier this year, you released "Ain't No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville USA." I'm always interested when performers can take well-known material and make it their own, and you've done that throughout your career. What attracts you to the songs you decide to cover, and can you tell me about the balance between honoring the original intent of a song and honoring your own sound?
A: My childhood was surrounded by these great songs and artists. I listened to them on the radio and on records and was profoundly influenced by the soul and the feel of these times. The songs and artists are classics and the music infectious and fun.
There are so many great ones that appeal to me to interpret for different reasons but some take me back to my becoming years and the writers were so great they made sad songs feel good for us.
So, the album is a compilation of songs from a nostalgic time in which I was growing up - though I never quite did that. This was some of the music that influenced me and helped shape my musical start. By singing songs from some of music's greatest like Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops, writers like Holland-Dozier-Holland, Smokey, Ashford and Simpson and so many more, I wanted to bring this music I loved forward to my audience who definitely love it. These songs have always resonated for me. It's timeless music that influences singers and songwriters, even to this day.
Q: Your production company recently announced it was working on a documentary about Detroit. What can you tell me about the project?
A: My production company, Passion Films, started documenting the recording sessions for my latest CD and that led us to an awe-inspiring trip to Hitsville USA in Detroit. While we were there, we were welcomed by a brilliant entrepreneur named Dan Gilbert who was born and grew up in Detroit and was clearly on a mission to rebuild and create a new, thriving city from the center out.
His team, which consists of quite a few of his childhood friends and legions of focused, sharp, highly motivated men and women, are intent on making Detroit's future a bright and powerful one. They allowed us and our cameras into their process of rebuilding.
Detroit is a city known as one of the greatest driving economic forces in American history. Between the automotive industry and the wealth of artists, songwriters and producers, not only of Motown, which is enormous by itself, but many others like the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, Bob Seger, Kid Rock, all the music that has come from this place is staggering.
The awareness of all of this, combined with my fresh experience at Hitsville and the impact Motown had upon the entire world, brought me to the heart of my belief system. Enter ... the American dream. In the documentary, we get deep into this theme, one that I refuse to let go of.
Q: You've had a long and sustained musical career, so what is it that continues to drive you?
A: After many decades of learning, striving and finally making it in the music business, I still love what was my first love, my first passion, and that's making music and singing. No matter how many shows or how many times we perform the hits again and again, there's only a deeper appreciation now, as I actually get the art of it, which is the heart of it. Being able to do what I truly love to do both makes me feel so fortunate and completely humbles me at the same time. I'm deeply grateful to have an amazing audience to connect with, sing for, laugh and play with. This is my dream come true. I'm not slowing down, stay tuned.
Petra Christine (Germany)
