There are infinitely more highlights in the Canadian singer-songwriter’s bulging catalogue than just ‘that song’. Read on…
To the transient fans who jumped on his wagon for the paydirt of the early 90s, a Bryan Adams buyer’s guide is a short conversation: simply seek out Waking Up The Neighbours, stream Reckless highlights Heaven, Summer Of ’69 and Run To You, and your work is done.
Seasoned Adams watchers, however, know better. Long before – and sporadically after – those chart-residing, till-ringing years, Adams turned in some of the best blue-collar rock out there, his mission statement always to produce hardy, hooky, no-nonsense music that was worth his audience’s time and money. “For me,” he reflected, “there was no message, no trying to be a man of the people. I was just trying to write great songs.”
Adams once said that he “came from absolutely nothing”. That’s not quite true, but his background as an itinerant military kid, and modest aspirations to be a guitar-playing sideman, gave little indication of the future solo phenomenon whose 15-millionselling anthem (Everything I Do) I Do It For You would end up feeling like the theme tune to Top Of The Pops in the summer of 1991. The turning point early in his career, he told Classic Rock, was meeting older industry head Jim Vallance, who helped the still-teenage songwriter “filter out the shite” and channel his talents.
“The first day we got together, I knew that he was going places,” Vallance once recalled. “He was only eighteen but he was overflowing with confidence. Not in an arrogant way, more like bursting with energy and ideas. Right away I’m thinking: ‘Wow, this kid can sing and write songs.’”
Enduringly prolific – in the past decade alone now the 64-year-old Adams has released four albums and written a Pretty Woman musical – he has the ability to sell even a mediocre song, thanks to a vocal that is probably what most of us would land on when asked to imagine the quintessential stadium-rock rasp.
But at points in his career – and particularly during the decade-plus hot streak from ’83 to ’96, when his writing partnerships with Vallance and big-name producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange were at their most fruitful – he has proved himself a rare craftsman, equally adept at wistful ballads as sanguine rockers, always able to tap into the universal emotions that fill stadiums and soundtrack life events.
Here’s how you should approach the life’s work of Bryan.
Essential Classics
1983, A&M
Worn raw by the road, Adams recorded this breakthrough third album on home turf at Vancouver’s Little Mountain studio, where his partnership with Jim Vallance audibly started to cook, the pair knocking out set-list staples like This Time and the album’
