Michael Bolton: A Black Jack Dealing, Rock ’n’ Roll Soul Provider
The hard rockin’ career of Micheal Bolton that you never knew
“I don’t care what people say, rock ’n’ roll is here to stay.”
— David White/Danny & the Juniors, 1958
After a long, hard day of spinning cruel destinies for the world’s dreamers, the three Fates fell asleep at the wheel and their wicked, gold threads ran out — this time, the record executives got it right. The new “image” for their new signing, worked. U.S. daytime TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey loved this oozy-sexy, soulful crooner who seem to come out of nowhere to storm the radio and retail charts. Oprah’s audience of soccer moms who graduated from The Donnie Osmond and Andy Gibb School of Interior Bedroom Decorating instantly transformed into a screaming bevy of ’60s Beatlemaniacs. The singer’s dreams finally came true.
For in those days, Oprah Winfrey had the “Eric Von Zipper” touch.
If these now married-with-children women responded with that fervor as young girls and teenagers in 1975 when the warhorse singer issued his debut album at the age of 22, they would have ripped out his innocuous centerfolds from the pages of 16 and Tiger Beat and plastered him on the wall next to the dreamy images of Lane Caudell, David Cassidy, and Rick Springfield. (Join the discussion regarding ’70s musician-teen idols with this chronicle on the career of Lane Caudell on Medium.)
The Rock . . . of the ‘80s
During this writer’s wee-pup vinyl and transistor FM radio days, WCKO “K-102” was the station to listen to if you loved rock ’n’ roll. Struggling as a low-rated R&B-disco “party station,” WCKO had enough — and they went through a triple-360 format change that would make Rodney Dangerfield toss a cookie from the high dive.
At first, the “Kangaroo” of the reengineered “K-102” jumped off the launch pad as your run-of-the-mill AOR station playing the ubiquitous Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin (when those bands were still together and releasing viable, new songs), while breaking “new artists,” such as a bunch of guys known as Van Halen, along with Journey and Foreigner (two bands which altered the career-course of the singer that mesmerized Oprah’s audience). Until . . . the AOR format deteriorated into the “McDonald’s of Radio” (a radio consultant’s battle cry for ratings success) with a repetitive, automaton rotation of so called “classic rock artists” that made us hate the very artists we once loved.
Inspired by the “grunge movement” of the ’80s pre-Internet epoch, known as the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal,” “K-102,” out-of-nowhere and with little fanfare, became “Your Heavy Metal Station,” spinning a format anchored by two “new bands” stodgy AOR stations overlooked — who would become worldwide superstars: Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.
When the Beatles-cloned “Nirvana” of the ’80s, The Knack, outsold their ’60s forefathers, “K-102” became “The Rock of the ‘80s” and spun “new wave artists.” Now, it was lots of Blondie, the Cars, and some gangly Buddy Hollyesque musician that swiped his first name from the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll” and Bud Abbott’s portly sidekick: Elvis Costello.
And amid all this format tomfoolery at WCKO, there was this band called Blackjack distorting over my transistor radio ear piece one day, as result of the station’s heavy-metal experiment, you know, back when radio stations gave new artists a break.
“Hey, those were the guys that opened for Ozzy!” I rejoiced. For some reason, discovering some unknown band in concert, and then hearing them on the radio, meant something to me.
Yes. I saw Blackjack at an Ozzy concert courtesy of a clandestine operation spearheaded by my older, drum-crashing cousin during a stay over at my aunt and uncle’s house. (Those “operations” are how I saw Holly Knight’s Spider opening for Alice Cooper, UFO opening for Cheap Trick, Def Leppard opening for Ozzy Osbourne, and Saxon opening for Triumph. Don’t tell my mom! Or Aunt, since my older cousin sneaked both myself and my younger cousin, out.)
Blackjack’s two-album career with Polydor: 1979’s Blackjack and 1980’s Worlds Part.
Shall We Play a Game?
Blackjack’s initial notice by rock radio and us vinyl-retail slumming teens was result of the album’s unique packaging: instead of an open-ended side-seam to remove the dust-jacket clad black circle, the album had a top-flap opening analogous to a deck of playing cards. That the die cut corners made it “look” like a box, sealed the deal. Here’s your $7.98 (once I found one of the poorly distributed copies; as with Spider’s). (As I reflect on the album: I think the packing concept came first; the record company just needed a band to become their “Blackjack”; you know, like when the Greg Brady of U.S. TV’s The Brady Bunch “fit the suit” and became the “new Johnny Bravo” . . . “ . . . Clowns never laughed before /Bean Stalks never grew. . . .”)
Sadly, the inventive marketing couldn’t sustain Blackjack. Their follow-up, Worlds Away, which I didn’t know existed until years later, landed with a thud in the desolate landscape. As with most bands: when your sophomore effort sells less than your debut, it’s game over. The company edict: score a massive hit(s) with that third album (see Def Leppard’s Pyromania from 1983) or you’re out on the street, “rock star.”
Later, as a hair-teased pseudo glam-rock solo artist, Michael received additional support from some crazy, burgeoning television network that ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith dreamed up that played “pop clicks” (i.e., “rock videos”): MTV — with the song “K-102” gave some spins to: “Fool’s Game,” and the less successful, pretty darn-decent rock tune, “Everybody’s Crazy.”
I Give You, Beef! I Mean, Bolton!
By this point, Michael was in the business twenty years. Introspective, soft-rock smoothness didn’t work. Foreigner-cum-Journey “corporate rock” didn’t work. Sidling himself with Quiet Riot spearheading the burgeoning hair-metal/glam movement as a solo artist (Mike had one hell of a curly mane) didn’t work.
He’d been through three recording contracts. All he knew was music. He was getting older and guys like Mötley Crüe ruled the airwaves. When you have a wife and kids, slapping studded black leather straps across your chest Vince Neil-style to round-up scantily clad women into a chauvinistic-corral won’t work.
Michael couldn’t rely on the three fickle Witches of the spinning wheel anymore.
Or could he?
Did Michael make a Faustian deal with Swan to become the new “Beef” of the vinyl meat market?
The truth is: once snobbish rock ’n’ rollers yanked the Fates-spun cotton balls out of their ears . . . Michael Bolton could belt it with the best of them. And Michael had a stellar reputation in the business. (Many of his peers have said in the rock press and trades, “. . . he’s the funniest man I ever met.”) The fact that Michael survived so long in the business is that record executives knew he had “the stuff,” it was just a matter of finding the right material to connect with audiences.
“I give you, Michael Bolton! Uh, I mean, Beef! Yeah, eh-em, BEEF!”
Searching for the Dock Near the Bay
As a young man, known by his birth name of “Bolotin,” Michael’s record collection was rife with singles cut by soul singers, such as Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Otis Redding (be sure to read the previous Medium article about Gene Townsel and soul/gospel music) — they were the reason he got into the business in the first place. So Michael shed all the hard-rock nonsense, the stage clothes, the image, the sound — and decided to go back to his roots and just sing from the heart.
Those “roots” began on the saxophone at age seven; by age 11 he was playing guitar. His New Haven, Connecticut bar band, the Nomads, signed to Epic Records in 1969 when Michael was 15; they were dropped after two failed singles. (Ugh! You Tube, you failed me! I want to hear them!)
By 1975 Michael was a 22-year-old singer and songwriter recording in New York with a deal through RCA Records based on demo tapes he cut at Leon Russell’s Tulsa-based label, Shelter Records.
Shelter was also home to Gainsville, Florida’s Mudcrutch; with roster changes, they became Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The label also had an “overnight” chart success with “I’m On Fire,” the debut single by a Beatlesesque Tusla-based duo formed by Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour (had his own ’80s hit, “Precious to Me.”)
During the recording of Michael’s 1975 debut, guitarist Wayne Perkins auditioned to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones; the gig went to the Faces’ Ron Wood. In an interesting twist: bassist Bill Wyman’s birth name was “William Perks.”
Courtesy of Michael’s connection to Shelter and access to the label’s “sound,” which was analogous to Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen-groove, the RCA studio featured Shelter’s southern-rock soul studio band consisting of keyboardist Patrick Henderson, saxophonist Jim Horn, guitarist Wayne Perkins, and Detroit-raised backup singer Marcy Levy (aka, Marcella Detroit; recorded and toured with Bob Seger and Eric Clapton). David Sanborn, who was just starting to become a solo artist in his own right, played saxophone on two of the albums cuts — “Dream While You Can” and the uptempo rocker (and failed single) “Your Love.” In addition to the Wayne Perkins-penned, should-have-been-hit ballad “Lost in the City,” which foreshadowed the soulful Joe Cocker-meets-Michael McDonald (Doobie Brothers) style that took “Michael Bolton” to the top of the charts in the late ’80s, the album also features Perkins and Bolotin’s rearrangement of the Rolling Stones hit, “Time Is on My Side.”
For the recording of his second album, 1976’s Every Day of My Life, at the industry-respected, Toronto-based Nimbus 9 studio operated by Jack Richardson, who produced hits for the successful RCA Canadian band The Guess Who, orchestrated a ballad-reimaging of the Guess Who’s 1969 Top Ten “rock” hit, “These Eyes,” as the album’s official single.
“No,” cackled the Fates. “Get away from our wheel, foolish one!”
Michael’s desire to achieve fame emulating the soul artists of his youth, failed.
The style of singles-oriented AM Top 40 radio, where Michael’s tunes were meant to be hits, was in a downward slide; progressive FM rock radio was on the rise. Los Angeles’ premiere progressive-rock station, KMET 94.7 FM, was the first FM station in the U.S. to beat one of those stodgy, top-rated AM Top 40 outlets. Real, kick ass rock ’n’ roll arrived and it was commercially viable.
It was time for Michael to hit that distortion pedal and switch gears — and he (in this writer’s opinion) excelled in the hard rock/heavy-metal genres from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties as a lead singer and a solo artist.
First, he co-founded what would become Blackjack with former Meatloaf guitarist Bruce Kulick and blues-rock guitarist Robben Ford’s bassist, Jimmy Haslip (Ford issued an ignored solo album in 1977); the new kid on the block was drummer Sandy Gennaro, in his first recording band. Courtesy of respected music attorney Steve Weiss — who oversaw Bad Company’s and Led Zeppelin’s legal affairs for Swan Song/Atlantic — as their manager, they signed to Polydor. The music executive brain trust decided this new quest for the hard rock throne shall be known as Blackjack. “So say we all.”
According to Bolton’s 2013 memoir, The Soul of It All, Weiss is the one who encouraged Bolton and Kulick to move away from the style of Bolton’s two RCA albums and adopt the budding pop-rock direction taken by the likes of Foreigner and Journey.
Another struggling singer by the name of Joey Lynn Turner mixed that “formula” during a four-album stint with the very cool — but forgotten — Fandango, on his way, somewhere over the “Rainbow.” Then there’s Billy Squire with Piper, Michael Lee Smith with Starz, Jimi Jamison with Target and Cobra (he’s a “Survivor”), and Lou Gramm didn’t become a rock ’n’ roll black sheep in a strange land; he became a “Foreigner.”
The label wasted no time in sending Blackjack on the road in support of their 1979 debut — featuring opening slots with an on-the-downslide-but-still hot Peter Frampton and a quickly on the rise Ozzy Osbourne. Even with those high-profile tours, Blackjack’s debut single, “Love Me Tonight b/w Heart of Mine” (its follow up was “For You b/w Fallin’,”), produced by Tom Dowd (the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cream, Eric Clapton . . . and Michael’s inspiration, Otis Redding), just missed breaking the Billboard Top 60; while the album sold a respectable 100,000 copies for a new band, the record stalled at #127 in the U.S. Top 200.
Perhaps if Dowd let the band cut loose inside Miami’s Criteria Studios instead of reining their sound, maybe the album would have made a better connection with rock audiences. According to Bolton in The Soul of It All, Dowd wanted the band to “take a ‘little edge’ off their sound,” and for Kulick to turn down his amp, declaring, “What do you think this is, Kiss?” Ironically, that “sound” Kulick was looking for with Blackjack was realized several years later — when he became the lead guitarist for Kiss.
By the time Blackjack entered the studio for their 1980 follow up, Worlds Apart, Polydor Records went through a regime restructuring that stymied the band’s support. For a band dumped by their record company, the album’s lone single fit the occasion: “My World Is Empty Without You.”
First Epic. Then RCA. Now Polydor.
Years later, Black Sabbath fans were shocked to discover through the hard copy and online rock press that Black Sabbath founder Tony Iommi claimed that, after Blackjack’s demise, Michael auditioned as Ronnie James Dio’s replacement. According to Iommi, they called Michael in after hearing his “tape,” to sing the Dio-era “Neon Knights” and “Heaven and Hell” and Ozzy’s “War Pigs.” While Iommi never heard of Blackjack at the time, he thought Michael was very good, but he simply didn’t fit into Black Sabbath’s “image.” (Of course, the job went to ex-Deep Purple belter, Ian Gillan, who’d given up on his ’80s namesake band, Gillan; his guitarist, Janick Gers, ended up in Iron Maiden.)
However, according to Michael, while Blackjack opened for Ozzy Osbourne and other “really heavy bands,” the myth of his tape and studio audition with Black Sabbath never happened and he has no idea how it started.
After Blackjack cashed out from the green felt of fate, Bolotin anglicized his name to the more hard-rock oriented “Bolton” and forged onward with a dream to make it as a hard-rock solo artist. Bruck Kulick got a gig with the ex-singer of Piper; the solo debut of Billy Squire became a hit and set off a fruitful session-musician career culminating with his membership in Kiss. Jimmy Halsip reverted to his jazz and blues roots, forming the Yellowjackets with Robben Ford. Sandy Gennaro joined Canadian guitarist Pat Travers (1981’s Radio Active), then Craaft, a U.S.-AOR-inspired German concern with ex-Krokus guitarist Tommy Keiser; they opened Queen’s European legs of The Works Tour (Seattle’s Big Horn, signed to Epic, and Dakota, singed to Columbia, opened for Queen as well during their U.S. tours of The Game). In addition to becoming Joan Jett’s and Cyndi Lauper’s longtime drummer, from 1987 until Davy Jones’s 2012 death, Gennaro provided the backbeat to the Monkees.
Meanwhile, the newly-minted Michael Bolton signed his fourth recording contract, this time at Columbia; his studio and touring band featured Al Pitrelli (later of Asia and Megadeth), Bruce Kulick, and future Billy Joel drummer, Chuck Bergi.
Chuck Bergi previously provided the backbeat to Balance, which featured Bruce Kulick’s brother, Bob. The band was fronted by Peppy Castro of the ’60s psychedelic-pop band, Blues Magoos. Balance had a U.S. Top 40 hit with “Breakaway.” Blues Magoos’ Top 40 hit was “(We Ain’t Got) Nuthin’ Yet.”
Tommy Keiser of Craaft previously worked alongside fellow Krokus (and future Asia) guitarist Mandy Meyer and ex-Target vocalist Jimi Jamison in Cobra, a Nashville, U.S.-based hard-rock collective, on their lone album, 1983’s First Strike (see above image collage).
Toning down the “metal” of Blackjack for a smoother, commercial AOR-rock sound, Michael’s third solo album and fifth overall, 1983’s Michael Bolton, fared better courtesy of MTV’s support of its single, “Fool’s Game” (lower regions of the U.S. Top 90), but the rocking title cut from 1985’s Everybody’s Crazy repeated the sophomore jinx that plagued Blackjack.
In steps Laura Branigan.
The Rise of the Soul Provider
Hot from her worldwide smash debut single, “Gloria,” the interest propelled her follow up single, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” written by Michael Bolton, into the U.S. Top Ten. That hit opened the door for Bolton to provide songs for charting albums by Kenny Rogers, Barbara Streisand, and Kiss, in addition to collaborating with esteemed songwriters such as Eric Kaz (of Blues Magoos; American Flyer with Creedence Clearwater Revival castoffs), Barry Mann, Diane Warren, and Cynthia Weil.
It was those relationships that resulted in Bolton returning to his soul-loving roots with 1987’s The Hunger, which produced his first self-penned U.S. Top Twenty hit, “That’s What Love Is All About.” Then he made it to the Top Ten for the first time with a cover of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.”
And the hits just kept on coming with the chart-topping albums Soul Provider (1989) and Time, Love and Tenderness (1991), including the smash single covers of Percy’s Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and the Ray Charles-version of “Georgia (On My Mind).”
Since 1975 Michael has released 20 solo albums and over 35 five singles. Eighteen of those singles reached the U.S. Top 40; nine others went straight to # 1.
And Michael’s ’80s hard rock years received belated admirations — and well-deserved royalties — twenty five years later, courtesy of urban/R&B star Jay Z sampling “Stay” from Blackjack’s Worlds Apart for “A Dream” from his Billboard #1 album, 2002’s The Blueprint 2: The Gift & the Curse. Fellow rapper Kayne West was also a fan of Worlds Apart; he sampled “Maybe It’s the Power of Love” for “Never Let Me Down” on his triple-platinum selling debut, The College Dropout, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts.
Michael Bolton and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll
Becoming a fan of Michael Bolton during his hard-rock years with Blackjack and his early-Columbia rock offerings — and thinking of the possibility that 1985’s Everybody’s Crazy could have transformed him into a footnote in the biographies of Pat Travers and Kiss — I am happy . . . no, I’m proud that Michael made it. He’s one of my rock ’n’ roll heroes and I love it when my heroes succeed.
Miles Goodwyn of Canada’s April Wine (one of my all-time favorites, next to Saxon) advised us wee rockers that “Rock ’n’ Roll Is a Vicious Game.” Michael Bolton cashed in, spun the wheel of the vicious fool’s game and, I’ll be damned, he beat the odds. He ripped those golden threads from the spools and weaved gold records. Good for him.
As I relive the career of Michael Bolton, I can’t help but think of my old friend Arthur Pendragon (yes, we really were friends and coworkers, stop asking). Arthur spent five years slugging it out on Detroit’s local scene, starting in 1967 when he was 16 years old, beginning with the Revolvers (then Madrigal, then Walpurgis). Michael Bolton was 15 and signed with Epic. While the most of the musicians this writer covers on Medium disappear after two albums, Michael defied Fates’ spools and signed a second major-label recording contract in 1974.
Meanwhile, Arthur Pendragon watched Phantom’s Divine Comedy, his debut album by his band Walpurgis, from 1974 on Capitol Records crash and burn in a not-so-glorious “It’s Jim Morrison back from the dead” marketing blaze that same year. No matter how hard he tried, Arthur never issued (at least not officially through a legitimate label) a second album by way of his next concern, Pendragon (their late ’70s demos were later pirated); he never got a second chance at the Fates’ wheel of fortune, let alone Bolton’s fortunate four bites at Eve’s damned apple — five if you consider Columbia gave Bolton a second chance at a more profitable, softer stylistic change. If Bolton’s 1987 reboot, The Hunger (this third Columbia album overall) didn’t hit, that might have been his final thread. . . .
There is no clear-cut answer to why — regardless of the profession, especially in the creative arts — one becomes a success and the other fails. This is the record business, not rocket science, after all. There are no formulas or calculations. Sure the marketing, promotions and sales departments attempt to formulate and quantify hit records across charts and bar graphs, feeding in digital data and babbling about algorithms. Yes, composers and arrangers attempt to Frankenstein an acetate and Mylar formula (today it’s bits ’n’ bytes), usurping a band’s creative juices, because they know what the public wants.
What rock ‘n’ roll — and life, or any career field — needs is less propositions and promises and more second chances. Everybody needs one. And they need the faith of the other.
And that’s the formula to beat the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll.
END
This playlist, the “Music of Michael Bolotin and Blackjack,” features his 1975 and 1976 RCA solo albums, his Columbia 1983 and 1985 solo efforts, and his two Polydor albums with Blackjack in 1979 and 1980.
After his singles-deal with Epic for his first band, the Nomads, Bolotin recorded two dozen songs in 1970 at Sunset Sound Recording in California’s San Fernando Valley with his next hard-rock band, Joy. Segments of two of those songs, “Running Away from the Nightmare” and “Where Do We Go from Here,” appeared in the 1972 biker-exploitation film, Nightmare County (November Children in its original release).
Following his demo deal with Tulsa-based Shelter Records, Michael signed with RCA Records; those 1974 to 1975 New York recordings resulted in his first solo album, Michael Bolotin.
