He is coming. Don’t look so confused and worried. You know who I mean. What? You haven’t a clue what I’m clearly so excited about? I say again, louder and slower this time: H-E I-S C-O-M-I-N-G.
That’s right. I am in a state of high excitement because MICHAEL BOLTON IS COMING TO CANBERRA! Oh yes. One of the great hard rock voices of all time will be expositing his wares amongst us at the AIS on Friday May 21.
I hear you sniggering. I see you wiping the flecks of spittle from your smug chops as you contemplate my clearly demented excitement. Hard rock? In a chimp’s cock…
But it’s true, brothers and sisters, it’s true. After a brief false start in the mid ‘70s under his real name, Michael Bolotin, when he released two soul-influenced elpees, Bolton hit paydirt at the end of the decade in the band Blackjack.
Blackjack also featured Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick, and the band produced two sterling slabs of Bad Company-styled bluesy hard rock on the Polydor label. Their biggest hit, the strutting Without Your Love still occasionally gets a run out on Rage in the weekend small hours.
Of course, the cream rarely rises to the top in the music industry, and Blackjack withered on the vine thanks to some rubbish record company decisions. By the start of the ‘80s Bolton was out on his own again. In 1983 he released his third (self-titled) solo album, and reminded the world once more that here was a set of lungs to be reckoned with. Combing the hard rock elements of his Blackjack days (Kulick again lending his not inconsiderable six string skills to the Bolton bellow) with a slicker pop sensibility, Michael Bolton is an absolute classic of ‘80s AOR, with every track featured delivering the goods. But the album only got to number 89 on the US chart, despite good reviews, and once again Bolton was forced to question his direction.
Taking stock of the musical environment in America, and its seeming turn to a harder-rocking style, Bolton decided to return to the arena rock stylings of Blackjack for his next release.
Put simply, 1985’s Everybody’s Crazy is one of the greatest melodic hard rock albums ever released. Written and performed by our hero and an absolute who’s who of AOR royalty, EC quite literally had it all – bone crushing rockers (the title track and the devastatingly tear-jerking Save Our Love), achingly yearning ballads (Desperate Heart and the majestic Call My Name, later covered by Jennifer Rush) – there literally isn’t a bad song in the set… but since when has that actually made any difference to an album’s success?
Everybody’s Crazy inexplicably stiffed, leaving Bolton propping up the bar in the last chance saloon. For what would probably be his last shot at the big time, he changed tack again – and the rest, as they say, is history.
1987’s The Hunger was Bolton’s first platinum album and, sad to say, its success was largely derived by getting rid of the rock. Sure, some highlights for fans of the good stuff are still in evidence – the title track and Gina both bring the hairs on the back of the neck to attention – but for the most part the man’s banshee wail was reduced to a cocktail lounge croon as soul classics (Bolton’s version of Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay is here) and big production numbers became the order of the day…
And that’s what he’ll be singing at the AIS, of course. But I’ll be there, just in case he decides to crank out some of ‘our kind of music.’ I can dream, can’t I?
