Bryan Adams: 'It was one of the sweatiest, most drippingly moist gigs I’ve ever done'
With his most intimate gigs in Leeds in many a year beckoning, Bryan Adams is casting his mind back with The Yorkshire Post to a previous occasion when he performed at the city’s now long-gone Queens Hall.
“It was one of the sweatiest, most drippingly moist gigs I’ve ever done,” says the Canadian rocker of that night on October 31, 1987. “The ceiling was quite low in the place and the condensation on the roof was dripping on us, it was disgusting. I don’t mind a hot, sweaty gig, but when it’s dripping on you? I’m not so sure.”
In late 1970s the same venue had hosted punk gigs by The Clash and The Damned as well as two editions of Futurama, the post-punk festival organised by Leeds promoter John Keenan and featuring the likes of Joy Division, Public Image Ltd, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Soft Cell. “I think everything that was happening in 1977 was dripping on me in the ’80s – it had been waiting on the ceiling,” says Adams, laughing.
Hopefully there will be no such issues when the now 65-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist plays two shows at the Brudenell Social Club in Hyde Park on Saturday August 30. The gigs, organised by Crash Records, coincide with the release of his 17th studio album, Roll With The Punches.
He is unsure what his 20-year-old self who was writing songs like Hidin’ From Love for his first album in 1980 would have made of the thought that he would still be making records 45 years later. “You don’t really think about that when you’re starting out, you think about the present,” he says. “I think that attitude has prevailed throughout the years – just think about the now, don’t worry about what’s going to happen. You certainly can’t worry about what’s happened, so just keeping moving one day at a time.”
The son of English emigrants, Adams had had a peripatic childhood due to his father’s diplomatic postings around the world. He’d acquired his first guitar, an imitation Stratocaster, when he was 10, swapping it for an imitation Les Paul the next year. By the age of 12 he was soaking up the guitar licks of Humble Pie’s Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott; Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple would become a later favourite.
By 15 he’d become the voice of Vancouver glam rock glam band Sweeney Todd before going solo in 1978. Although he’s very much been a rock ’n’ roll lifer, Adams says there was never any long-term vision. “I don’t really have that kind of consciousness; I’m very much about living for today and tomorrow,” he says. “There’s a lot of plans now, the calendar is booked up until the end of the year and next year already, with loads of tours and lots of places to play around the world. That and school holidays” – he has two daughters, aged 14 and 12 – “is all I think about these days.”
Now self-managed with his own record label, Adams is enjoying his independence. “Being free, even though I might have got to it a little late in the game, it’s better late than never,” he says.
Although well known around the world for ballads such as (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Heaven and All For Love, Roll With The Punches is one of Adams’s rockier albums. “It’s where my head’s been at for quite a while,” he says. “What I usually do is I have an engineer I work with called Hayden Watson and when I’ve got a song started I usually do all the instrumentation myself and put together a demo – that includes me on drums. When I get a chance to reflect on it, (Hayden)’s also a drummer as well and we look at it and go, would (John) Bonham have done that? And he’ll go, ‘nah, go back and do it again’. We tend to think in the rock world, and that tends to help when I do bring in someone like Pat (Steward) to play drums afterwards. He’ll have a go idea where to take it and then he can take it to the next level.”
Alongside his regular co-writers Jim Vallance and Mutt Lange, Adams has again worked with Sheffield’s Eliot Kennedy, with whom he’s previously penned hits such as When You’re Gone. Of their partnership, he says succinctly: “It like anything, the shoe fits, and sometimes we get a good ’un and that’s all there is to it.”
He likes collaborating, he says. “I think working with different people brings different things and for a more interesting overall record. Imagine if I had a group where everbody’s contributing writing, so I kind of look at it like that. I’m quite good at coming up with an idea and taking it so far and then I like to see where it can go.”
Songs on the new album such as A Little More Understanding, Love Is Stronger Than Hate and Be The Reason sound like pleas for a more compassionate world. Adams says he “certainly would” like to see more empathy in troubled times. “I don’t know who’s running this world right now but I tell you what, I’m not happy with them,” he says.
What particurlarly gets his goat is is the prevarication of political leaders such as UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. “I just don’t understand when someone gets asked a direct question why they can’t answer it,” Adams says. “The dancing around, especially your Prime Minister – I mean God almighty, if the guy could answer a straight question it would be brilliant but he can’t. Is the sun shining? (Adopts an English accent) ‘Well, let me be clear...’ F*** off!”
As a songwriter and musician, Adams has always been something of an Anglophile – something he shares with his long-time bandmate Keith Scott. “Keith and I were always fans of the great guitar players – the Claptons and the Pages and the Blackmores – and I’m inspired by the Bonhams and Keith Moons, the great english rock musicians and that’s my school, that’s where I go back to. And then for the harmonies, I love The Beatles and the great rock singers like Joe Cocker and Steve Marriott and Paul Rodgers. Those are my fallbacks that I always tend to think of when I’m working.”
At the Brudenell Social Club, Adams will perform Roll With The Punches in its entirety. “It’s all we’re going to be playing,” the singer says – but there will be a chance to hear of his catalogue when he headlines the Rock N Roll Circus at Don Valley Bowl in Sheffield the day before. He also requested that Spice Girl Melanie C – with whom he duetted on When You’re Gone – should be on the bill too.
Aside from rock ’n’ roll, photography remains an important outlet for Adams. Over the years he has photographed for magazines including Interview, Harper’s Bazaar, and British and German Vogue and he’s exhibited his work widely. His photograph of the Queen and Prince Philip hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
“I shot my album cover and all the pictures for it,” he says. “A lot of it was done on my iPhone – in fact the cover of the album was shot on my iPhone.”
His most recent book, Exposed, is “a retrospective of the last 10 years and a few bits and bobs that I forgot to put in my earlier books – it’s just a really nice volume of portraits that have happened over the years”.
He believes there is a particular art to portrait photography, and it’s something that he’s trying to pass down. “I’m teaching it to my daughter at the moment, and trying to get her to think about light and how important light is and what kind of light,” he says. “She’s got school projects which are talking about some of the great masters of photography. She has to write about them and also try to emulate their work, and I’m trying to teach her the difference between artificial light and natural light and how to recognise it – it’s quite interesting.”
Roll With The Punches is out on Friday August 29. Bryan Adams plays the Rock N Roll Circus, Sheffield on August 29 and the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on August 30. https://www.bryanadams.com/