MIXing it up with Bryan Adams

By Alan Sculley
Correspondent

October 05, 2008 12:55 am

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For nearly three decades, Bryan Adams has been a steady presence on the American concert scene, regularly hitting the road throughout a career that has produced 11 studio CDs and several live releases.

But rarely has Adams put together a tour that has put him in so many different settings. He has been doing solo acoustic shows as a headliner. He's doing some full band shows. On other dates, he's sharing the bill with Foreigner, and he has some dates opening for Rod Stewart.

Adams said he is enjoying the variety of live settings and noted that the acoustic shows in particular have been interesting and are having some benefits for his full-band performances.

"I think sometimes it helps the arrangement on how you're going to do it live. Sometimes it makes you think, I wish I had recorded the album this way," Adams said, referring to his acoustic shows. "I've not done like an hour and a half (acoustic) of just trying to be a busker on a stage like that before. So it might enhance my entertainer chops up a little bit. I've (had) to come up with some good stories."

Adams maintains a heavy enough touring schedule that the different settings for this year's concerts should keep his performance chops fresh.

While he no longer cranks out records at the furious pace he maintained early in his career — five albums in the first seven years — Adams said he is as busy as ever.

"I don't think my pace has really changed," he said. "I think what has happened is, if anything, I've accelerated the amount of work I've got, because I've ended up playing in so many more places and so many different countries around the world and there's such a bigger, sort of wider breadth of places to go on tour.

"I mean, it was difficult to play places in Europe when I first started and now everywhere is open," Adams said. "We recently played in South America, where I played Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina... I played Pakistan a year and a half ago. I just got offered a show in Dubai. You know, it's endless. That didn't exist when I started."

The demand for tours, and the continued steady stream of new music from Adams, says a lot about the enduring popularity he has managed to achieve since the early 1980s.

It took Adams until his third album, though, to break through in the states. But when he did, it was in a big way. That 1983 album, "Cuts Like A Knife," boasted three hits, the title song, "This Time" and "Straight from the Heart."

This set the stage for Adams' fourth album, the 1984 release "Reckless," which became his biggest hit. It topped the charts on its way to selling five million copies, while spawning six hit singles, including the number one hit "Heaven," "Summer of '69" and "Run To You."

He had three more popular albums — "Into The Fire" (1987), "Waking Up the Neighbours" (1991) and "18 'Til I Die" (1996) — before the hits dried up in America for Adams. But he has remained a strong concert draw stateside, while in other countries he has enjoyed continued popularity.

The recently released "11" album will sound instantly familiar to Adams fans. As usual, the CD is built around hearty and tuneful rock anthems ("Tonight We Have The Stars," and "Flower Grown Wild") and several rough-hewn ballads ("We Found What We Were Looking For" and "Somethin' To Believe In").

"11" also marks a return of a major contributor to Adams' early success — Jim Vallance — who last wrote with Adams for his 1991 CD, "Waking Up The Neighbours." The two co-wrote nearly all of the songs on Adams' first five albums, and Adams said he found that the creative chemistry he always enjoyed with Vallance was still intact.

"Jim and I have always, from the moment we sat down, the day we sat down together in 1978, we wrote a song together," Adams said. "So I know that the chemistry between us is great. And that if we sit down and work together, music happens."

It will be interesting to see if "11" can restore Adams' commercial momentum, especially because the CD is being sold exclusively through Wal-Mart. That approach worked just fine for the Eagles, moving well over two million copies of that group's 2007 CD, "Long Road Out Of Eden," so far.

"It was an absolute no-brainer," Adams said of the Wal-Mart deal. "Wal-Mart came in and said, 'We'd like to order some records,' and we thought, 'Great.' I know the Eagles have done it, and it seemed like a good idea... So I thought, good plan, and they seemed enthusiastic and we're all on a page here."