Canadian rocker Bryan Adams: ‘Music is symbolically intertwined like a calendar’

As Bryan Adams rolls back into town, we fire some questions at the 57-year-old soft rocker.

Canadian rocker Bryan Adams will return for a show in Dubai this week. Photo by Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images

Full disclosure: Long before puberty hit, I enjoyed an irony-free appreciation of earnest North American soft rock, and Adams’s big-hearted ballads were always the easiest of ear. Of course, the affair couldn’t last into my teens, and I can remember the exact moment my flame for Adams was extinguished.

A school trip. I left my cassette of hits collection So Far So Good on the bus seat. The teaching assistant who discovered it found great joy in walking up and down, asking who owned this laughably mawkish item, resulting in immediate peer shame when I feebly raised my hand. To this day, I regret not staying quiet.

Still, I'm hoping Adams can conjure happier memories when he takes to the stage at Dubai's Autism Rocks Arena on Thursday (March 9). The latest tour stop in support of his 13th album, Get Up, sees Adams return to the emirate for the first time in six years.

The 2010 show at the Dubai World Trade Centre was hailed by Adams on Twitter as one of “our best gig ever in the Middle East… What a night.” The 57-year-old can still the big reception he received: “I remember the audience being very enthusiastic.”

18 Till I Die was one of the first albums I ever owned. It feels like that album, released in 1996, marked the beginning of a new stage, and perhaps some kind of artistic rebirth for you? What were you going through at the time?

I just wanted to follow up the previous two releases – So Far So Good and Waking Up the Neighbours – with something rocking, and that reflected where I was at the time. 18 Till I Die will probably be my epitaph as a result.

How does it feel to have provided the soundtrack to so many people’s lives? Their first dances, weddings, nights out, concerts, heartbreaks…?

Music is a powerful thing, and as I look back on my life, music is symbolically intertwined like a calendar. I can remember where I was from a song, or an album.

Last year was horrible for the music world. Which loss affected you the most and why?

It’s hard to say which musician’s passing has more of an effect than the other because it’s a brotherhood – they all meant something in some way and in this world we need more musicians to say what we feel and sometimes say what we want to say but can’t find the words.

Guns N’ Roses played the same venue you as you six days earlier. Reckon you can blow them off the stage?

No, but I reckon I’ll hold my own for sure.

In 2015 you released your 13th studio album, Get Up. How many more albums can you imagine recording in your lifetime?

I'm probably good for a couple more. At the moment, I'm writing a musical for Broadway, based on the film Pretty Woman.

You’re also a respected photographer, who has documented many fellow musicians. It must have been a bittersweet moment to see your photograph of Amy Winehouse reach such a large audience on the cover of Lioness? What was she like to shoot, deal with, and know?

Amy just wanted to be loved, she wanted a nice guy to take her out and make her laugh. She was engaging, quirky and an extraordinarily talented singer and songwriter. It was really sad to see her fade away.

What’s the most annoying preconception the world holds about you?

Oh, I get the one most singers get: ‘When are you putting out another song?’

Can you see yourself following Mick Jagger’s example, and touring the world into your seventies?

Let me get to my sixties first – some day I’ll be 18 going on 65.

• Bryan Adams performs on Thursday, March 9, at Autism Rocks Arena. Tickets, from Dh295, at www.117live.com