Those unmistakable raspy vocals of Bryan Adams have realised some of the world’s most cherished rock classics.
Summer of ’69, Heaven and that sublime ’91 epic, (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (this writer’s first single purchase) might be the songs that most people think of when they hear the name of Canada’s favourite son. For Bryan himself though, he’s open about the influences that dominated his formative years, and how they shaped the way he wrote such peerless songs.
“I have this kind of thing where I consider the songs that I grew up with are kind of untouchable,” Adams told us back in an interview in 2014.
“AM radio was king in the ‘70s,” Adams explained. “Back then, there was no discrimination between genres, so you’d get Ray Charles or a song like Kiss And Say Goodbye into The Beatles – easy. If it was a good song, it was gonna get played.”
At the time of our interview with Bryan, he was on the verge of releasing Tracks of My Years, a collection of his own takes on a set of songs that were influential to him in his youth. Amongst the chosen selection were cuts originally helmed by Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys and The Beatles.
“I just thought, ‘OK, let’s do songs that were on the AM radio and stick a picture of me on the cover from the time when I decided that music was what I was going to do. What unified everything was my voice and the way I produced it,” Adams explained on these more bare-bones versions of the classic songs.
“The key was to not have anything on it. There’s no reverb, no echo – it’s raw and right in your face, off the microphone. It didn’t matter who produced it; I decided that my voice should have that quality of production throughout the record, and that’s what tied it all together. I’m really pleased with the results.”
Adams guided us, track-by-track though some of the songs he took on when making this album. He explained why he chose The Beatles’ more underrated A Hard Day’s Night cut Any Time at All…
“It’s really hard to do a Beatles song without f****ng it up. [Laughs] I have a song called Back To You on my MTV album [Unplugged], and I thought that Any Time at All could work the same way – very strummy. And it did. It worked out beautifully.
“Everybody knows the song, but it’s not like one of the Beatles songs that gets played all the time. Because it was a little more off the radar, that’s why I was interested in it. I wanted it to rock out a bit more. One of the things about this record that I wanted to do was not do a pastiche of the original track; I wanted to do my own thing as best I could. I think I accomplished that.”
