As Bryan Adams releases his 15th album, here's a love letter to India's favourite Canadian rocker

In #TheMusicThatMadeUs, senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri chronicles the impact that musicians and their art have on our lives, how they mould the industry by rewriting its rules and how they shape us into the people we become: their greatest legacies.

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He’s the most famous Canadian in India. No international artist has toured the country as often as Bryan Adams. No major Indian artist has had the kind of packed stadiums in this country [every single time] the way Adams has had. In fact, he has visited India so often that within the event management community here, it remains a widely accepted notion that if you have incurred a loss over any international concert, all you need to do is bring back Bryan Adams.  

For a singer-guitarist who originally intended to be a drummer, Adams’ career has been an almost 40-year exposition of pop-rock. His ‘Summer of ’69’ from his fourth album Reckless  [1984] has one of the most instantly recognisable opening riffs, one that has been so overplayed in these past few decades, yet one that evokes the loudest cheer in every single concert.

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By the time ‘[Everything I Do] I Do It for You’ hit the screens with Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, an entire generation of English-music loving urbane Indian women had lost their hearts to the blue-eyed Canadian. It remains one of the best-selling songs of all time, having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, and continues to be included in romantic compilation albums 30 years on.  

Around the world, Adams shot to fame with his unabashed rock love ballads that topped charts, and caught our attention for their timeless melodies. From ‘Please Forgive Me,’ ‘Can’t Stop This Thing We Started,’  and ‘Cuts Like a Knife,’ ‘Heaven,’  to  ‘All for Love,’ ‘Run to You,’ ‘Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?,’ his earnest songwriting, coupled with his raspy powerful voice provided generations of young men the confidence to verbalise their youthful romantic inner feelings. You may find it cheesy today but be honest, you have definitely dedicated a Bryan Adams song to a love interest, at some point. Or pretended to sing it to them in your minds. Whether or not that love actually materialised is a whole different story.  

Adams’ mastery over heartfelt, accessible lyrics without the pretension of self-appointed rock gravitas has considerably contributed to his universal appeal. He was a rockstar who looked like he showered every day — a big factor in his wide fanbase that spanned generations at the same time. He balanced the right amount of noise with the schmaltzy, and at the peak of his career, had as many male fans as female. At a time when disco morphed to tinny synth rock, and grunge was making way for a cheerier hip-hop, Adams stuck to his guns; boy did it pay off! Some of his biggest hits have come when the music flavours of the season were in a state of transition, but Adams remained completely undeterred by trends and fads.

It cannot be overstated just how much Bryan Adams has done for couples in India, a culture that is infamous for its lack of sensitivity and respect for young, romantic relationships.

It is no surprise that Adams enjoys a very special relationship with India that goes beyond his commercial viability and bankable nature in the events’ space. A self-confessed Indophile, Adams has toured India five times between 1994 and 2018. In fact, his first concert in India was a resounding success, thanks in particular to the timing of it.

When MTV hogged our attention in 1992, among the many songs that played ad nauseum was the Adams’ ‘[Everything I Do] I Do It For You.’ At over six-and-a-half minutes, it was a long song for its time, yet it got a fair bit of airplay in a video that cut between two dishy men: Adams and Kevin Costner. Having won the Grammy that year for the same song, Adams continued on an international high when he released the compilation So Far So Good in 1993. That was a strategic move that saw the album go platinum in the UK and many other countries, reintroducing his greatest hits to a newer generation of fans, and capitalising on the music video boom of the early ’90s.  

By the time he came to India in January 1994, Adams had given us a revision course of his repertoire, and even featured in The Musketeers’ celebrity-trio power ballad ‘All for Love’ with Sting and Rod Stewart. A generation in Mumbai that missed out on watching The Police in 1980 at Rang Bhavan, and the clandestine Page and Plant gig from 1972 at Slip Disc, was raring to go when Adams became among the biggest rock acts at the peak of their career to perform in India. The city was still limping back to normalcy after the communal riots and blasts that tore through it in 1992-93, and culturally, it was hinged on the last shreds of its ‘Bombay’ persona, when Adams performed here. It was a year before Bombay became Mumbai and Bon Jovi’s visit, before the Hindutva-espousing Thackerays of the then-ruling party flaunted their love for an artist like Michael Jackson in 1996.  

Your first time is often the most memorable, and our first interaction with Bryan Adams at Brabourne stadium created a long-lasting impression on our idea of fandom. Even today, as he is poised to release his 15th album So Happy It Hurts on 11 March, 2022, the idea of Bryan Adams’ music is immediately associated with a sense of nostalgia not just for the love from our past, but for the love for a city that was at the threshold of irreversible change.

Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles.

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