A diet of Bread — unbuttered

HONG KONG, Jan. 12 – Say David Gates and chances are that people will ask you, "David Gates who?" But mention Bread and most everybody will exclaim, in a flash of recognition, "Of course, David Gates – the main man of Bread."

Yes, David Gates, now pushing 62, the voice behind such enduring Bread hits as – okay, it’s sing-along time! – Make It With You, Baby I’m a-want You, It Don’t Matter to Me, Everything I Own, Lost Without Your Love, Sweet Surrender, The Guitar Man, Diary, Aubrey and – who can ever forget – the immortal If? Gates composed all those songs, remember?

So when Jojo San Pedro (of JP Entertainment Productions, Inc.) and Vic de Vera (managing director of Widescope) asked if I wanted to make a quick trip to this former Crown Colony with Bulletin’s Shirley Pizarro to interview David Gates and watch his concert at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium, I nearly jumped out of my Bench denim pants and screamed, "You’re not kidding, are you?"

It was my day-off and what better way to spend it than having a date with – I’d rather say – Bread whose songs I play and replay especially during my low moments and in times when I’m in no mood to write, in a jiffy putting me back on track? (I also play, among other favorites, Jose Mari Chan, The Bee Gees and The Beatles.)

During the one hour and 45 minutes PR 300 flight to Hong Kong, I kept playing and replaying Bread songs in the stereo of my mind; so engrossed was I that I didn’t notice the pretty stewardess offering me breakfast. I preferred this kind of Bread – fresh as ever despite the passage of time, crispy, pure, unadulterated, invigorating and, most important of all, unbuttered.

Give me my "diet" of Bread – anytime!

From the overwhelming Hong Kong airport, the four of us hailed a taxi straight to the Queen Elizabeth Stadium for the lunch presscon which turned out to be a two-on-one, Gates on one end and Shirley and I on the other end. There were a dozen other journalists but they were too shy (maybe) to ask questions, so they gladly let Shirley and me dominate the 30-minute interview. (Watch for my Conversation with Gates this Sunday, Jan. 18.)

After a quick, late lunch at the coffee shop, we retired to our respective rooms at the Marco Polo Gateway (Kowloon side), rested a bit, freshened up, had glasses of iced tea, hailed a taxi and off we went to the Queen Elizabeth Stadium for more servings of unadulterated and unbuttered Bread, with David Gates performing the same songs that have become part and parcel of my life’s sweet memories, with two American string artists as back-up and an all-Filipino orchestra (Jojo San Pedro’s wife Evelyn is a member) as accompaniment.

Gates didn’t disappoint.

Without much ado, Gates opened the show with Make it With You in the same effortless style we’ve known him for. The voice remained the same – gentle, caressing, poignant. For a while, I closed my eyes and Gates sounded exactly like he does on the CD. Plakang-plaka. And I loved him for that.

"I’m in a story-telling mood tonight," said Gates after the song and proceeded to recall an incident related to the song, one of Bread’s earliest hits. "My mother was so proud of me that when I went home to Oklahoma, she tipped off a local newspaper about the song. The next day, there my picture was and the story quoting my mother, ‘David just wrote a hit song called Naked with Me’."

Next came Diary whose story, even if you’ve heard it a thousand times, never fails to touch the heart. It’s about a man who finds out too late from his love object’s diary that "the love she’d waited for was someone else not me." Sob, sob, sob! When Gates was singing the lines, "The words begin to stick and tears to flow, the meaning now was clear to see," I was almost in tears. Sniff, sniff, sniff!

After he did Seventeen, Gates told another story, this time about a middle-aged woman who had a heart attack.

"She asked, ‘God, is this it?’ God told her, ‘No, you have 34 more years to live.’ So the woman had a facelift and the works. But when she stepped out of the hospital, she was run over by an ambulance, killing her on the spot. When she was face-to-face with God, she asked, ‘I thought You said I had 34 more years to live.’ God said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognize you!’"

By the time Gates was doing Guitar Man ("He can make you laugh, he can get you high"), Mirror, Mirror and Baby I’m a-Want You, Shirley and I, and Jojo and Vic, too, were itching to sing-along with him. But we didn’t want to disturb the audience which was much too reserved and too polite and too "well-behaved" – unlike demonstrative Filipino music buffs who can’t help singing-along with their idols during "live" shows – so we simply hummed along with Gates.

Like wine, Gates’ voice has mellowed. He must have been singing those same songs – with a few new ones – countless times all these decades but he sounded as if he was doing them for the first time, with so much feeling.

We almost leaped from our seats when Gates launched into Aubrey ("Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing"), followed by Goodbye Girl (with Gates switching from his guitar to the piano), Lost Without Your Love and Everything I Own which, I never knew, Gates wrote for his late father ("You never said too much but still you showed the way and I knew from watching you... I would give everything I own just to have you back again, just to touch you once again").

When Gates said goodbye, the audience clamored for more, even just one more. He reappeared onstage, saying. "Oh, we forgot one song!"

And then he closed that romantic evening with a heartfelt rendition of If ("...And when the world was through; then one by one the stars would all go out, then you and I would simply fly away...").

Thank you, David Gates, for helping fill up the world with beautiful sounds.

(Note: After Hong Kong and Singapore, David Gates will have a one-night show on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at the Araneta Coliseum, Don’t miss it. It’s a beautiful, uplifting once-in-a-lifetime experience. For tickets, call SM Ticketnet at 911-5555 or JP Entertainment at 899-2812.)

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