Tavis Smiley: Good evening from Los Angeles. I'm Tavis Smiley.
Tonight, a conversation with singer-songwriter, Michael Bolton. The multiple Grammy Award-winner joins us to talk about his 27th album. It's called "Songs of Cinema", which pays tribute to songs from the world's most iconic films. He'll also discuss his move from power balladeer to comedy genius. We'll explain that if you don't get it.
We're glad you've joined us. A conversation with Michael Bolton coming up right now.
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Tavis: Multiple Grammy Award-winner, Michael Bolton, has sold over 65 million albums worldwide since hitting the music scene. His latest is called "Songs of Cinema". However, over the past few years, he's welcomed a new generation of fans, thanks to his unexpected comedic ability. Look at that comedic face. No, not me, him [laugh]. Thank you.
Before we start our conversation, first a look at his comedic chops in the music video for "Jack Sparrow" made with the Lonely Island guys which has been viewed more than 165 million times on YouTube.
[Clip]
Tavis: We couldn't do this show without a huge group of interns. Some of the local colleges and I organized a plan some years ago when I first started the show to make sure that local college students got a chance to intern on this TV program. So we couldn't do this without all these great interns.
I say that because all of our interns know you from this stuff, not from your long hair days the way I know you when you first broke out. But you got a whole new generation of fans around here because of this stuff. Who knew?
Michael Bolton: This is the gift that keeps on giving [laugh], "Jack Sparrow".
Tavis: How did this stuff happen?
Bolton: The Lonely Island guys who were doing that, creating viral videos for Saturday Night Live asked for a meeting and we all met in Los Angeles, my manager and I and the three of them. It was so funny. Sitting across the table, I felt like I knew all of them from their videos.
Tavis: Sure.
Bolton: I said, "Look, I'm a huge fan. I want to do something with you guys. But the script you sent me, it's too disgusting for me to do. It's hilarious, but not all my fans are going to get what's funny about it." They started laughing. They said, "Yeah, we know. We could tweak it. We could clean it up a little bit". I said, "Can you, please? I'd love to work with you." They said, "We really want to do this."
About seven months later, I was in Atlanta and I finally got a message from Andy Samberg and I read it and I said, "This one I can do." They said, "Go to a studio. Find a studio in Atlanta." I did and then to New York for two 14-hour days of shooting. We were pretty much laughing nonstop until somebody said, "All right, let's call it."
Tavis: I'm sure [laugh].
Bolton: The most traumatic things, Erin Brockovich is still very traumatic for me to see myself dressed as. I needed a lot of therapy after that one. But they had a really good feeling about it, and I was terrified. So when it aired on Saturday Night Live, I was at the studio and I found a dark corner by myself and I just tucked myself into it.
People started laughing at all the right places. And the next thing I knew, John Mayer was telling me, "Tomorrow you're gonna see something you're not gonna believe." I said, "What?" He said, "Whole new audience." I said, "I hope you're right" and he was right.
Tavis: Speaking of John Mayer, I just read a beautiful piece about him in last week's New York Times Sunday Magazine — no, the paper, the paper. The Sunday paper did a nice piece about him about his resurgence. Bob Lefferts did a big piece about him as well.
So Mayer is experiencing his own sort of resurgence and I think I could use that word with you. In addition to these videos and the Netflix special, fair to say that Michael Bolton is experiencing a bit of a resurgence? Or is that offensive?
Bolton: No, it's not offensive at all. I would say it's fair to say. You could use that. I mean, people are saying it, so that's probably what makes it true.
Tavis: But do you own it? Do you accept it?
Bolton: I do in a way that you described where it's not just a generation. Two or three generations have discovered me and then they go out and they look around at your music and they come back, "So have you seen this?" and they share it.
That is a kind of — definitely resurgence is one word, you know. But it's also widened my brand basically and the ability to do things from a kind of a different platform, which is having fun, which is what I've always loved. I've always been kind of a joker behind the scenes.
I think it's not only acceptable. We're really taking great advantage of, you know, the opportunities in developing television shows. Shortly after Jack Sparrow was invited on "Two and a Half Men" for multiple episodes and I thought this could be fun every day.
You get into your trailer and the new funnier pages are there. And the lines that you asked if they could be addressed are like 10 times as good and everyone's in stitches. I look forward to that. So we're working on a couple of projects that could be a good place to sit down and have my own sitcom and always keep the music near me.
Tavis: Sure.
Bolton: And tour five or six months a year like I do.
Tavis: Speaking of the touring and the long distance runner that you have been in terms of maintaining a following…
Bolton: I like that. Long distance runner.
Tavis: That's what you are, man.
Bolton: It's a marathon.
Tavis: That's what you are. It's a marathon, man. You been doing this a long time and you've protected, yeah [laugh…
Bolton: That's why you do what you do.
Tavis: I won't ask — no, no, no. I'm not the first to say that. Trust me [laugh]. But you've protected your instrument. You sound as good now as you did then. How have you done that?
Bolton: I got invited — one of the most exciting things — a lot of exciting things happen when you have mainstream success. A lot of doors open. Joe DiMaggio is in your dugout when you're playing a softball game or people that you want to be around who are doing great fundraising, great works, all the way to the president.
The White House calls my office and, you know, the first couple of times you think it's a practical joke and you realize, oh, this is just mainstream success. All the doors are open. Now what do you want to do? Which ones do you want to go through?
I got invited to sing with Luciano Pavarotti in the 90s, late 90s. I immediately started doing my homework in studying what we were going to sing together. I would listen to him and my eyes would just well up. And I thought, "This is a guy who's been doing the right work on his instrument".
And I've developed from singing — you know, at 15 years old, I was doing Chicago blues and I had a husky, big voice, but I didn't know that I'm a tenor. I've never really studied the use of the voice in a high C and above high C. So I went to work on my voice and started singing along with Pavarotti.
As a kid, singing along with Stevie Wonder was a great way to exercise your voice and become a more flexible singer because he has the greatest control of his instrument. With Pavarotti, I was developing like a larger engine for the same vehicle basically and I learned that the tenors, the successful ones, they have their throats wrapped.
They're always wearing scarves or multiple layers. They're drinking tea. They're religious about their voices because when those guys get up onstage, if they don't have a high C, the crowd turns on them. They're coming there for them, but the high C and the big payoff, these people all know them. They know the music.
So they're under a different kind of pressure and scrutiny. So they religiously protect their voice, so there's a lot of things I do, but eight hours sleep is the single most important thing for the voice.
Tavis: I've heard that, but to hear you say that just underscores how significant that really is. There is no substitute for that. Whatever else you do, you cannot substitute for some sleep.
Bolton: No. Eight hours. Most of the people I know who are really singing for a couple of hours onstage know that. Your chords are happy. There's just two muscles. Your whole career revolves around them and the people who are driving to your show, who are holding those tickets, they're expecting something.
Tavis: I mentioned earlier these interns, these kids around here, who love you now and have discovered you through these videos. You mentioned singing at 15. I was just amazed to go back in preparing for our conversation to look at your journey.
You were really signed around 16, but you didn't really break out until you were 34. You get signed at 16, but you don't break out until you're 34. What's the lesson from that for everyday people?
Bolton: There are a few [chuckles]. But the one, because I was off by 18 years, I thought I might have made it when I was 16 and I was off by 18 years [laugh].
Tavis: Just a little bit.
Bolton: But there's something funny about it that I share that with my audience and they laugh when I say it wasn't funny back then, I assure you. But just saying it wasn't funny back then doesn't really sum it all up because I was feeding and helping provide for a family of five.
I had three young daughters and we didn't want them to know how tough things were, because eventually we got eviction notices because my rent checks were bouncing. We didn't have that term of homelessness.
We didn't have a homeless reference, but looking back, we were really close to being homeless quite a few times while I had been signed to some of the biggest labels in the world, while I'd been signed as a songwriter for publishing with some of the biggest publishing companies.
In between record deals, I never had that huge hit until '87. "That's What Love is All About" came out. Fortunately, my songwriting career took off and that's the portion of a show that I call "food is good." So good [laugh]. You ready for this?
Tavis: I got you. I feel you, absolutely.
Bolton: And then I hear the audience respond and I just want to make sure they know I am not kidding. That first hit, Laura Branigan recorded "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" and, all of a sudden, all the publishers and songwriters in that business were coming to me for the first time instead of me chasing the industry.
And I realized I could have a songwriting career on the side, which was really important because it taught me how important the music is, the songs are for artists to have long, enduring careers. So whether I recorded "Georgia On My Mind", eventually got to sing it with Ray three times, sang it to him once, which is just so surreal. "When a Man Loves a Woman", Percy Sledge, got to sing with him.
I don't need to write everything myself. If someone says, "Listen to this classic. I think you could make it your own and just have a great time with it", I love doing that. I learned that I can do that and I have permission to do that. But songwriting actually really delivered food and shelter for my family.
Tavis: I want to talk in a moment about the fact that you don't have to write the song to sing it, give your new project, "Songs of Cinema". Since we're talking about songwriting, though, I've asked this question of other great songwriters.
First one that comes to mind is William "Smoky" Robinson. They don't get much better than him. Smoky's been on — they've all been on this program over the years, great songwriters, but I'm curious from Michael Bolton's perspective what makes a great song?
Bolton: Wow. I love…
Tavis: I asked that of Carole Bayer Sager just a few weeks ago. I asked her the same question. What makes a great song?
Bolton: It's a good question because, you know, with any humility, you happen upon it. You know, you're working. You have to show up in the writer's room, whatever it is. If it's a piano in a tiny room which is fine too, you have to be present for when inspiration shows up. And then you have to be a student of songwriting to write something that's going to be around for a long time
But I think anybody can write a song, but Smoky is a great example, someone who can write a song that's going to outlive all of us, and many, many songs. He's also one of the nicest artists and icons I've ever met in my life.
Tavis: One of the nicest people, yeah.
Bolton: We've played golf together and it's great to have all this history. But when it comes to songwriting, relating to peoples' lives and writing something that everybody has been touched by and everyone can relate to, no matter what genre it is, it's got to be human.
It's got to resonate in a way. We used to say, you know, you want that hook to just be imbedded in peoples' memories and their consciousness, so they find themselves singing the chorus suddenly.
I don't know if there's like a way to do — you can't kind of chisel it like that as much as when you happen upon it and you're creating it. To recognize it is a part of that, the answer to your question. Being able to recognize a melody that is — Quincy Jones, when he heard a song that wasn't memorable, he said, "There's a $25 reward out for the hook."
Tavis: That's Q [laugh]. I love him, yeah.
Bolton: So we thank Q for that. We have some other formula, you know, kind of in pop songwriting which is formula mentality is "Don't bore us. Get to the chorus." Songs that may add…
Tavis: I love that. Don't bore us. Get to the chorus, yeah.
Bolton: There's a lot of meandering in songwriting sometimes.
Tavis: What's the difference, Michael, in the feeling, the euphoria that you get hearing someone else sing your song like Laura Branigan versus hearing yourself, seeing yourself on the chart with a song that you wrote for yourself?
Bolton: Different streams through the same river kind of. You know, it's you're grateful. It's really exciting hearing someone else record your song, especially when it's being performed on stations all over the country, thousands of stations. You're getting these letters that, yes, we're now in Cleveland. MMS is playing it in Dallas, the whole network of giant radio stations.
I think that's the great thing about it taking 18 years, is that you appreciate it deeply in a way that I think you wouldn't if you had success by going on a TV show and, in the first year of your ascent, you're a star. You have to almost come back to that place to appreciate it deeply enough, I think.
And there's a lot of great talent, but I'm not taking away from any of that as much as I don't know that it gives people time enough to develop as human beings when you have success too soon. I just didn't plan on it taking 18 years. I really didn't.
Tavis: 18 years, yeah [laugh].
Bolton: I did not. But there's something about hearing the song with another singer delivering it where you're very moved that they heard the demo. I sing on all the demos. That's the blueprint and you just hope that the producer doesn't say, "Okay, this is a great song. Now here's what we should do with it", you know, and take it somewhere else. That's every songwriter's nightmare.
Every time I did a classic by one of my heroes, one of my beloved artists that showed us how to sing, the intimidation was always something natural and an honor to actually accept, basically to accept the challenge, to walk into this powerful moment of music and say I love Ray Charles.
He was probably the single most powerful influence on me as a kid. I love this Percy Sledge classic, and Otis Redding. This is all hallowed ground to me.
Thankfully, you get some sort of reinforcement. With "Dock of the Bay" with the Otis Redding standard, there were people saying, "Oh, I don't know. You don't need to go there. I mean, I know you love the song." I couldn't understand what the hesitation was because, as a kid, we did everybody's great songs. That's what we did in clubs and restaurants and bars and any place that would have us, right?
I do "Dock of the Bay". It gets all kinds of radio and then it stops and there's just like a layer of gatekeepers who were saying, "I don't know. I mean, this is an Otis Redding standard." And I'm going, "Yeah, yes, it is."
Zelma Redding happens to be watching Showtime at the Apollo and I'm invited on to do "Dock of the Bay". She gives us this amazing kind of critique, amazing endorsement. She loved the performance and she knows her husband would have.
All the walls came down and I saw something crazy happen there, and the song became a huge hit. And then I got to meet Zelma and the family. It taught me to be respectful and be okay with being intimidated and accept that as a challenge, that the song requires a type of intense embracing.
You know, you love it, you respect the fact that this amazing singer recorded it before it made it a classic, performed and delivered the defining version and you're just bringing your own, and it better be damn good.
Tavis: Tell me something about whatever you want to share anything about the business of the music business. I ask that because you've made money for the stuff that you sing. You've made money for writing stuff for other people. I know from my research you own a few catalogs. So you ain't done bad, but tell me something about what you've learned about the business of this business over the years.
Bolton: Hmm. You know, that's the left creative and right business are different kinds of brain functions. I'm not sure which is which, but I think what happened was I became business savvy because it took me so long to make it. That's another factor that fueled me. I didn't want to go back to remembering how good food was when it finally arrived in my kitchen.
I think I got the sense that, if this is going to happen, if this is really potentially happening, it got to a point where I had so many disappointments that I didn't want to believe the next one when the record label said, "You're on the radio, man. This is like you're on 72 stations", I thought we need to be on 500, don't we? We didn't get there, so I had enough of those that I wouldn't get my hopes up because I didn't want to get devastated.
But when it finally started happening in '87, the label said to me, "Norway. They want you to fly over to Norway. They are like insane about your record. They just want to get you over there. They're sure they're going to have a big album there."
I didn't know where Norway was, but I got on a plane. I went there and did like 18 or 19 interviews in one day. I didn't want to hear my own voice anymore after it. You know how that goes [laugh].
Tavis: Yeah, I do [laugh]. Thank you for reminding me, but yeah, I do.
Bolton: That's why I'm doing all the talking here. It's one after another, after another. Sure enough, when I left, the album went flying up the charts and was huge in Norway. What did I learn? Oh, if I do the work as an artist, if I do the work, the team will be obligated to come and show up and raise the bar themselves and show up for me in the album, and they did album after album. That happened in Sweden and Denmark and Germany, etc.
Tavis: The flip side of handling your business is not taking yourself too seriously. I can't believe I'm saying this, but you and I have this in common. We both did that show, "Dancing With the Stars" [laugh] at one point.
Bolton: I'm sorry [laugh].
Tavis: Yeah. So am I [laugh]. I was about to say the same thing to you [laugh]. But I just love the fact that here's a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously as evidence by your appearance on that show and these videos. There's something to that. No matter how big you get, that notion of never, ever taking yourself too seriously, I think, is helpful.
Bolton: That's been an interesting lesson for me, life lesson because for some reason, when I look back at the early interviews, people say, you know, "You look so serious all the time", and I'm thinking, well, you'd be as serious too if you were in this condition.
I was so far out in the desert, there was no way to go back. There was no Plan B for me and I think that makes you take every moment maybe too seriously. People want to see that human relatable side of you and they want to know it's real.
Tavis: They're seeing it now.
Bolton: So they are seeing this, and it's fun.
Tavis: Yeah. I got two minutes left. We've talked about everything but the new project, which I enjoyed our conversation. Then there's this, "Songs of Cinema". Tell me about this one, yeah.
Bolton: So this concept came along. My manager suggested that we look at this possibility. Her name's Christina Kline. She knows a lot about songwriting and she's a huge fan. She's been involved in publishing and songwriting for her entire career.
Here's a place where you're asking the songwriter artist to take a look at a body of work that is in our DNA, that's beloved music from some of the biggest most iconic films in history and see if you can find a song in there that you'd love to sing. Well, that was not a problem. Now I'm starting to integrate all the songs into our live show.
So every once in a while, you go to a show, you see a band or an artist that you loved. You know their 24 hits, if they're fortunate enough to have that. And then at some point during the show, you're going to hear those words: "So here's something from my new album." Everybody goes, "Oh…" [laugh].
But we just heard seven hits in a row that we were singing when we were kids, when we got married, when he had children. What's this one now? But everyone's respectful and you're kind of rooting for the band. Okay, kill us with this, you know? Murder us.
It's not going to have the power and depth most of the time that a song will have after you've heard it hundreds of times or even 20 times where you're singing along the melodies and every nuance. So one of the things that happens is — and then the next song, they go into one of their greatest hits again, right?
Tavis: If they're smart [laugh].
Bolton: Yeah. What have we learned? Don't keep them out there too long. You have to watch your audience and respectfully take their temperature. See how they're responding. If you lose them at all, why? Fix it or pull that song out of the set.
But I think this album, "Songs of Cinema", allows me to sing some of my favorite music, including a version of "When a Man Loves a Woman" from the movie, "When a Man Loves a Woman" in a way that I had to sit down and I had to make sure that version vocally was worthy to replace my version of 20 years ago, or more than 20 years ago. And I'm really happy with it. It's about as strong as I'm ever going to sing it, I think.
Tavis: It made the cut and it's the first track [laugh].
Bolton: It made the cut, yeah [laugh].
Tavis: It guess it's okay. The new project from Michael Bolton is called "Songs of Cinema" and you can be one of the 165 million people to download these videos as well. Michael, it's a joy to have you on the program. I've enjoyed our conversation. Come back and we'll do it again.
Bolton: Thanks so much. You're great. My pleasure.
Tavis: My pleasure, my friend. That's our show for tonight. Goodnight from L.A. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.
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