Chart entered : 17 February 1990
Chart peak : 3
Number of hits : 18
Michael is perhaps the ultimate Marmite artist. You either love his over-wrought vocal style ( as my mum did ) or you can't bear it ( as I can't ).
Michael was originally Michael Bolotin born in Newhaven in 1953 of Russian immigrant stock. He was interested in music from an early age and joined his brother's high school band The Nomads. Some sources say they were signed by Epic and released a couple of singles in 1968 but I can't ind any trace of them.
His solo debut was in May 1975 with the single "Your Love", a rocking boogie tune featuring a puchy sax break from David Sanborn and backing vocals from Marcy Levy. It's not a bad song and I could quite like it without the excessive Joe Cocker-esque vocals. It was followed by his eponymous debut LP. It was divided between rockers like the single and dreary West Coast AOR, fleshed out by covers of "You're No Good" 9 ( so-so ) and "Time Is On My Side " ( wretched ). Michael, whose voice is too high in the mix, throughout, shows himself a stranger to any notion of restraint. Like the single it failed to chart anywhere.
He came back the following year with "Everyday of My Life" , a predominantly covers album. The covers are all disposable and while his own songs are nicely arranged - "If I Had Your Love" dips a toe in disco waters - they are ultimately dragged down by his painful singing. It didn't improve on its predecessor's showing.
Michael changed tack and decided to form a band with guitarist Bruce Kulick who'd previously played with Meat Loaf. The band was called Blackjack and they released their eponymous debut LP in June 1979. The lead single "Love Me Tonight" is a decent stab at commercial hard rock in the Rainbow vein and reached a respectable 62 in the US charts. The follow up "Without Your Love" didn't achieve the same success and the album stalled at number 127. It's OK if you like that sort of thing ; Michael's bawling is better suited to belting out beefy hard rock numbers.
The band toured in support of Peter Frampton , Ozzy Osbourne and Marshall Tucker and released a second album "Worlds Apart" in 1980. The record sounds like an average Whitesnake album and received little support from the record label, Polydor. Discouraged , the group decided to call it a day. At the end of 1982 Michael auditioned for the vacant snger's role in Black Sabbath but lost out to Ian Gillan.
In 1983, things started to turn Michael's way. He anglicised his surname to Bolton for his third solo release, allowing him to use his new name for a second eponymous album. Michael retained Kulick as his guitarist though not as a co-writer and stayed within the hard rock genre although there's a much more prominent role for synthesisers than on the Blackjack records. He started to tickle the bottom end of the US charts as the album reached number 89 and the sparky Bryan Adams pop rock of "Fool's Game" got to 82 in the charts.
However these were minor triumphs compared to Michael's success as a writer with "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You ?" The maudlin lament from a jilted lover was originally written with Doug James for wet AOR stars Air Supply but got passed on to Laura Branigan who recorded it as a straight power ballad. I've got some time for Laura and much prefer her version to the one we're discussing, It got to number 12 in the US.
Michael's progress was not maintained by 1985's "Everybody's Crazy" where Michael fell prey to eighties production bombast and produced an entirely vacuous set which was a moderate hit in Sweden but didn't chart anywhere else.
The following year he had another , more moderate, success writing for Branigan with "I Found Someone" which reached number 90. A less synth-y version by Cher reached number 10 in the US and number 5 over here in 1988.
In 1987 he released "The Hunger". With Kulick less involved, Michael dropped most of the hard rock elements to his sound and acquired more sympathetic producers. Though of little interest to me, it's a polished adult pop set and the hit singles started to flow, "That's What Love Is All About" , ""Wait On Love" and an awful -though widow-approved - version of "(sittin On ) The Dock of the Bay" all made the US Charts and the latter single narrowly failed to make the chart here. The album made number 46 in the US ( and was a hit here in 1990 ) and after twelve years of slog Michael had finally arrived.
Michael re-surfaced in June 1989 with the single "Soul Provider" which turned out to be the title track of his next album. By this point he'd left rock behind and the song is bland corporate pop , the sort of thing he might have offered to Rod Stewart or Tina Turner; the aggravating pun in the title is the only even slightly memorable thing about it. It reached number 17 in the US charts but wasn't a hit here until 1995 when it reached number 35.
The next single chosen was his own version of "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You ?". It's similarly paced to the Branigan version with producer Michael Omartian adding some nineties gloss with his sugary production. There's a nod to Michael's rock roots in having a guitar rather than sax solo but it's still aimed at an adult audience. Michael's straining vocals don't convince me at all but as I said, my mum loved it and it went all the way to number one in the US. Here it was kept at bay and he hasn't got as near to the top spot since. I guess it is slightly preferable to his assaults on sixties soul standards but that's damning with faint praise indeed.
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