Bryan Adams Acoustic Show

1/16/2009

Atlanta Symphony Hall (fancy!)

I wasn’t really sure if there was any Canadian music besides Rush, until I became familiar with Bryan Adams. From the beginning, I was never a huge fan of his studio work. I think of it kind of like if you took all the cheesiness and clichés of 80’s pop and created one artist from that, you would have Bryan Adams. That is until I saw him live acoustic. I have heard great things about him live, in general, but once you take those thundering drums and generic 80’s synth away from the tracks, what you have left is a great songwriter. That’s right, I said it, I think Bryan Adams is a great songwriter. He might be simple, and might have relied a little too much on synth and “let’s make tonight count” lyrics, but he sure can write a powerful song stripped down.

Arriving at the Atlanta Symphony Hall was a strange thing indeed, because I’m used to arriving at a crowded venue filled with a rowdy crowd of T-shirt and jeans wearing people. I had to leave my usual T-shirts of various bands that existed before I existed at home, and instead sport a snazzy button-up shirt. A friend and I opened the doors to the venue and found everyone dressed similarly.

After a quick announcement from a coordinator at the venue, the lights dimmed, promptly at the announced start time - which was another thing I wasn’t used to. Instead of various band members walking confidently onto the stage and tearing right into the first song, one man walked out with an acoustic guitar strapped to him. He went into a song I recognized immediately, “Run To You”, which really caught my attention. I started actually listening to the song, not the various 80’s add-ins. Somehow, with everything stripped away, the chorus really shined. However, when Bryan went into the guitar solo with nothing behind him, it was intimate, but pretty weak. Then the lights dimmed to red, a nod to the red wine referenced in the dramatic opening song to Bryan’s new album 11. “Tonight We Have The Stars” is one song I’ve liked from the very beginning, and done on just an acoustic, it was brilliant. Following this song, a pianist came on stage, as Adams equipped himself with a harmonica Dylan-style. “Back To You” was played before Bryan started talking to the audience. The venue and show were so intimate, you could talk in just above a normal speaking voice, and Bryan could hear you. While interacting with the crowd, something he’s notorious for, he announced the next song, “Here I Am” from his soundtrack to the movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. A woman yelled out that she loved him in the movie, to which he promptly replied, “I wasn’t in that movie. Do I look like a horse to you?” The audience laughed and he and the pianist played the song. At the very end, he added lyrics so that the last line went “Here I am….without my band” which got a hearty laugh from the relatively small audience.

After rousing acoustic renditions of “Let’s Make A Night To Remember” and “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”, the pianist and Bryan performed another track off the new album, “I Thought I’d Seen Everything”, which in my humble opinion, was the best song of the night. Something about it really stood out, and the next song, “When You Love Someone” just felt weak in comparison. This was followed by “Heat of the Night”, which took on a totally new form live. After this one, Bryan talked with the crowd again. This time he talked for a while, and first went over how this was the 11^th show on his “11 tour”, and how he thought that was pretty cool. He then went on to explain how a guy busted in on him one night in his dressing room, and gave him a letter saying “Dear Mr. Willie Nelson, I really love your song, ‘Seven Spanish Angels’.” He found this weird, but realized that he really dug that song, too, so he decided to add it to the tour. Sure enough, the next song was “Seven Spanish Angels”, but before Bryan and his pianist could get to the song, they had key troubles for five or six minutes, and had a joking little argument about how the other musician was in the wrong key. Two songs later, including one with a really cool piano solo, Bryan took out his camera to snap a few shots and went into one of his classics, “Cuts Like A Knife” followed by “This Time”, both taking on a very different feeling acoustic.

“This Time” was followed by “Please Forgive Me”, a sentimental ballad. After the first chorus, Bryan announced that it would make a good country song, so he started to sing it in an exaggerated Southern drawl, getting some chuckles along the way. After a few seconds of silence, he announced that he was going to play “his most misunderstood song” - for reasons I will not go into-- and the crowd knew right away what was coming. Acoustically, his biggest hit, “Summer of 69” had so much raw power and drive. I had heard the song at least 1,000 times on the radio, but it just seemed so fresh and new coming straight from the heart (like that Bryan Adams pun?). He followed this one up with the closing song off his 11 album, “Walk On By”, which features strings and an acoustic guitar, so I was hoping for the orchestra to make an appearance. Although they did not, the song went over well, and he decided to follow it up by singing both parts of the duet he did with Tina Turner, “It’s Only Love”.

Someone yelled “Free Bird” during request time earlier in the show, causing a huge amount of laughter, so Bryan decided to tease the first verse of it; he then followed this up with a “Stairway to Heaven” tease. Finally, someone had actually requested a Bryan Adams song, “Oxygen”, so he went on to play a verse and chorus of it, and then went on to tease another song. After this warm crowd moment was over, Bryan announced he’d do a song that was supposed to be about a male stripper for a movie, but then he scrapped that idea. It’s a good thing he did, because that song became one of his most popular. There’s no way anyone has ever been to a dance where they haven’t played “Heaven” at some point, and it’s one of those songs that just about everybody knows. After a long applause, he went on to play a song he wanted to pitch to Ray Charles called, “The Right Place,” and he closed his main set with “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You”. Bryan then left the stage to an enormous amount of applause.

The lights stayed on for a bit, and Adams took the stage again with his pianist. The two went into a beautiful rendition of “Somebody”, followed by “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” The latter was extraordinary because the pianist transposed the Spanish guitar line to piano, and it sounded great. This was followed by probably my favorite Bryan Adams song to hear acoustic, “Straight From The Heart”. This is one of the songs I liked even in the studio version, so an acoustic version was great. Bryan even included a harmonica solo in this performance of the song. Finally, he announced that the next song would be his last. It was the song he and two other fantastic singers, Rod Stewart (I never said he wasn’t a great singer) and Sting recorded together, the extremely catchy “All For Love”, in which he sang all three vocal parts. After the sound of his voice and his guitar died away, the sound of a standing ovation filled the venue, as the night with Bryan Adams came to a close.

- JJ