As he celebrates 17 years in showbusiness, Martin Nievera talks about the ups and downs of his career; his regrets; his failed marriage with equally-popular singer Pops Fernandez; their kids; his father’s profound influence on his life and his continuing

Journey to “Forever”

By Marisse G. Abelgas

Martin Nievera teases a group of men, women and children as he invites them to his upcoming concert in Los Angeles: “Darating daw si Ricky Martin...pero i’m not sure ha...”

The people are delighted with his banter, and applaud accordingly. Here, on a warm fall afternoon at the Seafood City in Carson where his concert producers ( the Law Office of Michael J. Gurfinkel and Creative Concepts International) had chosen to hold “Fans’ Day,” Martin Nievera is in his elements. Garbed in black tees, black pants and sporting a dullish hair color that seemed totally incongruous with everything he was that day (“My hairdresser is dead. I killed him,” he wisecracks.), Nievera is -- in contrast to his monochromatic attire -- every bit the colorful superstar. For more than two hours, Nievera graciously entertains his fans who huddle around him, struggling to take photos, shake his hand or ask for his autograph.

Earlier, during a press conference at the Carson Hilton where he received a key to the city from Mayor Pete Fajardo and Councilman Manny Ontal, the irrepressible Nievera managed to unleash his famous wit and humor. Five minutes into the press conference, Nievera had practically all members of the Los Angeles-based Filipino-American media eating from the palm of his hand -- a remarkable feat, really, considering that most of them hardly looked up from their plates of roast beef and braised chicken when the superstar ambled hesitatingly into the room.

Sitting comfortably on a swivel bar stool in the middle of the room with only a solitary microphone stand in front of him, Nievera expertly and effortlessly fielded a steady stream of questions. As he cracked jokes one minute and waxed philosophical the next, one had to listen closely to catch every nuance of his more emotional statements -- or risk quoting his dead-panned joke na pala instead.

It mattered little if the newsmen around were too polite to needle him about his failed marriage to equally-popular singer Pops Fernandez, a seemingly ideal showbiz alliance that began romantically on television and ended rather ignominously in an annulment court, not to mention in all the magazines, broadsheets and tabloids from the Philippines to here and back. Nievera, the master showman, still managed to deftly squeeze in some tidbits about his ex, their kids, and his feelings about the break-up. He even managed to feed the newsmen an unexpected “scoop.”

“I never told anyone this. But my second CD album (entitled “Forever”), wasn’t meant to be a commercial project. I recorded it as a gift to my wife; it was supposed to be this I-love-you-I-still-want-you-take-me-back gift,” he confides. It was meant only for her, he explains, originally meant to be a very personal token of his love for the woman he had lost and wanted back. The CD, he asserts, was never intended to be sold to the public.

But. “It didn’t work,” he says emphatically now, “it didn’t work. So I just told my producers to release it.”

The CD, which contains the couple’s favorite songs, was completed in a fraction of the time it normally takes to record an entire album. Nievera says it was such a down-to-earth-no-frills CD so they simply decided to use one of his old file photographs for the cover, instead of having new and more glamorous studio photos taken. He says he didn’t even bother to promote it. Yet, to his -- and everyone else’s -- surprise, the CD shot through the charts, eventually becoming the No.2 best selling CD of all time in the Philippines.

Ironically, Nievera’s marital woes ,which served as fodder for the gossip mills, also provided a second wind for his singing career. To celebrate his 17th year in show business, Nievera has been holding a series of concerts (all entitled Journey to Forever) since July. His Manila performances were all sellouts, prompting one Manila-based entertainment editor to remark that the public had apparently “forgiven” him for the “sins he committed against his wife, Pops Fernandez.”

His November 12 concert at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles (also billed as XII: Journey to Forever) is the last leg of his concert tour in the U.S. According to his concert producers, Nievera will sing love songs that women especially, love to hear. He will also sing love songs dedicated to, and meant for, his ex-wife, Pops Fernandez.

Forever is a word that carries significant weight in Nievera’s life and career. “When Pops and I were together, she would always sign autographs with Always, Pops and I would sign with Forever, Martin,” he says.

“Forever,” a hit song by American singer Kenny Loggins, became a signature song of sorts for Nievera, and he counts Loggins’ appearance on his television show some years back as one of the highlights of his career.

He also admits that the tandem of Martin Nievera and Pops Fernandez was -- professionally --the “best team ever” in Philippine entertainment. But in the next breath, he says he also accepts the fact that it would be impossble at this time for them to get together that way, either professionally or personally. He takes his own personal shot at the moon: “I would love nothing more than to be able to perform with her again in the future.”

Nievera reveals that despite his personal failures -- and in fact, now, more than ever -- he still believes in “forever,” referring to this ideal both poetically and literally, and referring to it in terms of both his controversial personal life and thriving career.

“I believe there’s a place called forever. I’m still on this journey to that place. I believe in forever,” he muses.

The son of balladeer Bert Nievera and Conchita Razon, Nievera grew up idolizing his father, while constantly being discouraged (on the sly) by his mother whenever he showed any inclination towards show business. Nievera’s success has apparently changed his mother’s attitude towards the profession. In a promotional material released by Nievera’s agents for a previous concert in Manila, his mother wrote a touching and personal note: “I have tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, not to be a stage mother. When people introduce me as ‘the mother of Martin Nievera,’ I try to look humble. But my heart bursts with pride.”

Nievera’s destiny as a singer seemed pretty much cut and dried. “In my time, you had to follow your father’s footsteps. You had to become what he was. If your father was a plumber, you had to be a plumber. Thank God, my father wasn’t a plumber,” he quips.

As the son mimicked the father, watched the father perform and learned the father’s repertoire, the young Nievera would tell himself : “That’s me. That’s what I want to be when I grow up. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Despite this self-determination, however, Nievera says he ended up taking a business course in college, and still regrets having given up higher studies in favor of a budding career in entertainment during his teens. And because his career took off faster than expected, he has always regretted never quite taking the time to take formal music lessons.

“I should have stayed in school. But you know how it is in showbiz, you have to strike while the iron is hot. I even wanted to be an architect when I was young,” he recalls wistfully.

Then : “Did you know that when I was little boy, I used to make dollhouses?”

But he credits his father for having encouraged him to go the way of music, and more importantly, for teaching him how to dream. “ My father gave me my first minus-one tape, (The Greatest Love of All)” he says affectionately. The older Nievera was already a successful singer then, spicing up his acts with magicians’ tricks while solidifying his family’s future by going into the restaurant business.

The young Nievera became quite the father’s shadow, going regularly with him to the restaurant which they owned and managed, even learning the rudiments of cooking. “ The people who came to the restaurant would always watch us because my father and I would always sing while we were cooking,” he says.

Coming into his own as a singer, Nievera recalls dreaming of that day when he would perform duets with his father. When the opportunity came, he says, all he could think of was, “I’m singing with him. I’m onstage with my idol.”

It’s this emotional connection with his father that Nievera carries with him onstage on his U.S. concert tour. Being onstage with Bert Nievera is, for the son, the greatest honor of all. Even the younger Nievera’s current repertoire reflects the father’s extensive influence on his son’s musical direction and preferences.

Ballads, love songs, songs from Broadway musicals, and OPMs (Original Pilipino Music), including his own compositions, have been the staples of his concerts, and Nievera has indicated that his November 12 concert in Los Angeles will feature most of the songs that have made him the superstar he is today. Together with Bert Nievera and special guest Agot Isidro, Martin Nievera says he will treat concert goers to a night of mostly “70s and 80s remakes.”

Another revelation: “I’ve written about a hundred songs,” he says, “but only two of them became hits. Sad, ano?”

And while he rarely uses fancy footwork a la Gary Valenciano to get his audience up and dancing, or a lot of hip-shaking-head-shaking a la Ricky Martin during his concerts, Nievera nevertheless throws in another teaser. “I’ll surprise you on November 12,” he announces.

Nievera is also expected to be his usual glib, spontaneous self. Known for carrying on hilarious conversations with members of his audience during concerts, Nievera says, “My concerts are unscripted, except for guidelines for the songs. My spiels are you (the audience). I rely on my rapport with the audience. Once, when I gave a concert, I knew everyone’s name in the audience by the time the concert was over.”

Nievera dismisses any possible professional rivalry between him and his father. Although he admits he is more popular now than the older Nievera, he qualifies that his father had also attained a different, yet parallel, superstardom at the peak of his singing career.

“During his time, the medium was more radio than TV,” he explains of his own comparatively mega-superstar status. “It (exposure) was more limited then.”

Bert Nievera’s profound influence on his son apparently extends to the younger Nievera’s attitude towards fatherhood. When Martin Nievera does talk about being a father, one gets the distinct impression that failure is not an option for the superstar, at least, in so far as raising his own two children is concerned.

“I may not be the perfect husband,” Martin Nievera declares, “ but I am the best father to my two sons.”

He describes his children thus: “My kids love to sing too. Robin, the older of the two is more like his mother. He’s shy and quiet. Ram is more like me -- talkative and very demonstrative.” As any typical proud papa would, he casually tells newsmen that Ram impersonates Jim Carey and a South Park cartoon character like a pro.

Marital discord notwithstanding, Nievera says he has become quite adept at long-distance parenting. “There are two things I always tell my sons: one, that I love your mother; I will always love her; and two, it is not your fault,” he says.

But while life has apparently granted him success in the area of parenting, failure in other aspects has humbled him It has also caused him to “reinvent” himself in terms of his career and his music.

When he started singing and performing fast songs like rock or jazz, Nievera says his career went on a down slide. Only when he reverted back to the ballads and love songs -- the ones he calls the “forever, straight-from-the-heart” songs -- did he begin to experience a revival in his career.

“Love songs suit my voice,” he explains. He adds that his longtime friend and musical director Louie Ocampo helped him “reinvent my music.”

The reinventing, he says, stops right there. Reinventing himself does not apply to his personal life, which he feels has been completely forfeited because of his failed marriage.

“When I say ‘personal life,’ I’m not referring to those nights out with girls or things like that,”he explains. “By personal life, I mean the happy times I have spent with my family, my wife, my kids. That’s all lost now. I have no more personal life,” he says with a tinge of sadness.

And because there’s nothing else left to reinvent but his music, Nievera says his career has become his priority. He is also bent on showing the good side of the Filipino persona when he travels and performs in other countries, on making “Filipinos stand out in a different way.”

“I’m a good example of what a Filipino is. I’ve been up there. I’ve failed. I’m trying to cope with failure. I’m trying to succeed again,” he says.

The Martin Nievera we see today, he reveals, is the Martin Nievera who has reinvented himself because of failure.

“When you’ve failed like I have, even the most simple things mean a lot. Life has become so precious, especially when you’ve failed,” he says unabashedly.

Feigning seriousness, the reinvented Martin Nievera advises: “You should try it sometime.”