‘Getting hamme Ered doesn’twork for me...’
HE IS one of the world’s biggest rock stars, but you wouldn’t know it when you meet him. Bryan Adams has none of the spoilt brat arrogance you’d associate with the breed, nor the lifestyle. He is sustained on tour not by booze and illicit substances but by “cups of tea”. The only thing Adams is addicted to is hard graft.
The multi-platinum selling Canadian-born idol has lived in London’s Chelsea for more than 30 years, but few people ever notice him there or anywhere else, he says.
Bryan, 62, recalls the time he headlined New York’s Madison Square Garden and, after spending too long shopping, had to jump on the subway to reach the venue on time. The carriage was packed with his own fans but none of them recognised him.
“I got off at 34th Street and didn’t know if I should turn left or right. I said to this guy, ‘I’m looking for Madison Square Garden’. He said, ‘That’s where I’m going for Bryan Adams, I’ll take you there.’ I brought him backstage to meet the band.”
That was on his 1987 Reckless tour but little has changed: “I don’t think people recognise me any more now – I fade into the background.”
Adams has sold more than 60 million albums since his self-titled 1980 debut – he doesn’t know exactly how many. The mega-sellers began with 1983’s Cuts Like A Knife, and kept coming as he notched up global hit singles such as Summer Of ’69, Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.
The 1991 smash famously spent 16 weeks at Number One.
“There was a joke at the time about Terry Waite, and how the first thing he said after he was released as a hostage was, ‘Is Bryan Adams still No 1?’” he laughs.
Bryan is at an airport in Norway when we chat. He is on tour all year in support of his 15th studio album, the hugely upbeat So Happy It Hurts.
He wrote and recorded it between two bouts of Covid, exchanging song ideas over email with his co-writer, the legendary hit-maker Mutt Lange.
“It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t put the band together so I just got on with it.
“The guy who made the tea in the studio, Hayden Watson, went from that to being the recording engineer – he recorded everything and mixed it. He’s a top boy.”
The UK leg kicks off with three nights at the Royal Albert Hall on May 9.
The first time Bryan played London he supported Tina Turner at Wembley in 1985.
“That’s when I had to pinch myself.” he says. Live, they duetted on It’s Only Love – written by Bryan and on-off collaborator, ex-prism star Jim Vallance. “In Belgium on her birthday, for one of my teeth,”
“I sang the first my teeth and as s I smiled at her. Sh
“She stopped th show the crowd w
“There’s always humour is a spec probably doesn’t
B
RYAN Kings Night were British – mu Conrad was ex-b Canadian diplom beans on toast,” h
At six, they mo parents divorced mother took Brya Vancouver.
In his teens Bry bands like Mott Th the Rolling Stone Pie and Ritchie B
“I liked anythin he chuckles. “I’m hair is short. Der laugh a lot back t
a laugh, I blackened out
he recalls. t verse so she couldn’t see soon as she started singing, he cracked up!
he song and made me what I’d done. s something going on. Band ial kind of humour, but it
translate.” led his English teacher Mrs Singh to tell him “your mind is in the gutter”, at which point we will bypass his reasons for writing Summer Of ’69.
Bryan’s English uncle bought him his first guitar, an imitation Stratocaster, from a shop in Reading when he was 11-years-old – and he really did play it until his fingers bled. He later bought a black Les Paul copy, “like Stevie Marriott’s”, from an Ottawa pawn shop.
Leaving school at 15, Adams worked as a restaurant dishwasher while playing in local bands, and then moving into studio session work.
“My first pinch-me moment was meeting songwriter Jimmy Vallance in a music shop.
“We decided to get together for a cup of tea and wrote two songs on the first day.
“The first, Don’t Turn Me Away, was the B-side of my first single, Let Me Take You Dancing.”
Vallance and Adams went on to compose songs for Kiss, and Bonnie Raitt covered their No Way To Treat A Lady. They also wrote Bryan’s solo albums of course.
“The second, You Want It, You Got It, got me on rock radio and noticed internationally,” he says.
After real success with the follow-up
Cuts Like A Knife, Bryan’s fourth album Reckless broke through the 10 million sales barrier, going diamond. It eventually sold more than 12 million copies. His sixth album, 1991’s Waking Up The Neighbours – written with Mutt Lange – did even better.
But his triumph was underpinned by constant touring.
“There are whole years from the 90s that I just don’t remember,” says Adams. “I only remember it from pictures and videos.”
He does recall making the multi-platinum follow-up 18 Till I Die though.
“I remember going to Jamaica and working with Mutt on it. One song was
Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? [written for the film Don Juan Demarco] and Mutt said it needed flamenco guitar.
“I knew Paco de Lucia so I sent a fax to his manager who replied saying, ‘Paco’s on holiday’. Where? ‘Jamaica!’ He was two hotels down! What a staggering coincidence that was.”
Bryan is happily settled with long-time partner Alicia Grimaldi, his former PA, the mother of their two daughters aged 11 and nine, and a trustee of his charitable foundation – set up in the wake of the 2006 tsunami and financed by his parallel career as a photographer.
Adams caught the bug in the 1990s, working with the likes of Elle Macpherson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Princess Diana – all of whom he has been romantically linked to. (If Bryan is more guarded than I expected, it probably comes from fielding tabloid questions about his 90s love-life.)
He has photographed everyone from Mick Jagger to The Queen, and more recently shot Cher, Iggy Pop and Rita Ora for the 2022 Pirelli calendar.
ADAMS ALSO found time to co-write the 2018 soundtrack for Pretty Woman the musical, currently on at the Savoy Theatre. Bryan’s songs share a timeless quality because he shuns trendy techniques.
“I record as I always have with real instruments, so the sound of the records is the sound of the band” – who will go from their European tour on to Canada.
“We just carry on carrying on,” he laughs. “It’s an amazing feeling out here, amongst the punters, they are so happy to be out.” Bryan wants 18 Till I Die as his epitaph. “It’s a way of life! You don’t have to be a drug-taking alcoholic. I couldn’t physically do it. Getting hammered to get inspired wouldn’t work for me. Tea is my solution.”
Bryan Adams’s 15th album, So Happy It Hurts, is out now on BMG. His UK tour begins May 9 at the Royal Albert Hall, London