Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 9, 1994 TAG: 9409130036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the last five years, Michael Bolton has sold more than 25 million albums. He is consistently one of music's top concert draws, and he has won two Grammy Awards.
Defenders of Bolton argue that those numbers should be enough to earn the much-maligned singer some respect.
Bolton, who will play the Roanoke Civic Center on Monday evening, has said the same. He aims to please his fans, not the critics, who seem to aim at him like he's a dart board.
Some examples:
"Michael Bolton is guilty of many things - oversinging, lack of musical imagination, overall hackdom."
"It's my hope that he will someday ask how much a critic might imagine he owes in reparations for butchering classic R&B."
"Dumping on Michael Bolton is almost too easy."
His "idea of soul, as usual, is to turn up the shriek quotient."
"Bolton ultimately reverted to heavy-handed love thug, repeatedly sacrificing emotional subtlety to steaming bombast."
They go on and on.
It is this contrast - critical lashing offset by tremendous popularity - that makes Bolton such a springboard of debate, much the way Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow inspired similar arguments in era's past.
Is he the man with the golden voice? Or is he a hack?
Questions that will never be resolved.
What is sure is that Bolton, 41, offers no apologies. Some of his own examples:
"I get shot at by the critics because they want me to write about the baby whales off the coast of Africa. But they're not going to get it from me."
"I will have no mercy on these people. They've had none on me."
"What a lot of people don't get - people who don't get my music or who have a problem with it - is that I've never been interested in just playing at clubs or playing at parties so people can dance and do their thing. This is the way I express myself."
"I decided they're right." (Read heavy sarcasm here.) "So, I'm going to write about things that are insignificant and tedious, and this record is going to be off-key and recorded in bad studios without a lot of care, but it'll sound like adolescent meandering that we've heard in different forms for the last 20 years, but in a new way ... so the rock critics will enjoy my music better."
"I'll stay true to my overwrought form."
It is a form that certainly works. His takes on some of R&B's biggest songs, "When a Man Loves a Woman," "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" and "Georgia On My Mind," among others, have fueled his last four albums to the top of the pop charts.
Not surprisingly, women make up his core audience, drawn by his good looks and his big emotional ballads.
According to a USA Today poll of Bolton's 12,000 fan club members, 98 percent of fans are women, and 95 percent are white. Some 36 percent are college educated, twice the national average for women. About 33 percent are professionals, 15 percent are housewives and just 3 percent are laborers. Nearly half are married.
And to his credit, Bolton does do more than just sing when he comes to a city. He also plays softball for charity, and he hires a small choir to supplement his regular band in concert.
Monday afternoon, Bolton and his Bombers will play radio station K92's Wrecking Krew at 2 p.m. at Salem's Municipal Stadium. The $5 admission will benefit the Michael Bolton Foundation, which targets women and children at risk, and The Covington Boys Home, an orphanage.
At the concert that night, Bolton will use a local choir of 16 people taken from various church choirs around the Roanoke Valley to help him out on his final two songs.
Bash him or not, few other performers do as much.
Michael Bolton. Monday, 7:30 p.m., Roanoke Civic Center. Reserved seats, $25.50-$35.50, through TicketMaster outlets and box office (981-1201), or charge by phone, 343-8100.
by CNB