Life of Bryan
Multi-million selling rock star Bryan Adams is now enjoying life as an independent artist. Ahead of shows in Yorkshire, he spoke to Duncan Seaman about his career and also his other passion, photography.
WHEN Bryan Adams arrives on these shores in a couple of weeks, it will be the start of a flurry of activity for one of Canada’s most successful musical exports. Beginning with a three-night residency at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the singer, songwriter and guitarist’s schedule for May and June includes three dates in this region including headlining Halifax’s spectacular Italianate Piece Hall.
Talking to The Yorkshire Post from New
York, the 64-year-old explains the shows are not only part of the touring cycle for his most recent album So Happy It Hurts, they will also be a chance to celebrate a significant career milestone. “This year is the 40th anniversary of Reckless (his breakthrough album in 1984) so we’re going to bust it out big time,” he says.
Adams hints that a new album might already be near completion for next year, but in the meantime there’s an ongoing project to reclaim some of his early songs from major labels. Back in 2022, he re-recorded the likes of Run To You, Summer of ’69 and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You for a pair of albums he called Classic. He intends that there will be a third part. The idea, he says, was inspired by Taylor Swift’s revisions of her back catalogue and also Jeff Lynne of ELO. “I’d been working with Jeff Lynne back in 2018 and Jeff was like, ‘You should just re-record your masters’ and I said yeah, maybe I will, but when I saw Taylor go through with it, I thought, you know what, I’m going to do it. Obviously I don’t have the clout that Taylor does but in my own way it’s really satisfying to have control over certain things, so I’m really pleased that I did it and
I’m still doing it – in fact we’re going to release Classic III sometime.”
Amid everything else two years ago, Adams released his versions of the songs he wrote with his long-time musical partner Jim Vallance for Pretty Woman – The Musical ,atouring production of which visits Leeds Grand Theatre next month. Being involved with the show was, he says “exciting”, adding that he’d originally contemplated a stage version of the 1990 film that starred Richard Gere and Julia Roberts back in 2008 “but there wasn’t any interest to make the musical back then”.
“Then I got introduced to the producer, they’d suddenly managed to corral the different rights together and they decided to make it and I put myself up for it. Basically, I auditioned. It was really cool, actually, because I’d never done anything quite like it before. It kind of needed to be the way it was because Broadway is quite a different kettle of fish to rock ’n’ roll album writing, so when the meeting was scheduled I said to Jim, who I wrote the musical with, we should go in there with two or three ideas for segments of the musical, even though we didn’t know what segments they were going to use, we presumed they’d need this and they’d need that and an opening number, so we sat down and scrambled together a few ideas and all of them made it into the musical.”
Adams first met Vallance in an instrument store in Vancouver in 1978. Then 18 years old,
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Adams had already been in a couple of bands while Vallance was a comparative musical veteran, having played drums and been the principal songwriter in the Canadian rock group Prism. Together they would go on to write scores of songs over a 45-year period. Adams believes their partnership works so well because Vallance has “great ideas and he’s really fun to work with”.
Back in those days Adams says his ambition was simply to keep a roof over his head. “All I cared about was just to pay my rent. I didn’t have two pennies to scrub together.”
His big international breakthrough occurred with his fourth album, Reckless. Containing hits such as Run To You, Summer of ’69, Somebody and Heaven, it would go on to sell 12 million copies around the world. Adams cannot recall any particular eureka moment while they were working in the studio but does remember: “There was a lot of momentum because we’d toured America quite extensively and had quite good success – I managed to pay everybody back, basically. Cuts Like a Knife (his third album) put me at zero, and luckily I had a few more songs in me.
“It was just trying to make a better record than Cuts Like a Knife. We sort of challenged ourselves to do better and better work. We spent an awful lot of time writing and rewriting. For example, Summer of ’69 was demo-ed three times and two full recordings were done of it, so I guess I was never pleased with it. Even to the last minute when we were putting the fader down, I didn’t know because I’d spent so much time thinking about how to make that record, it was so crafted.”
Adams’ career went into overdrive in 1991 with the power ballad (Everything I Do) I Do It For You that was featured in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It spent a recordbreaking 16 weeks at number one in the UK, eventually selling 15 million copies worldwide. Adams says he had never expected it to blow up in the way it did. “It was just a sweet song, I thought,” he says. Nevertheless Mutt Lange, his co-writer, “knew something I didn’t, he really knew that song had potential”. “I remember him driving up to the studio one day and he goes, ‘Badams – because that’s what he calls me – I think this song has an international sound’. I’ll never forget those words and he was dead right.”
Adams has gone on to rack up 100 million record sales but today he is also well regarded for his photographs of celebrities. Photography has long been a passion, he says, adding: “Because it’s the 40th anniversary of Reckless this year I had to pull all my negatives out from the days when I was shooting in the studio, documenting our work, and I kind of wish that I had done more upmarket photography back in the day. I wish that those photographs had gone on the album sleeve because I like them better than what actually made it on the record.”
In 2002 Adams was invited to photograph the Queen. One of the images he took was used as a Canadian postage stamp in 2004 while another, of the Queen with Prince Philip, now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. “I was the Canadian representative for the Commonwealth,” he recalls. Despite having little more than 10 minutes in which to conduct the session, it was, he says, a “really special” assignment.
After nearly half a century in music, the excitement for Adams comes from having full control over his own career. “I’m an independent artist now, I’m not signed to a label,” he says, “so the whole advent of getting control of things and putting things in place for the future is really exciting. Learning about so much of the business that I was never doing before. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have a record company, all I have is a booking agent and that’s it.”
Bryan Adams plays at the Utilita Arena, Sheffield on May 18, Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire on June 21, and the Piece Hall, Halifax on June 23. www.bryanadams.com