In November 1984 Bryan Adams’ fourth album, Reckless , had only just begun spinning off what eventually would be a total of six Top 15 hits, including “Run to You”,”One Night Love Affair”, “Somebody”, “Summer of ’69”, “It’s Only Love” with superstar Tina Turner, and the #1 single, “ Heaven”. At the time only Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the equal of Reckless for sheer mass appeal sales. Ponder that for a moment.
By mid-August 1985, a month after I had witnessed him & his band from sidestage at Philadelphia’s massive JFK stadium performing to more than a billion people as part of the televised Live Aid charity concert, Reckless was the #1-selling album in America.
Seated at Bryan’s kitchen table late on a Saturday night at his home in Vancouver, we talked about that remarkable year. Then in his basement studio overlooking the glassy water of the bay, he played early demo versions of “Run to You” with backing vocals which undermined the taut urgency that the song eventually demanded. Finally, at about 3 a.m. on a clear starry September night, Bryan set up a telescope on a tripod in the middle of his suburban Vancouver neighborhood street & showed me the rings around Saturn, seemingly as eager to share this natural wonder as he was displaying the vintage recording consoles in his basement. –Redbeard ( Backstage in Dallas/Ft.Worth with Bryan Adams (c) and Sirius/XM’s Kurt Gilchrist (r) )
Since we chose to play Bryan Adams’ second album, You Want It, You Got It at ROCK 103 Memphis in 1981, containing the impressive “Lonely Nights”, “Tonight”, and “Fits Ya Good”; and because we spent a memorable weekend together there, I may have been the least surprised person outside of Bryan’s Vancouver base when his next one, Cuts Like a Knife, arrived in January 1983 with even more instantly identifiable hits. Cuts Like a Knife contained “This Time”, “Take Me Back”, “I’m Ready”, the under-appreciated album track “Don’t Leave Me Lonely” (which sounds like it belongs on Reckless); the title song “Cuts Like a Knife”, and his first Top Ten hit “Straight From the Heart”, which Bryan Adam’s wrote at the ripe old age of eighteen.
After a whirlwind Seattle Saturday in September 1988 with a noon interview session with Heart’s Ann Wilson, followed by hamburgers on Mercer Island with Steve Miller for dinner, now I was witness to a spectacular Pacific sunset as I barreled up the scenic coast into British Columbia for a rendezvous in Vancouver with Bryan Adams for one last interview that day. The last time I had seen Bryan was in his dressing room trailer backstage at Live Aid in Philadelphia in July 1985 immediately after he had performed to 100,000 at RFK Stadium and over one billion estimated watching live on television. He had given me his Live Aid “Performer/Stage” laminated pass because my press credentials were expired (wouldn’t I love to know where that little bit of history is now). I had grossly misjudged the driving time from Seattle to Vancouver, the delay to cross the US-Canadian border, and the Saturday night traffic in downtown Vancouver, so arrived at my hotel quite late to meet Bryan, and this was long before cell phones to warn of my tardiness. I didn’t so much park the rental car in the hotel lot as abandon it, rushing to the front desk to inquire if a “Mr. Adams” had arrived, only to be told that he had been there, waited forty-five minutes, and finally left.
I was shattered. Professionally embarrassed, yes, but I actually knew Bryan Adams, had spent time with him in Memphis in a casual non-performing setting when he was just starting out, seen him perform in clubs, watched him grow. I liked the guy, and he had done me a huge solid at Live Aid which allowed my reporting from on stage the rest of the night. I did not want to let Bryan down. So as I shuffled back out to re-park the rental car, my gaze was at my feet and I barely noticed one single occupant of a vehicle silhouetted against the headlights. Softly I thought I heard a voice say, “Redbeard.”
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked intently at the rear of the Jeep with the driver inside. “Adams here.” My heart leaped for joy. What a guy! He told me to follow him to a residential neighborhood. Bryan’s girlfriend had just arrived from London, but with the long flight and time change, she went straight to bed, so we had to conduct our interview in a stage whisper in Bryan’s kitchen ( If you listen closely you can even hear the refrigerator cycle from time to time).We took a break to go down into his basement recording studio with the big glass window overlooking the bay waters, and ended the night at about 4 a.m. literally in the middle of the street where Bryan Adams’ telescope picked up the moons of Jupiter in a stunningly clear Northwest sky.
Bryan Adams has been an international star for a full forty years now, long enough that you may have forgotten his scrappy rise to the top from obscurity. Bryan tells us about knocking on doors at sixteen and never taking “no” for an answer in this classic rock interview at his kitchen table.- Redbeard
Backstage in Dallas-Ft. Worth with Bryan Adams and Sirius XM’s Kurt Gilchrist
Don’t let that headline confuse you into thinking that, in any way, Bryan Adams has had a “so so” career: So Happy It Hurts is the Canadian rocker’s fifteenth (!) studio album, and he’s not even old enough to get the Early Bird Special down at Denny’s. Adams became a star way back in late 1984 with Reckless , one of the Eighties’ biggest sellers, then in 1991 absolutely crushed it with Waking Up the Neighbours , an all-time biggest selling album in history. Bryan Adams’ seventh studio album, 18 ‘Til I Die , was a #1 seller in the UK and Top Five sales in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The international popularity was driven by hits “The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You”, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”, and the title song.
This point, however, was also the first indication of a bizarre syndrome peculiar to American media whereby 18 ‘Til I Die peaked on the US Billboard sales chart at a perplexing #31. This strange reaction by US media gatekeepers, particularly latter twentieth century rock radio programmers, was first pointed out to me by The Edge of U2 while conversing about that band’s late Eighties road movie, Rattle and Hum. He pointed out a long-standing mistrust by music writers of such pop music idols as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley “…going off to Hollywood and never coming back.” So apparently, Bryan Adams’ sin was to include on his previous album, Waking Up the Neighbours , (packed with no less than a dozen flat-out rockers), a single ballad,”Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” that happened to run under the credits at the end of a hit chick flick that year. MTV played the video in saturation airplay because it had scenes from the blockbuster Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves . Everyone benefited from this cross-marketing, by the way: North American rock radio played six great rockers from that album on the way to record high ratings, Bryan’s record company had a #1 seller worldwide, MTV had record ratings, & the movie company broke box office ticket sales records.
But when 18 ‘Til I Die came out in June 1996, US rock radio programmers decided, in spite of the music actually on the album to the contrary, to brand Bryan Adams a love song balladeer, not rock enough, not alternative enough, not cool enough. “And don’t confuse me with the facts. All those millions of people in all of those other countries buying it are not in my town, so we are different here in the Tri-State Area, see?” Yeah, whatever. Adams finally addresses the issue with tongue firmly in cheek on the song “Kick Ass” from So Happy It Hurts with the help of the brilliant British pillar of Python humor, John Cleese, who has been skewering pompous pundits for half a century. Also listen to the infectious “Never Gonna Rain Again”, which could be Bryan Adams’ next big hit. –Redbeard
Waking Up the Neighbours was packed with an abundance of great songs. This is Bryan Adams and band live straight off the floor on “Hey Honey, I’m Packin’ You In“, no overdubs, during the In the Studio live North American broadcast from Vancouver’s Little Mountain Studio in March 1992. – Redbeard
Bryan Adams has always been a terrific live performer. Case in point: when I visited Bryan at his Vancouver home way back in September 1988 to discuss his career breakthrough Cuts Like a Knife in 1983 and his star-making blockbuster Reckless in 1984, the band had just completed a very successful European tour including a set at Werchter Belgium with 50,000 close friends in the rain. They closed the night by tearing into this sizzling performance of the Bobby Fuller Four staple, “I Fought the Law”. –Redbeard
In November 1984 Bryan Adams’ fourth album, Reckless , had only just begun spinning off what eventually would be a total of six Top 15 hits, including “Run to You”,”One Night Love Affair”, “Somebody”, “Summer of ’69”, “It’s Only Love” with superstar Tina Turner, and the #1 single, “ Heaven”. At the time only Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the equal of Reckless for sheer mass appeal sales. Ponder that for a moment.
( Backstage in Dallas/Ft.Worth with Bryan Adams (c) and Sirius/XM’s Kurt Gilchrist (r) )
