COVER STORY: Bryan Adams Feels the Love in India

Amid the sounds of clattering cutlery, Bryan Adams appears and gives me a brief but electric smile. “I’ll just put my camera on for a second, so you know it’s me,” he says. With the verification done, we begin talking about his return to India in December, performing across seven cities in what is his biggest tour of the country.

Adams is no stranger to India – he’s among the artists who have arguably toured India more times than any other singer of his level, to the extent that fans often joke that he should be given citizenship. But he last visited in 2018 and since the global pandemic, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that now more than ever, people want to seize every opportunity they get – especially when that comes in the form of the iconic voice behind songs like “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started,” “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” “18 Til I Die,” “Summer of ‘69” and “Here I Am.”  

Arriving in India to promote his Grammy-nominated album So Happy It Hurts from 2022 along with the above-mentioned classics, Adams first announced a six-city tour in July. On Oct. 27, a seventh show was added in Goa, marking the final stop on his tour that started in Kolkata on Dec. 8 and now ends on Dec. 17, 2024.  

Adams is more than aware of his fandom in India. He says, “I’ve been banging on to everybody to get back to India for a couple of years now. And so we finally organized it and I really, honestly didn’t know what to expect because I haven’t been there for a few years and times change. But my goodness, the tickets have virtually sold out.”  

Beyond the usual stops on his tour like he did in 2018, the sixth time that Adams is performing in India includes new cities like Goa, Kolkata and Shillong. Other than those, he returns to familiar ground in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurugram this month. Adams says, “Somebody asked me recently why we keep coming back, and my answer was, because the fans in India have always been so loyal.” 

Right from 1993 to 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2018, these are all signs that fan loyalty is only on the rise for Adams. Sure, it might be for nostalgia value to a great deal, but you can’t overlook the streams that So Happy It Hurts has accrued in the millions since its release in 2022. As the Canadian veteran ends the current album cycle, he’s already focusing on his next album, called Roll With The Punches and slated for release in 2025. He adds, “The first song from that’s going to come out probably in January or February. After three years, I think I have to say, So Happy It Hurts has lived up to its expectations.”  

In an interview with Rolling Stone India, Adams opens up about coming back to the country, new cities, old memories and why he can’t “turn off the tap” when it comes to writing music. Excerpts:  

Rolling Stone India: I was there at last time that you played Bengaluru. The funniest thing about it was when there was a plane flying over during a quieter song and you had to stall.  

Bryan Adams: [Laughs] Anything for a laugh!  

You go city to city, country to country, playing to huge crowds, a sea of people. What are the little things that make a difference to know you’re in a different part of the world? 

Are you talking about what makes a difference live or what makes a difference in the travel?  

Both, I guess.  

Well, we try and do as much as we can in the week or the two weeks… Let’s say we’re in a country. I try and pack as many shows as I can and I have to give some days off to the crew because there’s distances we have to get between cities. I suppose the main thing for everybody really is just rest and eating well. So those are the two key things about touring, whether we all get enough sleep so that we can have a great day.  

In terms of… let’s take the very first time I came to India, for example, and you say that it looks like just a mass of people, but when we first came, it was back in 1993 I think, and we played the cricket stadium in Mumbai and everybody dressed up for it. It wasn’t just jeans and T-shirts. Everybody came in their outfits. We had Sikhs, we had Krishnas, we had all different types of people in their full costumes. It was something very unique to see, nothing like I’d ever experienced before. 

Now you’re back with So Happy It Hurts, whose titled track also got a Grammy nomination last year. Was that surprising for you, or was it not really something that you think about too much?  

It’s not something I think about. But when I heard about it, I couldn’t believe it because I hadn’t had a Grammy nomination in 20 years. It was interesting that it coincided with the change of record company. So I went from Universal To BMG, and instantly things changed because no longer was I just a chair in the lobby. Suddenly people started paying attention, and so I got nominated. It just shows you that things need to change and it’s important to keep things fresh. 

In your last interview with us, you’ve said you’re always interested in what’s next. When do you feel like you’re ready for what’s next? 

I don’t think I’ve ever sort of rested on my laurels on anything, so I’m always up for what’s next. It’s never about what was, it’s about what is.  

It actually runs in my family. I have a mother that’s 96 years old, and I was looking at her the other day, and I was talking with her, and I said, “I know what it is with you now. I realize what it is. You don’t think about yesterday.” She goes, “Of course not, darling. Yesterday is done. It’s only about today and tomorrow.” And I thought that’s exactly how I’ve always been. So maybe it’s a genetic thing in my family. 

What’s the most rock and roll thing about Bryan Adams today? 

Well, I don’t know if I can really articulate it, because it’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t know if you know my song “Room Service”? [the title track from his 2004 album] 

If you listen to the lyrics of that, it sort of typifies my life in so many ways. It’s just one hotel to the next. And musically, I can’t turn off the tap. The tap seems to be able to just trickle along with ideas, and occasionally you get a good one and I think you have to be sort of open to the universe to allow those ideas to come forward. You got to sort of be aware. I don’t know if it’s hard to explain.  

So obviously when you’re writing – I don’t know if you experienced this as a writer – but you have to sit down and do the work. And if you don’t do it, you never finish what you wanted to do. I don’t mean the work in sense of like schoolwork, but I’m just saying if you want to move forward, you have to put the time in. I guess that’s part of what I do. Plus I really enjoy what I do. So it’s not difficult to get up and start assembling ideas. 

Occasionally, you’ll get a good one, like So Happy It Hurts. This is an idea that had been sitting around in my computer for ages and ages and I hadn’t really paid attention. When it came time to work on things again, I was shuffling through my notes and came across the song title. And I thought, “This is a perfect song title for how I feel right now.” Because it was lockdown [due to the global pandemic], I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t get my band together, I couldn’t go on the road.  

So I wrote a song that was pretty much about the idea of the car going down the road and the tops down and you’re just heading out – sort of the dream of being that free. It wasn’t possible at that particular time, as you probably recall. I was just happy and I thought the idea was it was a good antidote to how everybody was at the time. Perhaps that’s why it got nominated. 

What would you say has changed about your processes over time? Not necessarily in terms of technology, but just creatively. Maybe specifically with this upcoming album?  

Perhaps more independence. This next album is going to be released on my own label, which is called Bad Records. I’m going completely independent. The same sort of feeling about independence has been happening in the recording and the writing. Although I did cowrite on the album – what I would do is I’d sort of start an idea, come up with an idea and then share it with whoever I wanted to work with. But it wasn’t like ideas were being sent, it was just I was sort of on my own again. 

I guess that’s the only difference really now to say before, when I was working with say, Jim Vallance, we would always lock ourselves in a room and create together. That doesn’t happen anymore. 

Speaking of Bad Records, over the last year, you’ve also become self-managed. What is it like taking control of all of that, at this stage in your career? 

I should have done it a long time ago, but I was loyal to the companies and people that I had engaged with. But like I told you, early on in this interview, at some point you have to sort of freshen things up if things aren’t. Everything is about moving forward. Everything. If you don’t feel that the people you’re with are helping you move forward, then you have to change. That’s all there is to it. 

it goes more than just in music. It goes for everybody out there. You have to create your team and if your team is your wife or your family or your workplace or whatever, you choose the people that are going to help you move forward. 

It feels like it also signifies that it’s never too late for any artist to manage things on their own terms instead of letting someone else call the shots. 

I do really believe in teamwork. My father used to say, “No man is an island” when he was talking in reference to relationships. You can’t really do it on your own. You have to have a team. And that might be one person, you might be 10 people, whatever it is.  

Even though I’m self-managed and I started my own record company, I still have to get people in to help me because you can’t do it all, but you can freshen things up and get a younger take on the way things are. So much has changed in the world – how you deliver music, how you make music, how you perform music. You really have to keep up technologically in some ways. However, live, it’s musicians, it’s about real musicians playing music. 

Did you feel like there was still a little bit of nervousness going into it, like taking care of things yourself? 

No, I was very confident that things had to change. It doesn’t come without some trepidation because it’s like entering a forest again with never knowing the path. So you have to sort of work your way through it. But it’s exciting and the reason I got into music in the beginning was it excited me. It was really exciting to create from nothing, and it was exciting to go and perform these things that we created. So you always have to get back to the source. The source is the songs, and just you have to be excited by what you’re doing. You know the old adage, you have to follow your gut. 

So follow your gut. You’ll never go wrong, you know? Don’t follow your head. Don’t follow your heart. Don’t follow anything below the waist. Follow your gut. 

You were one of the first artists from the West that a lot of people heard. Did anyone ever figure out what was so relatable about a guy reminiscing about the Summer of ’69 or very Western settings and stories? 

But is it a Western setting?  

No, not entirely.  

It’s not. It’s that, you know, maybe a porch is a Western setting, but other than that, the setting is the best days of our lives. Everybody has that, everybody can relate to that and you’ve got to take a chance. It’s now or never – everybody relates to that. And again, follow your gut. I’ve got to make this decision. It’s now or never. 

I think the first song that really captured everybody’s imagination, there might have been “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You.” Because once that song came out in 1991, everything else that had happened before suddenly had a new lease of life. 

I call it my backpacking trip around the world. I didn’t go home for four years. Once that song came out, it opened up places. We had the Number One song in every country in the world. So we thought, “If that’s the case, then people will know who we are. Let’s go. At least they’ll know one song.” We went and we played so many countries that had never had shows before, big shows. Maybe they had Western artists in India before I’d shown up there, but we were certainly the first to do a big show there in ’93.  

So I think that it created something at the time that became sort of almost like folklore. [Replaying a hypothetical conversation between fans] “He actually came. He came to India. He played!” “No, really? Yeah, he really did. Yes, I saw the show!” And so from there, it perpetrates a sort of thing. 

Being an artist who has fans across generations now, have you heard any great stories about how your songs have been passed on from father to son or maybe even grandparent to grandchild? 

Don’t make me feel so old. [Laughs] 

But yes, people write in daily just saying this song or that song meant so much to them, and to please play it at the next show. We actually do a thing at the beginning of our show where we have a cue code which people can request a song at the beginning of the show. If we get enough requests for a certain song, we’ll play it. Because now there’s 16 albums, there’s so much music that you kind of forget what songs are out there, in demand or not, or just interesting for people. 

I saw an Instagram Reel about two lizards hugging on a porch and it was set to the unplugged version of “Heaven.” What’s the funniest context you’ve heard your music in these days? 

Oh, I don’t know. That sounds like a good one, though. You know, when you write songs, you don’t expect them to end up as sort of memes that involve animals. But listen, I guess it means that the songs have passed the test of time.  

Last night I was doing a show here in Berlin, and one of the fellows that was putting the show on said, “You know that you’ve got songs that are going to go on long after you’re gone. How does that feel?” I said, I don’t know, man. It’s like I wrote those songs in a cold basement with cat piss everywhere. So, you know, I never expected them to go beyond. The whole goal in the beginning of making music was, okay, I got to pay my rent. Somehow I’ve got to pay my rent. 

You don’t think about whether it’s going to last a week or a year or a decade or whatever. You just write.  I used to take my songs and finish the demo, and then we’d get in the car and drive around and listen to the song over and over in the car at various levels. That became sort of a test to whether it was exciting enough. 

You’re fighting for artists with the Canada streaming tax laws that have come in. Where does that fighter in you come from? 

There’s just so much government involvement in Canada with the arts. And I just think for the most part, the government should stay out and let artists be artists and let the music do the talking. There’s no point in propping things up, especially a system that was developed in the Seventies, which is outdated and it doesn’t help emerging artists.  

Now, emerging artists, and I’m talking about young new artists, need to have the opportunity to work with who they want and not be dictated to by a system that only allows for Canadians to work with Canadians. Canadians need to be able to work with Indians, people from Spain and different cultures, because Canada is a multicultural society and there are so many influences that people naturally would lean to. If you’re an Italian immigrant and you’ve come to Canada, maybe you’re going to want to work with an Italian producer, but under the law there, if you do that, your music is no longer considered Canadian. So therefore, you wouldn’t benefit from the laws and the taxes that the government places on music and the streaming tax, which they’ve put on the DSPs.  

If the money that they were making from this was going to prop up a situation to help artists, really help them, then I would be all for it. But unfortunately, it’s a system that’s outdated and doesn’t help young artists.  

Hopefully that changes soon.  

I don’t think it’ll happen with this government. This government have got their heads firmly placed in the sand, so I don’t think that’s going to happen. But it doesn’t stop me from speaking out.  

You’ve said you don’t despair over the future of rock music. Do you think everyone else should let it go too? 

I don’t really hear that talk. To be fair, I think the biggest shows in the world are rock concerts, whether it be Metallica. Even Taylor [Swift], some of her shows quite rock. I suppose it’s just whether or not you capture the imagination of people and enough that they want to come to the show and whether they enjoyed the show before and they’ll come again.  

This is the thing that makes rock music different to say pop music, because pop music doesn’t. It’s great for the time and it’s very obviously very popular. But does it have a long life? The answer is it doesn’t. So if you rely on a pop career to keep you going, you won’t be able to play all the places in the world where, for some reason, everybody likes to rock. 

What do you think of getting up to outside of the shows while you’re in India? 

Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the tour schedule. It’s pretty packed. I don’t know if I’ll have time. I’ve always wanted to go to Chandigarh, so I’m going to try and go up there and visit because it’s one city I’ve always wanted to see. 

I know about [architect] Le Corbusier design and that he was very involved in the beginning of that sort of development of the city. So I kind of want to go and sped a day sort of mooching around.  

It’s a vast country, so you never see it all, which is part of the excitement about coming back again, it’s to be able to see something different again.