Corey Hart to say goodbye with retirement show, memoir

Corey Hart will mark his 52nd birthday by taking the stage at the Bell Centre in Montreal on May 31 for a hometown concert thathe insists will be his last, and will release a candid memoir that even his beloved wife has not read in full.

Hart sat down in Montreal on Monday to discuss the end of a performance career that has spanned more than 30 years, speaking of how his setlist had swelled to 36 songs separated into two acts, and how he savoured the
opportunity to finally perform in front of his four children.

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In his book, he relays the wisdom of Quebec promoter LouiseLalibert, who warns that a performer should never pronounce a showhis or her last because one just never knows.

But Hart is certain.

He knows, and the Sunglasses at Night singer is closing out hisperforming career with clear eyes.

"The thing is, Louise knows me but she doesn't know me thatwell. When I say, emphatically, that this is goodbye,this is a farewell, this is a full stop as far as me being a liveperformer, I'll ... prove myself right in the years to come.She warned me not to say that it's my last one," he said, asmile spreading, "but I never really listen when people tell mewhat to do."

Teen idol

After graduating from his Montreal high school, Hart set off to New York as a teenagerdetermined to make it as a singer/songwriter.

He auditioned for Tom Jones at 10 years old, sangto tape with PaulAnkainLasVegas at 11, brushed shoulders withChristopher Cross at 18 and recorded a demo with Billy Joel's band ayear later. Guitar legend Eric Clapton plays Dobro on Hart's debut, FirstOffense, released before the singer had even turned 20.

Besides featuring the ice-coldsynthvamp Sunglasses at Night a career-cementing No. 7 hit in the U.S.the record includesanother Top 20 American hit in the tender ballad It Ain'tEnough.

As he reveals in his memoir, Peruvian Lady was written aboutthe drug addiction that had claimed his father and sister, TheWorld is Fire was inspired by the night Hart learned of his dad's infidelity and Jenny Fey documented the depression thatenveloped his mother afterward.

"I did obviously feel that when I was in my 20s, no one evenbothered to notice or make light of the fact that I was asinger/songwriter and that I wrote all my songs and that I didn'tco-write my songs. I was a purist in the fact that all my words andmusic were from me," he said Monday.

"I didn't think that critics really took my work seriously orbothered to delve a little deeper into what I was writing. But Idon't hold any animosity or any anger towards it. They may havedelved deeper into it and not liked it at all. So maybe I got lucky,you know?"

The situation didn't necessarily improve even as Hart provedhimself on subsequent albums. Sophomore record Boy in the Box was a greater success than his debut reaching diamond certification in Canada with chart-topping singles in Everythingin My Heart and Never Surrender while 1986's Fields ofFire went double platinum and 1988's Young Man Running and1990's Bang both reached platinum certification.

His self-titled 1996 reinvention which he considers thepinnacle of his artistry also scored platinum certification herebut never secured a U.S. release, along with 1998 followup Jade. He attributes the situation to record label politics andcalls it a "great disappointment."

His insistenceupon performing only his own songs did cost him some hits he notes casually that he had the opportunity to record Danger Zone forthe Top Gun soundtrack but passed, thus allowing Kenny Loggins
to take it to No. 2 instead but such "foolish career decisions"were made so he could stick to a "certain artistic template."

"Being true to yourself, in the end, is important," he said.

'The truth is painful': Hart

Chasing the Sun is Hart's revealing memoir of his life and career.

One harrowing section involves Hart's relationship with his latefather, an emotionally withholding man with an insatiable appetitefor hard drugs and prostitutes, who died early last decade.

In one wrenching tale, Hart writes of his father dispatching hisyoung son to a sleazy Montreal bar in search of a cocaine fix, ahuge wad of American cash clutched in his sweaty palm. Anotherdisturbing passage documents the time his dad hired a sex worker totake the then-14-year-old Hart's virginity, and the way the teenunable to go through with the act was left humiliated.

"Sometimes the truth is painful," Hart said now.

"When I wrote about my dad, I felt good when I ended the chapter because I didn'tknow where it was going to go. But the last line of that chapter inthe book ... it was hopeful and it was reconciliation, and it wasn'ttoxic or angry. That's a good feeling to have."

The most difficult topic for Hart to broach was the backcondition that led to the "darkest period of his life" between
2005 and 2010. The two large cervical herniated discs he suffered ledto "inexplicable, never-ending physical pain" and dozens ofmedical procedures and tests, which hedocuments in hisbook.

Hart also reproduces tormented scribblings he leftfor himself including phrases like "I am dying!!" and "Never
surrender is a lie!" and probes the dark thoughts that led him to a gun shop in Delray Beach, Fla., "eye sockets blood-stained," before he came to his senses and stumbled out the door.

"My greatest 'to be or not to be' was do I write about that ornot," he said. "I wrote it because I felt not writing it ... wouldreally not explain me properly."

The book doesn't, however, include any music industry dirt, andnot because Hartdidn't witness any grime.

"Trust me, I got a lot of dirt.... But to me it would have beenjust disrespectful and hurtful to a lot of people."

One night

Hart will close out his career with one finalshow on May 31 at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Fans, he notes, aren't
coming because they want to see a guy who "looks cool in shades" or looked "cute in a video," but because his music "resonated with them."

"One night ... Even if it's 50 songs and I'm bleeding by the time I leave thestage, bloody and battered, that's [what] makes it special. To me,it makes it special.I want my fans to have something special. And once is
special."