Bryan Adams: Canada’s bestselling non-Canadian
Bryan Adams: How a Canadian blue-collar rocker became a
stylish Euro jet-7setter
Calgary Herald
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Page: E1 / FRONT
Section: Arts & Style
Byline: Nick Lewis
Some say the turn came in 1992, around the time the Canadian
government decided Bryan Adams wasn't very Canadian.
All 15 songs on his 11-million-seller, Waking Up The Neighbours
album had been declared un-Canadian by the Canadian Radio-television
and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which meant they could
only enjoy limited airplay on Canadian FM radio stations. It was
because the Kingston-born singer's songs had been co-written with
his British producer, the future Mr. Shania Twain, Mutt Lange.
Adams lashed out, saying the Canadian content rules, which demand
that 30 per cent of content be Canadian, breed mediocrity by giving
young acts profiles they don't deserve.
"So Bryan Adams, who is Canadian, has a Canadian passport and pays
taxes in Canada is not Canadian!" he later sputtered to Vox Magazine
in 1998. "I told them all to shove it up their arses, that Can-Con
shouldn't exist, they were just sponging off of other artists and
the government should stay the (expletive) out of music."
And then Canada's best-selling musician ever left Canada. And, with
that, his boyish, Canadian everyman image.
He's now 44 years old, having turned so on Nov. 5. He lives in
London, England.
At last account, he was reportedly dating a supermodel. He wears
Gianni Versace and Georgio Armani. He photographs the Queen at her
request. He writes Oscar-nominated songs for movies. He wrote an
entire album for an animated film (Spirit: Stallion Of The
Cimarron).
This is not the raspy voiced, dishevelled-hair rocker who screamed
he wanted to run to us, who would be overdressed if the T-shirt
accompanying his jeans had a collar.
To promote Waking Up The Neighbours on The Late Show with David
Letterman in 1992, he wore the classic hoser outfit of blue jeans,
white T-shirt, lumberjack overshirt and black boots.
"It's part of the Canadian culture," he told Letterman as the host
continually harassed him over his clothing choice. "We white-water
raft, we wear lumberjack shirts."
Now he tends to wear all white and has his blond hair neatly flop
over his right eye.
And that's pretty much what we know about him today. Because he's
an infrequent interviewee (we weren't given access to him) and shies
away from industry events.
And the odd time he does indulge a publication, he's closely
guarded about his privacy and shoots down personal questions.
Most of his interviews tend to be by e-mail, and when asked why by the National Post in 2000, he replied
tongue-in-cheek, "I get to practise my typing."
"The main philosophy I have is I don't believe the press can help
you at all," he explained in greater detail to Vox Magazine in 1998.
"My manager and I have huge arguments about this, because I don't
think being on the cover of a magazine will make any (expletive)
difference to my life or my music. If I have something to say about
a new record that I'm really proud of, then I'm happy to do it. But
press just for press's sake? I'm not interested. Fair enough. After
all, most housewives don't read the rock press, and they have proved
pretty loyal and lucrative so far."
Adams' fan base grew by many a housewife after his 1991 hit,
Everything I Do, I Do It For You from the Robin Hood: Prince Of
Thieves soundtrack. It was a chart-topper in 21 countries, and in
the U.S. was briefly the best-selling single of all time (soon
beaten by another movie song, Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love
You).
It was around this time that he turned from writing mainstream
blue-collar pop-rock tunes (at the beginning, he was called a poor
man's Springsteen) into softer, mushier fare. Some of his biggest
successes in the '90s came from ballads such as Have You Ever Really
Loved A Woman and the acoustic I'm Ready.
He indulged his passion for photography in 1998 by publishing a
book of photographs in a fundraising effort for the Canadian Breast
Cancer foundation called Made In Canada. He shot pop stars such as
Shania Twain and Celine Dion, political figures such as Kim Campbell
and Margaret Trudeau, and was invited by the Queen to shoot her
informally at her Golden Jubilee last year. That shot will be a
49-cent stamp in Canada in December when 10 million will be issued
for Canada Post's busiest period.
Though he looks and sounds a bit different in 2003, there is very
much a part of Adams that will be 18 till he dies. He has been
attending London concerts by "happening" rock acts such as Jet,
Kings Of Leon, White Stripes and Mercury Rev, and he's a big fan of
Eminem, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent.
But he says in select interviews that his new CD, slated for
release next year, sticks to what he's done musically of late rather
than borrowing from his newfound influences.
And his distinction as the best-selling Canadian musician of all
time is being challenged by Shania Twain, who is very close to his
55 million records sold. But she doesn't have the Order of Canada
(yet), three Academy Award nominations or 16 Juno Awards to her
name.
What she does enjoy is Adams's split nature as Canadian-next-door
and Euro glitterati. Except he does it better.
A man who can be as down-home a rocker as you need him to be, as
pretentious and playful a pop star as the world press makes him out
to be, and as sensitive and loving as housewives everywhere believe
him to be.
Five Things You Don't Know About Bryan Adams
1) An early rebel, he was kicked out of schools across the world,
with offences ranging from lobbing a soccer ball through a
headmaster's window to skipping class.
2) The $2,000 his parents had saved for his post-secondary
education was spent on buying Bryan his first piano near the end of
high school. He dropped out.
3) In 1979, a 19-year-old Adams signed on with A&M records for the
now legendary sum of $1. He released the disco hit Let Me Take You
Dancing, which sold 240,000 copies. He hates it because he thinks he
sounded like a chipmunk on it.
4)To date, Bryan Adams and the Backstreet Boys have sold the same
number of records (55 million).
5) Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's butler, writes in his book, A
Royal Duty, that there were nine male admirers pursuing her after
her divorce from Prince Charles, including "a leading musician."
Last month, British tabloid The People claimed the musician was
Adams. Adams had penned a B-side in the '80s called Diana, which
included the lyrics, "whatcha doin' with a guy like him?"
