I had a blast making those videos. I may not be quite where I want to be yet professionally, because there are so many things I want to do, but I’m realizing exactly what I want.
My Life Now
Career-wise, my life is now a lot about repetition. It goes like this. Record an album. Promote it. Tour for two years. Repeat. There is a rhythm to my life now, and it’s been steadily gaining momentum. I have changed since those early years. I’m much more confident and comfortable with my job, which is hugely freeing, especially creatively. When you are intimidated by people or feeling like an imposter, it’s a creative setback. At the same time, it’s important that I never get too cocky for my own good, because that can be the kiss of death to an artist.
When I first started out, David made a video tape of me promising never to turn into an arrogant jerk, because he’d seen that happen too many times. That videotape is his way of holding me to my promise that I’ll never become that guy. And I don’t think I will ever turn into the jerk celebrity who thinks his life is the most interesting one in the room. For one thing, my family won’t let me. For another, the fame-and-fortune thing is fun, but I don’t define myself by it. I’m happy with my life because I’ve found my comfort zone. I have confidence. I’ve found my groove. I’ve read the allegorical novel The Alchemist, by Brazilian writer Paulo Coehlo; it examines how the universe conspires to make things happen when you know what you really want. I truly believe that’s how life works.
When I record, I am intensely involved with my producers and my musicians. It is relaxed, easy, creative and satisfying, even though the days are long.
When I am promoting the album, I sit in hotel rooms to talk to press from all around the world, repeating answers to the same questions asked over and over. After a while, I get my stories down pat, fine-tuning my soundbites with precision efficiency. If I like a journalist, they get an honest and revealing interview. If I feel they haven’t done their research or they’re looking for dirt, they get the pat answers.
Television appearances are pretty easy. They don’t require that much of you, except for a few upbeat comments and knowing when to let the host talk. I have even filled in for Paul O’Grady on his popular British talk-show and had a great time doing it.
Going on the road is the most gruelling part of the job, but I was born to do it. Friends who come with me for a few days wonder how I can handle not seeing daylight. There are days I spend entirely underground in the back of an arena before the show. Once the show is over, I go directly to a waiting tour bus and travel all night. I’ll wake up in another underground loading bay in some other arena and start all over again. It’s like living in a cocoon. There are days when I get tired or irritable, but if I start acting like a diva and complaining too much, the only one who hurts is me. Besides, for the most part, I do love it. Like I said, I was born for this job. Even the motion of the tour bus reminds me of sleeping on my father’s fishing boat. I find it soothing.
Let me give you a glimpse of my day-to-day life now, when I’m on the road with my seventy-strong crew and the days blur together until I’ve lost all concept of time. The way I see it, we operate like a factory or a steel mill, ticking along until show time, when the factory closes down for a couple of hours, then wakes up again and ticks along to the next city.
I’m backstage in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I’ve played several times before, although I’ve never gone far beyond the arena. I’m nervous about a big hockey game between the Vancouver Canucks and their arch rivals, the Chicago Blackhawks. It has special meaning also because I play Chicago the next night, so I’ll be face to face with an audience full of Blackhawks fans. More importantly, however, the Blackhawks knocked the Canucks out of the play-offs the year before and won the Stanley Cup, which hurt. I’m worrying that I won’t be able to see a lot of the game because I’m about to go on stage.
I’m seated in my dressing room a half-hour before show time. It’s another blank bunker with grey walls and a nondescript couch. Nearby are the two stuffed toys I take with me everywhere, like good-luck tokens. My nephew O’Shae gave me Kermit the Frog and Lu gave me the stuffed pig because she thinks it has my eyes. She calls me ‘cochinito’, which means ‘little pig’.
Holly is airbrushing my face with a light coat of stage makeup. On my dressing-table are the usual supplies, my inhaler, allergy medication, a bottle of Tam Dao cologne. My screensaver on my computer is a close-up of Lu’s face when she was a kid. I watch the game on my laptop and reluctantly take my eyes away to get dressed for the show. My wardrobe containers are in another room, where other members of my crew steam out the creases in my clothes and keep them ready for stage and photo opportunities. Holly brings me my shirt, and I get into it as I keep one eye on the game. Only when my guitarist enters the room do I stop watching. Every night before a show he comes into my dressing room and together we do a warm-up, just to stretch the vocal cords. I do my best to be loud and goofy, improvising lyrics, acting boisterous and loud. Tonight we sing the Beatles ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, with a brash, deliberately off-key ending that could break glass.
Someone asks me what I’d like to eat later, when I’m on the tour bus. After the show, the guys in the band are often hungry and look forward to burgers or dim sum, which an assistant has waiting for us. I’m eating healthy while on tour, so I’m having cottage cheese and fruit.
I’m dressed and ready for the stage, but I take a few minutes to play ping- pong. The ping-pong table is custom-made and goes with me everywhere. It’s kept conveniently close to the stage entrance so that I can play a bit before I head on to the stage. I love ping-pong. You might say I’m addicted to it. I have such a large crew that there’s always somebody to play with, which makes me feel like I’m at summer camp.
I bat the ball back and forth, then head through a heavy curtain into the darkness of the immediate backstage area. I can hear the collective din of thousands of people and then a sound guy puts my ear monitors in. I punch fists with the group of handlers around me, a little pre-show ritual of mine. Then I turn and run up the stairs that take me to the stage. I wait for my cue, go through the curtain, slide down the raked stage platform and on to the stage. I launch into the big, bombastic, over-the-top ‘Cry Me A River’, and the crowd goes nuts. I’m a kid again. Every night, it’s nothing short of thrilling.
Since the beginning, I’ve made a point of going into the audience and interacting with the crowds. I love to see their faces, to make them happy. With the Crazy Love show, I go out to Stage B, which is in the middle of the audience, with my opening a cappella act Naturally 7, who, as you know, sing back-up on some of my songs. As I walk through the audience, I’m accompanied by a burly bodyguard, but not because I think I’m a big shot. As I said before, there was an incident where a delusional man tried to attack me. Walking through a crowd of strangers, even seemingly happy ones, can have its risks. Mind you, I’ve more often witnessed violence than been on the receiving end of it. I once saw a lady punch another lady in the face at a show in France because one was blocking the other’s view. It turned into a brawl, and my sister happened to be at that show in the eighth row. In that moment we locked eyes. She looked terrified.
More recently, a lady who’d perhaps had too much to drink got up on the B-stage, which is a small stage I go to for part of my show and is set up among the audience. She proceeded to fall off it. It was a six-foot drop and she hit the floor hard. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say, but as soon as I was sure she wasn’t hurt, I looked at the camera and said, ‘I pushed her.’ That’s me trying to make light of an awkward situation.
Back on the tour bus after the show, I’m slumped on a leather couch staring at the big screen TV, basking in the Vancouver three–nil win over Chicago. I’m already formulating how to work Vancouver’s win into my opening at the Chicago show the next day. I share my tour bus with my assistant Holly and three of my musicians – piano player Alan Chang, sax player Jacob Rodriguez and
trombone player Nick Vayenas. I have a bedroom with a queen-size bed and private washroom at the back of the bus, while everybody else sleeps in a separate compartment on bunk beds, like you would on a train. In the living area, we often stay up till the wee hours of the morning, playing Wii golf and baseball games. After a show, I’m often too wound up to sleep. And, besides, when you’re living in a cocoon, what does it matter what time you go to bed?
While I was performing, Holly decorated the bus interior with Christmas ornaments and lights to remind us that Christmas is only a few weeks away. I met Holly after I’d just gone through a major break-up and, to make matters worse, my favourite stylist had quit. She was living in her homeland, Australia, and she’d never even been to North America when she came to work for me. She was supposed to be a fill-in stylist, but ended up staying on as both stylist and personal assistant. She shops for my clothes, she cuts my hair, she orders my food, my medications, my Christmas cards, you name it. She organizes my life, and now Lu’s, even when we’re on holiday. I’m almost reluctant to call Holly my assistant, because she’s far more than that. She’s become a great friend, and I regard her more as a little sister than an employee.
By morning, I’ve decided to give the Chicago audience a major drubbing for the Vancouver win. I’ll do it in the most backhanded way possible. I’ll congratulate them on winning the Stanley Cup while a huge image on the screen behind me flashes the three–nil score for Vancouver. I discuss the idea with one of my crew guys, then call my dad to talk about Christmas bonuses for the crew. My dad is one of my closest advisers. I have a loyal crew, many of whom have worked with me for seven years, and I believe in treating people well. A caterer travels with us and prepares healthy, delicious food for everyone. There is also a gym set up in case anyone feels the need to work out. And at Christmas, I give generous bonuses because, as my dad says, if you give people peanuts, you get monkeys working for you. In other words, you get what you pay for.
After a long dark drive through a blizzard, we arrive in a winter wonderland in Chicago. The bus drives underground, we all trundle into the backstage bunker and I follow the signs to my dressing room. There are a dozen other trucks and buses travelling with me, and the crew always arrives to set up first. In my dressing room there are signs that Chicago is very much a hockey town. I see a stack of hockey memorabilia gifts from fans, including a Blackhawks jersey with my name on it. There is also a stack of CDs. I spend about an hour signing them before the show for the merchandise table, because I think it’s a
nice touch for fans. I’m at my dressing-table and I’m thinking back to the old days, when I was
desperate to get on a local radio programme to be heard by around a thousand people. I remember those days so clearly, working so hard to be heard by so few. It astounds me that I now play to audiences of fifty thousand people, as I did in Ireland last year, or multiple nights to sold-out audiences in Madison Square Garden.
Holly says she’s not feeling well; she’s a little tired. We’ve been without a break for several months, and the crew is starting to feel it too.
I take out my journal and make my daily entry. I like to keep track of my thoughts and experiences, and I often share them with Lu, to keep connected. She’s at my house in Los Angeles with her mother, waiting for me to join them when the tour brings me there in a couple of weeks. I’ll be playing Staples Center and also performing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Most importantly, I’ll get to see Lu again. Before that, I have a few more days on the tour bus and then I fly to New York for the annual Christmas concert, Jingle Ball Rock, to perform alongside artists like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. I’ll then fly from New York to Los Angeles. The band and crew will stay at hotels while I’ll be at my house. When we’re not on the tour bus, we’re in hotels.
Because my life has slid into a repetitive cycle of recordings, promotion and touring, time is slipping away. The last seven years have sped by. It scares me; it makes me wonder if the next seven years will go as quickly. I want to slow it down, to savour it. I want to live in the present. By keeping a journal, I feel I’m doing that in a way, keeping the details alive so I’ll experience them as they happen.
My life looks like this:
white hotel sheets that smell like laundry
room service menus, small soaps
dressing-room tables with my laptop, deodorant, water bottles
round dining tables littered with celebrity magazines
production desks in generic grey windowless rooms
coloured-paper signs on dressing-room doors with my name in felt pen
paper schedules posted on walls everywhere
a black ping-pong table and pink balls
backstage fluorescent lights, grey concrete
my ever-present BlackBerry and iPhone
The rooms are nondescript, a temporary refuge for a bunch of transients. My name and face, it seems, are everywhere. People wear laminates with my face on them. There are big posters backstage with my face, my name.
The equipment cases have my name on the side, as do the schedules posted on the walls. The merchandise table, too. It’s a weird thing, being famous. People look at me and do one of two things. They either smile at me, like I’m a long-lost friend, or pretend they’re not impressed, even though they kind of are. I like to tease people about it too, like this girl one time at a movie theatre who acted really nonchalant when I paid for my ticket. But once I got inside and was standing at the candy counter, I could hear her screaming over the walkie-talkies that all the staff were wearing, ‘Oh, my God, Michael Bublé just walked in!’
I laughed. I made sure she got tickets to my show that night and then I proceeded to tease her about it from the stage.
Backstage, I get around on a Segway, the two-wheeled, self-balancing contraption on which I ride standing up. I have several backstage so that my crew can go from A to B quickly if they need to. For example, backstage in Chicago, I whip along on my Segway from the catering room to the ping-pong table for a quick game with Roger Thomas from Naturally 7. I like to tease him that I’ll always beat him, and he plays along. When I finish playing ping-pong, I whip back to my dressing room to get ready for an interview with a British TV host. He’s presenting me with a plaque for Crazy Love selling two million copies in the UK. Holly does my makeup, and I wear some nice casual jeans and a blue sweater. The TV host does a Sean Connery impression: ‘Michael Bublé, I like your music, but that jumper has to go.’ Everybody in the room laughs. We get into a lot more ribbing, lots of chuckles and goofing around. I can’t help it. I’m a goofball when there’s a TV camera around.
As I said, I consider myself more of an entertainer than a singer, an old-time variety act that combines song with comedy. There aren’t too many entertainers out there doing a hybrid act like mine, and I think it gives the audience a way better experience than merely listening to me sing my way through a set list. I write a lot of my own jokes, often off the top of my head, but I also have comedian friends who write jokes for me. I’ve even hired the writers from Jay Leno’s show. I’m good friends with a lot of comedians, such as Canadian comic Russell Peters and British comic Peter Kay. Russell has a great self-deprecating sense of humour. I learn a lot just by watching and hanging out with him. When I’m in England, I hang out a lot with Peter, another hilarious guy who’s taught me a lot about comedy and timing, and life in general.
In Chicago, I do a sound check with a bunch of contest winners. I sing for them and ask them questions. I tease a guy about the age difference between himself and his fiancée. He looks old enough to be engaged to her mother, who’s also there. Afterwards I do a ‘meet and greet’ with the sponsor, Beringer Wines. I tell them a funny story about how I took some Ambien, which is a mild sedative, and went swimming with turtles in Hawaii. The story is ridiculous, but they laugh. Almost everybody is so sweet to me backstage. Even a representative from Warner visits me with a scrapbook of photos of me she’s taken over the years.
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The show goes without a hitch. The joke I wrote about the hockey game for the Chicago audience goes over well. Later, I’m lounging on my bed in the back of my tour bus and some of my band mates are up front, drinking beers and kicking back. I can hear them laughing. I don’t party much on the road because I like to be in top form to sing every night. I no longer need booze, potato chips and cigarettes to sedate me after the show. I do, however, need Lu. I phone her constantly. No wonder my cell-phone bill is over the top.
As I lie on the bed, my feet are in a massage machine that squeezes them like bread dough. There’s nothing personal in this room. It’s just another room on another tour bus. I’ve got some of my clothes strewn about, but the vibe is temporary, like so many of the sleeping rooms I pass through all year long. In the corner, swaying on a hook is one of my suits, a Hugo Boss. I think about my first suit, given to me by my grandpa. It didn’t fit well, not like the ones I wear these days, but it was the only suit I had, and I wore it everywhere. I think about how I’ll see my grandpa soon back home in Vancouver. He’s also planning to visit me in Australia. He is still my number-one supporter.
If there’s one thing I’ve done right, it’s keeping the important people in life close to me. I’ve got great family, friends and professional relationships.
I’ve surrounded myself with talented people who have helped me become more talented too. Some of the people around me say that that is one of my strengths, knowing who to go to for advice and support. Those people include Bruce and my producers Bob Rock, Humberto Gatica and David Foster, and too many others to list here.
After the Christmas break, I spent January starting to make a Christmas record with David, Humberto and Bob in Los Angeles. I’d wanted to make a Christmas album for eight years. By February, I’d be back on the road in Australia, and after that I’d be getting married, so I had to squeeze the recording around my schedule. I planned on returning to the studio in July.
Onstage Offstage Page 9