From hitting the boards to hits on Billboard

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/09/2010 (5521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DESPITE what you may have heard, Jus­tin Bieber will not be making his first live appearance in Winnipeg on Sept. 14.

OK, it’ll be the first one where he doesn’t collect tips.

"Years ago, we came through Winnipeg and he did some busking at The Forks," his father, Jeremy Bieber, recalls. "He drew a massive crowd."

That might be a bit of an overstatement considering Justin, 16, recently sold old out Madison Square Garden — "in 14 minutes," his proud papa points out.

 

Subsequent visits to Winnipeg — and there have been many — may not have drawn crowds, but suffice it to say they’ve been less spontaneous than the one that included a break-dancing and bongo-playing session in front of the Explore Manitoba Centre.

What a difference eight years — and five million Twitter followers and a fancy haircut — makes.

"We went to movies a few times and we got mobbed. We went to the mall and we got mobbed," says Jeremy, who moved here in August 2008. (A tweet from Justin 6:54 PM Sep 3rd, 2009 via web: "going to the movies!! polo park is awsome!)

The pint-sized pop star couldn’t even get lost in the crowd at Grand Beach. "We thought it’d be OK because Justin just went in shorts and he looked like all the other kids, but within the first five minutes, people recognized him and were approaching us."

The attention was "interesting" at first, says the 36-year-old carpenter, whose Twitter name is LordBieber — he has 127,000 (and counting) followers — but it got to be a bit much when even restaurant owners started interrupting them.

"We really couldn’t go anywhere in public," recalls Jeremy, who split from Justin’s mother when his son was two.

"We’d go to the go-kart place near Polo Park, and paintballing, but a lot of times we’d have to do it with just us there.

"When we really wanted to keep it low-key, we went to this little park in St. Vital, or else we just stayed home."

Even if you’re immune to Bieber Fever, you’ve probably heard or read something about the most popular teenager on the planet having ties to our city. If you’re among the stricken, you may have even been feeding the cyberspace rumour mill with tidbits about Justin’s pending move to Winnipeg. More than a few postings have him attending school here.

Sorry to be an Eenie Meenie and burst the bubble, but those ties have pretty much been severed.

In March, Jeremy, his fiancé Erin Wagner, and their two young children, Jazmyn and Jaxon, moved out of their rented Lorette Avenue home and back to Stratford. (Jaxon, who was born in Winnipeg, took his first baby steps around the same time his baby-faced half-brother was showing off his swagger alongside the likes of Usher and Miley Cyrus.)

"We were maybe going to make a life here, but the business ideas we were exploring didn’t work out," says Jeremy, who has run a construction company for the past 15 years and has longtime friends in Winnipeg. He says Justin came to visit about once a month.

As for pop’s reigning prodigy, when he’s not making young girls shriek in several different languages — he’s already been to Europe six times and to Japan twice, as well as Australia and New Zealand — he resides in Atlanta, Ga., with his mom, Pattie Mallette. He has a full-time tutor who accompanies him on the road.

What’s it like to be his dad?

(Judging by his initial email response to our interview request — "I’m very busy. Is there compensation?" — Lord Bieber isn’t living in total obscurity. After a few explanatory emails from this end, he texted an apology — "get a million of these sorry" — and explained that he uses the compensation line to suss out the intention behind all those requests — which he rarely grants.)

"For some reason the whole thing doesn’t feel surreal; it feels very natural," Jeremy says over the phone from Stratford.

"I always knew Justin was super special — he excelled at everything he did — but I thought he was going to be an athlete. The whole music thing just fell into his lap; it wasn’t something he pursued."

What Justin did pursue was hockey. Jeremy says he attended camps, met Wayne Gretzky and showed ability "well beyond his years."

Music does run in his paternal genes: Jeremy is an amateur musician — he taught Justin how to play classic rock tunes on the guitar — while his own mother is a pianist, who apparently used to jam with the Guess Who in the band’s pre-Burton Cummings days.

"Justin always sang in the shower and in the car as a kid, but drums were definitely his first love. He had some lessons, but he always played by ear and everything was mostly learned on his own."

With his tattoos, earrings and hand signs, Jeremy looks more hip-hop artist than father of a teenager in photos, and he admits people often comment that he and Justin seem more like brothers than anything else.

Given the tabloid train wrecks that the lives of other sudden superstars have become, does he worry about his boy?

"Yeah, I do," Jeremy says. "It’s tricky enough at this age to grow into yourself. My biggest worry is just the normalcy, his relationships — whether he’s going to be able to determine whether they’re real or not.

"But Justin is a very strong and smart kid — I don’t even really consider him a kid — and I think he’s good at separating himself into Justin the person and Justin the artist.

"This whole thing might not last; things come and go. I think he’s just embracing it while it’s here."

Meanwhile, sounds like the world may soon be seeing a bit more of Lord Bieber.

He’s accompanying Justin on the Canadian portion of his current tour — he got up on stage in London, Ont., and "danced around and waved to the crowd" — and, in fact, was in Winnipeg earlier this week shooting a TV commercial.

Actually, it’s a "call before you dig" public service announcement, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

"You never know," Jeremy offers. "I mean, I am kinda getting sick of swinging a hammer."

(Justin Beiber’s Sept. 14 concert at the MTS Centre is sold out, so if you really want to see him busting moves for a Winnipeg audience, check out YouTube.)

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca