Bryan Adams – Roll With The Punches interview

Bryan Adams is back with a feisty new record, Roll With The Punches, sounding like a man reinvigorated. We catch up with him during his European arena tour to discuss the ‘awesome’ Mel C, hanging out with Iggy Pop, and remaining unbeaten after all these years. 

“Hello,” says the voice at the other end of the line. “Hi, is that Bryan?” we reply… First stupid question of the day. Of course it’s Bryan Adams, you would recognise that voice anywhere: medium grit suspended in treacle. Distinctive and instantly familiar from childhood, closing out Top Of The Pops for 16 weeks straight in that Summer of ’91. Back to the here and now, for Bryan Adams it’s a rare day off from his latest arena tour. He’s a good sport, with a dry, self-effacing humour, occasionally taking the mickey in a deadpan manner that catches you unawares; sometimes turning the questions back on the interviewer. Last night he played Aberdeen. How was the show?

“Pretty good, I think,” he offers. “There really haven’t been any bad shows. It’s just changing the setlist a bit every night.”

Needless to say, he’s not short of material. Across a 50-year career, Adams has exhibited that rare knack for writing universal anthems that seem to flow out effortlessly. Modern staples like Summer Of ’69, Run To You, Heaven, Everything I Do… have become part of the bedrock of primetime radio.

Just to keep things fresh, though, he’s armed with an energetic new batch of tracks, Roll With The Punches (his 16th studio album), to spice up the established classics. Bryan opens the tour with the title track, a back-to-basics, honest rocker complete with barn-storming guitar solo – a dying artform in the modern pop single – and a muscular chorus that is tailor-made for audiences to scream back at him. Already, it’s taking on a new life on tour.

Roll With The Punches

“In many cases, you don’t really get the chance to play new songs live before they come out,” he says. “We used to do that in the old days. We would just play whatever songs we had, and they would take on a form playing in clubs. And then you take that to the studio.”

The title track carries an explicit theme of defiance; that sense of picking yourself up – no matter what life throws at you – and carrying on in good humour. It’s a central ethos throughout Bryan’s life.

“Well, I don’t know if I know any other way, really. That’s just who I am. I think that if I was to have accepted ‘no’ early on in my life I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. As it turns out, ‘no’ was an impetus for ‘yes’… ‘No’ was an impetus for ‘I’ll show you!’”

Show us, he has. Roll With The Punches manages to sound huge while possessing a satisfying intimacy. So much modern pop can be suffocated by its own production, but Adams allows it space to breathe. You sense the band’s presence at its core. It feels very much like three or four guys in a room, just blasting it out together.

“Yeah, that’s the key,” says Bryan. “That is how I make all my records. I don’t really know how else to do it. I don’t have enough keyboard savvy to be sitting there behind a bunch of synths. I just put everybody in the room, it’s easier!”

It’s particularly refreshing just to hear something that’s stripped back a little. It’s still highly-engineered and arena ready, but retains that rawness. He’s aware of his wheelhouse, and there’s an honest simplicity about that.

“I know that guitar music isn’t particularly popular at the moment,” Adams admits, “but it doesn’t matter to me ’cause I know there are people out there that really like it, if they get a chance to hear it. So, I play to the converted.”

Across Bryan’s catalogue, the notion of a band of brothers has served him well over the years. Regular sidemen like long-term guitarist Keith Scott, and Pat Steward on drums, bolster that ‘last gang in town’ mentality, which feeds back into the recordings. It never just feels like a solo star plus hired hands; it feels like a unit.

“All the way, yeah. I always wanted to be in a band, you know? I never wanted to be the frontman, but that’s the way it turned out. But I can still have the band vibe.”

So while, the spotlight is on Bryan, every player gets a moment to shine.

Fertile Relationships

Roll With The Punches sees Adams work with regular collaborator, Mutt Lange, whose credits include AC/DC and Def Leppard. “I love working with Mutt,” Adams offers. “I don’t think he is [particularly] interested in producing anymore, but he loves the process of songwriting so much. I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.”

Lange gives Adams someone to bounce ideas off. “He just knows structure really well. The way we work, generally, is I’ll have an idea for a song, whether it be a title, a chorus, or a verse or something, then I’ll send that to him. And within a couple of days, he’ll send me something back saying, ‘What d’you think of this?’ And so, it’s just a back and forth over the internet.”

Another fertile relationship has been Adams’ on-off songwriting partnership with Jim Vallance, stretching way back to 1978. Jim co-wrote two songs on the new album, How’s That Working For Ya? and A Little More Understanding. The latter is an infectious stomper that struts along on a funky groove.

“It was an old demo that Jim had sent me years ago. I have a library of things that I go back to, whether it be lyrics, guitar riffs or demos. And because I’m playing bass a lot live these days, occasionally, we’ll do a dance medley of songs just for a laugh. And in doing that, this song was inspired to go that direction. That’s what happens when you put me on bass.”

As with Mutt, their creative partnership has evolved. “With both guys, we don’t sit together in a room anymore. It’s similar in that sense.

“But those tracks with Jim are ideas that go back years that never found a home. That’s just the way it is with some songs. They just don’t come around right away, and probably for the better.”

The Tap That Doesn’t Stop

Adams is nothing if not prolific; always writing by default. He explains: “The tap doesn’t necessarily go off. Then one day something will happen, like Roll With The Punches will come together, and that becomes the cornerstone song for an album. You know it right away, as soon as you get that particular song.

“It’s happened to me umpteen times on records. In fact, every album has one sort of signature [track], and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the beginning of a record’.

“So, then you have your direction. And then you also have songs that you demoed prior to that, which you might need to rethink in order to bring them into that same energy space.”

“I’m really excited about this album,” Adams enthuses. Indeed, there are plenty of highlights elsewhere. Make Up Your Mind is another spirited rocker, with some turbo-charged drumming. Will We Ever Be Friends Again – thematically, if not musically – is an update on Reckless’ anthemic classic Summer Of ’69, looking back from a distance at long summer days and lost youth.

On Never Ever Let You Go (featuring Elizabeth Hurley, in the video), Bryan suggests a close connection is more important than pure perfection. He’s talking about relationships, but that could just as easily apply to music – the need to let the honesty shine through above the production sparkle.

Life Thru A Lens

While it’s music that made Adams a household name, photography has become a significant parallel career, with an equally impressive pedigree. He’s photographed heads of state, royalty, and icons of stage and film.

“I have always liked working with photographers, who are faced with the big challenge of making me look decent,” he jokes. And as a photographer, he’s come face-to-face with a few of his own heroes.

“I worked with Iggy Pop not too long ago. It was one of the most exciting sessions for me ’cause I was already a fan of Iggy, but when he showed up by himself, he just exploded onto the set. It was really funny. In fact, I sat with him at one point and said, ‘I’ve got to ask you something. I went to see you play in 1981 in a club in Brooklyn, and you took the microphone and you smashed it into your face and knocked your front tooth out. What was all that about?’ And he goes, ‘Oh yeah, I had knocked my tooth out before and I had this tooth that wouldn’t stay in. It occasionally just kept falling out.’ So yeah, it was part of that thing. Oh, it was so brilliant.”

While Bryan’s megastar credentials need no justifying, surely even he has felt a little insecure in the presence of some of the subjects he’s photographed (from Kate Moss to Amy Winehouse; Mick Jagger to Justin Trudeau). It must be pretty nerve-wracking taking a picture of the Queen, for instance… “Always, always humbled,” he says sincerely. “I don’t think I’m ever anything else but humbled. And that goes for everybody, really, ’cause it’s a daunting task to make something really cool with somebody that you don’t know.”

Again, it comes back to the notion of getting the gang together. “I realised at some point the photographers that really were excelling were doing it with a team. They had somebody working on clothes, somebody working on hair, a couple of assistants checking lights.

“There was always this team around, so I work around that idea. Whether it be music, art, photos, you gotta have people that you can rely on, that are gonna be able to inspire you.”

Bryan has published umpteen photography books, the latest, #shotbyadams, is a retrospective of the last 10 years’ work. “I went back into my Queen and Prince Philip session and pulled a couple of rarities out of that one, and there’s the odd thing that came in there that I’ve forgotten about.”

As we speak, there’s an exhibition in London, with various others in motion around the world. One particular venue to host his ‘Wounded – Legacy Of War’ exhibition has made an unexpected impression: the Reichstag, in Berlin. “It’s quite interesting to be able to do that, I mean, I didn’t even know they did exhibitions there!”

It’s just one of the many iconic and resonant buildings around the world that Bryan’s career has taken him to over the years. “Yeah, it’s crazy,” he says. “At the Ryman Theater, in [Nashville] Tennessee, I was like, ‘Didn’t Elvis play here? Let’s see if some of that mojo could wear off on us!’”

Another personal favourite is the Royal Albert Hall, where Bryan performed a three-night residency in May 2024. “The first thing that came to mind when we first played there, years ago, was the Zeppelin shows,” he says, “and I saw Cream there when they did their film. I love that building. It’s one of the best places in the world to play.”

An Undefeated Record

There’s one institution that Adams will be forever associated with. No doubt, he’s bored to tears of being asked about it, but we couldn’t pass up on the chance to mention (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, which to this day remains the longest ever consecutive No.1 in the UK charts: 16 weeks, which even The Beatles didn’t come close to. It doesn’t seem something like that could happen again.

“Oh, sure it can,” Bryan counters. “I mean, there’s been people that are already close.” (Indeed, fellow Canadian, Drake, almost equalled it with 15 weeks with One Dance in 2016.) Still, no-one’s topped it yet. That must feel pretty special? “Hmmm, that is amazing and long may it be so, but the reality is that something will eventually knock it off. Up until I came along with that song, do you know what song was holding the record?”

CP pauses to think… Wet Wet Wet came pretty close at some point? “That wasn’t it. Wet Wet Wet was trying for my title. No, before that was Slim Whitman with Rose Marie from, like, 1955.” [The US country star spent 11 consecutive weeks topping the UK chart, holding the record for 36 years.]

“So, the week that we got the record, I found Slim in America, flew him over to England, and we played Rose Marie and Everything I Do together at Wembley. It was just beautiful. He was such a dude.”

A neat full circle. But, looking on another 34 years, the whole musical landscape has changed once more. Bryan and Slim’s feat was based on people physically going into shops, buying a record, CD or cassette – parting with cash. Nowadays, the charts incorporate other measures like streaming services… “Streaming, what’s that?” Bryan deadpans before offering, “I’m just teasing you!”

But surely it adds extra resonance to the occasion, being based on physical sales. People aren’t buying records like they did; there’s a strong case that the milestone was even more impressive when Bryan achieved it in 1991, compared to today, given how people consume music and the level of engagement it requires.

“I see what you mean. Yeah, of course. It’s an amazing thing to have been part of. And I wish I had more moments of writing songs in 45 minutes like that, but you know, it was of a time.”

So, when they wrote that particular song, was Bryan aware that he had a colossal smash hit on his hands? “Of course not.”

Do you ever know? “I had no idea, but I knew that Mutt did, because I remember him pulling into the studio one day and he said, ‘You know what? This song really has an international melody’, and those words stuck with me because he was so right. There wasn’t a country in the world that didn’t play that song afterwards.”

It’s definitely got that universal quality… “When he was producing it, he was thinking global. Hats off to both Mutt and Michael Kamen, because they’re the ones that were really the geniuses behind it.”

As for the song’s association with the Hollywood film, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Bryan says: “We weren’t even thinking about the film; we were just thinking about making a record.”

Of course, another track that holds a special place in many people’s hearts is his hit collaboration with Melanie C, When You’re Gone. But that hook-up had a surprising genesis.

“I met her in a lift,” explains Adams. “I was just finishing up an album, and I was in Los Angeles. I got in the lift and she was getting in, too, and I said, ‘Oh hello and where are you going? Up to the bar? Okay, I’ll go along!’ And that’s how it came together.”

So, it wasn’t one of those cringey moments, squeezed in awkwardly waiting for your floor. “What, and like, farting?” he fires back, sounding vaguely incriminated… “No, it was very serendipitous. She is awesome. A real trooper, man, she just gets on with it.”

A Defiant Spirit

Bryan’s recent activity seems to represent a concerted effort to take back autonomy of his career and secure his legacy. He’s set up his own label, Bad Records – “The whole thing comes from my school nickname, which was Badams.” He’s also re-recorded the classic hits to take ownership of the masters. Adams has long produced himself; he now manages himself, too, for the first time in four decades. He’s had good reason to roll with the punches.

“Coming out of the last couple of years, it was tough,” he says. “I’ve been with Universal, and signed to a contract, since I was 18. So, to suddenly be free was strange, but at the same time really inspiring. I was definitely emboldened by my freedom. I felt like I’ve been let out of school.”

Because he can control his wider artistic vision more closely?

“That was always the case, but there was something more personal about it when you know it’s going to be your record company putting it out,” he says.

“Back in the day, you would have to do it by committee. Everyone had a job, and so they would try to push doing things that they liked. And that’s why in the beginning I never used to have my own photographs on albums, because I always thought, ‘Oh, I have to use so-and-so’. But that’s not the case. At some point in the 90s, I went, ‘I’m not going to do that anymore!’”

Bryan’s been testing the water with the new label, releasing his own versions of two songs he wrote for Kiss back in 1981 last year, followed by a Royal Albert Hall boxset, and a new version of his Tina Turner duet (It’s Only Love) for Record Store Day 2025.

“It’s exciting, because it’s just all about the music. If we can wash our face, that’s great. But, like you were saying, people don’t particularly buy albums anymore. If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it in a way that it really is something quite interesting and quality.”

Packing A Punch

It appears like Bryan’s latest flurry of activity is all about wrapping up unfinished business and there’s still a lot more yet to come. Does Adams have a stockpile of ideas tucked away on a shelf for the next record?

“Yeah, there’s probably about 10 other songs, a lot of extra material that could have been on the record, but there’s too many songs. I didn’t want to put out a record with 20 tracks, because no one’s going to hear them that way. So, it’s better to sort of come out slowly.”

While, generally, Bryan’s output is not overtly political, Roll With The Punches carries particular resonance in light of the current international climate – not least Canada’s relationship with the USA. So was that wider worldview in Bryan’s headspace, as well as the more personal impetus of self-autonomy?

“Of course,” he says. “But if you wanted to look at not being particularly political, listen to Ultimate Love or Don’t Drop That Bomb On Me or What If There Were No Sides At All. There are lots of things that get my politics across without having to be overtly political.” Fair point.

At 65, Bryan’s looking trim as ever, while his voice continues to age like a rich-bodied malt whisky. These gruelling arena tours must be pretty intensive on both body and soul. What’s Bryan’s secret to staying match fit on tour? “I just put the kettle on and have a cup of tea,” says Adams. “That’s pretty much it really. You know what? The best thing is getting enough sleep. If you can get enough sleep, you’ll be alright.”

But how do you manage that when you’ve just come off stage to 20,000 people? That’s a skill in itself, to have that power to switch off.

“You know – like last night in Aberdeen – I could come off the stage and go straight to bed.”

It’s a far cry from ‘reckless’ or ‘waking up the neighbours’, but clearly Bryan’s perfected the formula for sticking around for the long haul. Cup of tea, anyone?

Roll With The Punches, his first album via his own independent record label Bad Records, is out now. Order here

Featured image credit: B Adams

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