liam regan photo
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 7, 1988
By Steve Newton
Things are going well for Vancouver’s Barney Bentall these days. The 28-year-old rocker and his band, the Legendary Hearts, have a hit on their hands, a self-titled debut album on Epic Records that has sold 45,000 copies in Canada in three months. The group has just finished a successful eight-week tour across the country, and will mark its triumphant return to town with a show at the Commodore on Friday (October 7).
So has Barney Bentall’s time finally come? Have his years playing local clubs earned him stardom? Has he paid his dues?
“That’s a little premature,” Bentall says of the dues-paying idea. “You should ask me when I’ve had a 10-year recording career. Because, really, you start feeling like you’ve paid your dues and then you put an album out, and you realize that in a certain sense you’ve only really started. There’s a lot of country out there.”
“But I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done in the past. Sure, there’s times that were really frustrating because you want to make records and you want to tour and so on and so forth, and you’re just stuck–your wheels are spinning. But you get to what we’re doing now and you don’t really look back at it that harshly.”
The move for Bentall and his mates from just another struggling local band to major-label recording act had a lot do with a song called “Something to Live For”, a video of which was instrumental in catching the attention of both Epic and Bruce Cockburn’s manager Bernie Finkelstein, who signed Bentall in February of last year. An under-your-skin, uplifting rocker reminiscent of John Cougar Mellencamp, “Something to Live For” turned out to be the right tune at the right time.
Bentall says he had no idea, when he and lyricist Gary Fraser wrote the song, that it would turn into a hit.
“I think that whole notion of writing a song and really feeling like you’ve got a hit in the bag is only the case if you’ve already had several successful records–then you might be approaching it from that perspective.
“But when you don’t have any albums out, all you’re doing is writing songs! A certain part of you is going, ‘Geez, wouldn’t it be great if this was a hit,’ but your real motivation is, ‘We gotta write a bunch of songs, and they’ve got to be good so some record company will sign us, and then maybe we’ll have a chance to see if any of them are hits.’ ”
Bentall and Fraser have been writing tunes together for a dozen years now. Although Fraser is not a musician per se (he doesn’t play any instruments), Bentall says that he’s just like a member of the band. On their recent tour to Montreal and back, the lyricist was right there, selling t-shirts at the shows.
“He just wanted to be there on the initial big tour,” says Barney, “and we definitely wanted him there too.”
Bentall says that his relationship with Fraser is one of mutual dependence.
“I guess we’re a vehicle for each other’s art,” he shrugs, a little wary of trying to pinpoint what’s at the root of their chemistry. “The whole motion of writing is a hard things to describe,” he says. “Gary might have an idea for a lyric or I might have one, or we might come at one together through discussion. After we get a line or two we’ll figure out what kind of mood best suits it, and then the ball’s in my court, and I’ll try to communicate something that’s more than just the lyric–which a great song does, in my mind.”
Bentall first became known on the Vancouver music sene in the early ’80s as Brandon Wolf, which was both his stage name and the name of a band that included current Legendary Hearts drummer Jack Guppy and guitarist Colin Nairne. When Brandon Wolf broke up in ’83, former Payola$ bassist Barry Muir joined the lineup, and the four of them formed a ’60s cover band called the Revengers, which lasted two years and enabled them to buy an eight-track and record demos, including one of “Something to Live For”. Keyboardist Cam Bowman solidified the current lineup when he joined two years ago.
For the making of the Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts album, Bentall and his mates sequestered themselves in a little nightclub in Gibsons, where they did two weeks of rehearsals and pre-production under the watchful eye of ace producer David Tickle, who had bailed out of sessions with Rod Stewart to do the Bentall project.
“We had played in a club in Gibsons called Elphies,” explains Barney, “and it seemed like the ideal place to do pre-production because we could play there on the weekend, we wouldn’t have to pay for a rehearsal hall, and it’s got windows where you can look out over the harbour, which is a real plus.
“So we’d rehearse every day and play for two nights on the weekend, when we had a chance to try everything out live. It was a perfect situation, because we really got away and were able to focus on the whole thing, and get to know David. And that whole time we spent up there–I can really hear it on the album. I think it definitely had an effect on how the music turned out.”
Once the music for the album was finished it was time for Barney and the boys to pose for the album cover. Photographer George Whiteside captured their free-wheeling approach by having them playfully romp around on a beach, which became the back cover. On the front Barney is pictured sitting on the wet beach alone, smiling at the camera while his butt and cowboy boots soak up the mud.
It’s a neat-looking shot, and well worth the physical discomfort Bentall put himself through. But didn’t he wreck those expensive-looking boots?
“I’ve still got ’em on,” he chuckles, lifting a boot up. “See, and there they are. Still in one piece.”
And it’s a good thing too, because Bentall’s going to need them for the band’s next cross-Canada tour, which starts right after the Commodore gig. He’ll be covering a lot of ground this time around, journeying all the way to the Maritimes, where the record’s selling exceptionally well. He’s expecting an American release on Columbia Records by February, and that’s when we’ll find out whether the band has what it takes to crack that lucrative U.S. market.
With the major label signings of Bentall–and similar inroads made recently by Art Bergmann, Colin James, and Surrey’s After All–it appears that record company interest in Vancouver-area bands is getting stronger all the time. Barney agrees, and says it isn’t surprising considering how healthy the original local scene is right now.
“It’s like if you wanted to be a bicycle racer–if you were over in Europe where everybody’s doing it, you’d just develop that much more quickly. And there’s so many bands doing original music out here–even though there’s a limited supply of places to play–that your level of achievement just goes up because there’s so much competition.”
Bentall says that there is some similarity between his career and that of local hero Art Bergmann. Both artists have been slugging it out for many a year.
“We kept doing what we were doing and lost a lot of chances for record deals because we wouldn’t compromise. You can’t help but feel triumphant right now, though neither of us are exactly megastars. At least we have our records out there, and that’s a start.”
To read over 100 of my interviews with local Vancouver musicians since 1983, go here.