Bryan Adams
For Bryan Adams, the entire routine of conducting interviews is an ordeal he’d rather not deal with too often.
“I find it boring to talk about myself,” Adams said. “I’d much rather talk about last night’s game.”
The Canadian singer doesn’t grant interviews often. He likes to keep his private life out of the public spotlight and he’s rarely featured in tabloids. The singer/songwriter recently took some time out from his current North American tour schedule to grant a telephone interview.
Q. Many recording artists who are successful quickly alienate themselves from their audience. You’ve managed to stay on top without losing the huge following you have across the globe. Why?
A. Well, I try and design songs that are going to be easy to perform live. I try and create songs that I’d like to hear if I was listening to the radio. I try and create music which pleases me and I just happen to enjoy making records. I think it boils down to one thing. If you’re going to make records make sure that you put the best songs that you can on them.
Q. Currently a band in Britain named Rage has a hit single with a remake of your song “Run To You.” What are your feelings about hearing “Run To You” in a dance house mix record?
A. It’s fine. I think that it’s quite funny. They did a very good job singing it, too. There have been a few songs done in that music. A lot of songs have been covered by different artists. It’s not unusual, it’s very flattering.
Q. It’s probably great to see the royalty check come in.
A. I don’t know that a lot of those songs actually do anything. I mean the most recent cover of “Run To You” was what you’d call a happy accident really.
Q. Many recording artists today are more conscious of their image that their music. You’ve always placed your music before your public image. It’s kind of take it or leave it.
A. To be honest, I’m not really conscious of even that much. I am that way, but only because I don’t know any better (laughs). It’s what pleases me the most and it’s the easiest thing to do. It stems from the early days when I tried different things clothing wise and I just felt like a total pratt. I felt uncomfortable so I just decided that I’d go out with what I’d wear everyday onstage and it just made much more sense.
Q. There have been critics who have said that you’re unidentifiable. What is really puzzling is the way those same critics who try to label you as such can’t explain your huge success with the ballad “(Everything I do) I Do It For You.”
A.That song was the longest reigning number one in Britain’s history.
Q. How to you explain the appeal of that ballad?
A. Maybe they thought it was Robin Hood singing the song (laughs). I don’t know. I suppose the illusion was they thought Kevin Costner was singing it.
Q. In concert you vary your playlist from hard rocking tunes to ballads. The transition is natural for you when you’re onstage. Many hard rock singers don’t sing ballads very convincingly. How do you manage to sing both effectively?
A. Our show is kind of like a combination of songs people know very well and songs which people have probably never heard before. We open the show normally with a rocker and then throughout the show we disperse the songs that they’re familiar with some unfamiliar songs from other albums and maybe one or two cover songs. I think the point I’m getting at in my shows is to really keep the simplicity and try to get back to a roots type approach to making a concert. I never have been much of a flash artist. Hence you won’t see very much about me in the press. So I just make sure that our music is down to earth and simple and the show is a reflection of that.
Q. Your music has a global appeal that many acts have to go begging for.
A. Well, we’ve been touring Europe since 1983.
Q. There are few recording artists who play straight forward rock and roll these days on the record charts. You continue to have tremendous success with no frills rock and roll. What do you attribute to you longevity within the rock music genre?
A. Like I was saying earlier, it pretty much just boils down to trying to put up the best songs that you can. That’ it. It’s all about tunes. For me, it never has been about image; it’s always been about getting the best songs together. But there is a price to pay for that because you become faceless unlike other groups that put a lot of emphasis on image. They are able to transcend. For example, a group like U2. In messing with their image, I think they’re quite creative and quite interesting. Because why get stereotyped into being one thing? They are a group that has to evolve. With a solo artist you just have to make sure that your songs are as good as they can be and let the image take care of itself.
Q. You’ve never been trendy or fad oriented.
A. Well, back in ’84, I said, ‘This computerized crap ain’t getting me off,’ and since that time I’ve actually dabbled in using computers to make records. I don’t think that I’ve ever done it successfully to where I could actually look back and be very pleased with it. The last album, of course, I can’t complain about. I still prefer the original and most basic thing about making music which is five guys in a room making a record. That’s my favorite thing about making music.
Q. How much do you attribute record producer Robert John “Mutt” Lang’s involvement in making your latest release, “Waking Up The Neighbors”?
A. One hundred percent. He’s very much a part of this album and very much a part of the creation of it. So he’s as much a part of it as I am.
Q. Mutt Lang’s signature work on any rock record he produces is the huge chorus sounds he gets out of a recording. The chorus of his songs are reminiscent of a British soccer crowd chant. It’s similar to the sound the British hard rock group Slade achieved in the glam era during the ’70’s.
A. He really has that sort of thing. It’s a familiar thing which he’s used on many records. If you go back to the early ’80’s with AC/DC into the mid-’80’s with Foreigner and the Cars, there’s always been a big emphasis on the sort of gang vocal thing. Something I’ve never done before. In fact, I think you’d be pretty hard pressed to even find a harmony on some of my records. I’ve always kept it down to minimalism because no one in the band can really sing. So once in a while I put a third harmony on top and that will be it. The way Mutt makes records is as if he imagines the crowd to already be there so that’s the system he and I go through.
Q. In the song “Touch the Hand,” you sing about a husband reversing roles with his wife and staying at home as a “househusband.” How did that song come about?
A. That was sort of a laugh. At first I was kind of hesitant about doing it because I thought people were going to be up in arms about this. Then after speaking about it with Mutt, we both recognized that if someone would take that song too seriously they’re taking themselves too seriously. So let’s just go with it, ’cause it’s a funny lyric.
Q. The liner pictures on your recent release, “Waking Up The Neighbors,” portray you as a loner who’s at home onstage with his fans and his music.
A. Those photographs were taken on a trip I did with a couple of friends. A photographer friend of mine, Andrew Catlin, took those. It was a collection of photographs we did as we were wandering through the badlands of Alberta. We had a good time doing it and once we were making the record we looked at the photographs and none of them were really covers. So we did the cover shoot together and we interspersed those photographs into it to make it sort of biographical. I think it’s sort of a pleasing combination of photographs; I’m actually very pleased with the way the cover shots came out.
Q. You have a Japan-only five song EP CD release due out in January. Why release this CD only in Japan?
A. That wasn’t my idea. This is the second time that Japan has requested live material from me and both times I’ve reciprocated. I released a live album in 1988 which was retrospective of all the songs we’d put out in the past decade. Kind of like a closing chapter. I felt it would be a great thing to do and release all around the world. But of course my record company didn’t see it that way. Pony Canyon is my record company in Japan. The new five-song EP is all songs recorded over the summer. It’s all new songs and it was all recorded over the past summer
Q. What is the story regarding the accident in Switzerland in which the car that two girls were riding in crashed and you came to their rescue?
A. There wasn’t much to rescue; both of them had fallen out of the car. There were two girls and they were drunk. They had come back from a pub in Switzerland; they side-swiped our car and crashed into the mountain and flipped upside down. By the time we stopped our car, both of them had gone head first through the windshield. Basically, we scraped them off the road and put them on the side, covered them in blankets and tried to wave some help down. This is two o’clock in the morning in the Swiss Alps. It was in the summer so it wasn’t that cold, but it was cold because it was in the mountains. It was pretty awful. It was an awful thing to see happen to two women like that. Anybody else would have done it; just hang with them; try to keep them conscious and keep them warm.