Bryan Adams
Tracks of My Years

Introduction:

Writes Bryan Adams in the liner notes of this 2014 album: "Perhaps you're wondering who this guy on the cover is, who seems to have just stumbled out from the road crew and techs of Deep Purple, but I swear it's me, and all that hair is mine... I'm about sixteen years old and I'm at home in Vancouver, Canada... I loved music with great big guitars intensely, and at that time, people like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were constantly on the radio, so hard rock grabbed me, and I was hooked. It was a fantastic time for the guitar: Blackmore, Page, Clapton, Ronson, Townshend... Back then, I was practicing at home with Bad Company songs and having fun with Alice Cooper, Who, Janis Joplin... even Stevie Wonder, who was the first I saw in concert in Vancouver in '75..."

Context:

Very well, then why in a work entitled "The Tracks of My Years" by this rocker are there sixteen covers from great artists like Bob Dylan, Beatles, Chuck Berry, Miracles, Beach Boys, Creedence, Eddie Cochran, Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Cliff, Willie Dixon, Don Gibson, etc., which mostly features music from the sixties, when Adams, born in '59, was just a kid?

The reason is clear and unpleasant: Bryan has placed himself in the hands of the producer (also Canadian) David Foster, a skilled and prepared musician but anything but a rocker and, above all, a terrible manipulator of others' talent.

Already responsible, for example, more than thirty years ago, for the lifelong ruination of Chicago, who went from a multifaceted and surprising group with its three singers and four composers, to a backing band for their bassist Peter Cetera, flattered and convinced by the producer to sing his compositions, while the others were sidelined, and the horn section, which Foster didn't like, was silenced, convincing everyone that such a revolution was advantageous for each of them because with the poppish songs interpreted by Cetera, mountains of records would be sold, with a consequent overall surge in bank accounts.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

The much-loved hard rock is conspicuous by its total absence in this phony celebration of youth. And Bryan candidly admits it in the aforementioned liner notes, stating that some of these songs weren't even on his radar, and the person next to him in this venture made him sing them. So screw you, Bryan!

The strengths, not sufficient to make this work acceptable, are the predictable quality of Adams's voice and the instrumental execution by him and his accompanists. Mind you, all kept on a leash by the songwriter Foster... Four-bar guitar solos in total, almost no experimentation. Three or four covers are well done and moving, and I'll point them out below, but the rest is gruel for senile dodderers. Bryan's old flaw, letting himself go to "adult" pop that panders instead of cultivating his rocker soul (verifiable at every concert, my word) is at its fullest extent here.

Album Highlights:

Adams's slightly raspy and unmistakable voice bursts from the speakers and kicks off this album with "Any Time at All," a well-known Lennon song from "Hard Day's Night," 1963. The clean and clear execution highlights in particular the surprising, wonderful fourth chord of the verse (I believe a Bb with the ninth), the fulcrum of the whole piece together with the explosive refrain, not accidentally placed a cappella as the opening. Thumb's up, what can you say... the Beatles are so musical that reinterpreting them is almost always a success.

"Lay Lady Lay" is my favorite Bob Dylan song, just saying. Impossible to ruin it, with its exquisite swing and its simple and wonderful lyrics. But there's a catch: Adams chooses to interpret the verse, very low in key, an octave higher. So when the chorus arrives, sung in the same key as Dylan's, the thing falls a bit flat, a pity. I would have shifted everything a key or two higher, so as to respect the tone rise in the chorus. A beautiful song, always.

"C'mon Everybody" is from '58 (Eddie Cochran), and for once you can actually hear where Bryan also got his inspiration for his simpler and more visceral rock'n'roll. Finally, a grating guitar, convincing yelled vocals; you get that he's "centered" on this piece, but unfortunately, it's an exception.

No objections on "Many Rivers to Cross," yet another ballad although from a reggae artist (Jimmy Cliff), but intense and melodically remarkable.

The Rest:

The second track "She Knows Me" is a classic collaboration with his friend and songwriting partner Jim Vallance. Neither infamous nor praiseworthy, tense, and courteously rhythmic like dozens of other things scattered throughout his discography. But the question arises spontaneously: for what purpose? Why two original compositions, two, in the midst of a sea of covers? And not even placed at the end, or as a bonus... no, this one comes even second! What urgency did this track have to be assigned, along with another, to fit with sixteen (16) non-originals tied together by an alleged amarcord? Boh.

"I Can't Stop Loving You" is a famous country song from 1957 (with Adams, then, not even conceived...) transformed five years later into rhythm & blues by the great Ray Charles. In subsequent years, even Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lee Lewis... and also in Italy we had our version, thanks to a certain John Foster pseudonym of Paolo Occhipinti; Italian title "Non finirò d'amarti". That is to say, Adams here has no hope of standing out in the compact crowd of predecessors. One of Foster's most unfortunate choices.

"Kiss and Say Goodbye" was released by the Manhattans in 1976, and I bet Bryan didn't even notice it existed at the time. It's a slow rhythm and blues like a thousand others, skippable.

"Rock'n'Roll Music" is what it is, a pure rock'n'roll tied strictly to the genre. Covered by the Beatles, at the time. Pure rock'n'roll bores me, even if it's by Chuck Berry, what can I add... oh yes: thank goodness that, from the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who on, it has been well contaminated and crossbred!

Hopeless is the remake of "Down on the Corner" by Creedence. Bryan's gritty and raspy voice can do nothing against the detonating, sonorous, and magnificent delivery of John Fogerty in the original. There's no competition.

"Never My Love," dating back to the Association and 1967, is dignifiedly soporific.

The well-known "Sunny" is certainly a soul jazz giant with impeccable melodic development. Not my cup of tea, but above all, who cares to hear it sung by Bryan Adams.

"The Tracks of My Years" inspired (Foster, surely) the title of the album and is also a 1960s dish, cooked up by some skilled black soul singer, I believe Smokey Robinson. I'm sorry, my love for music doesn't extend to those roaring years that I see as formative, important, and decisive, but my emotion kicks in for what happened later, starting from 1966 let's say from Rubber Soul.

The greatest scandal of this album is the massacre of "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys. We are talking about one of the greatest songs of the sixties, perhaps the best ever. That unfortunate Foster takes the piano (on which he has an enviable touch, mind you) and makes it slow and indistinct, while Adams sings it truly like a fish out of water. An abomination, considering the wonderful piano interjections, the famous and irreproducible, brilliant bass line movement, the dreamy psychedelic arrangement, the strange but true instrumental interlude, the dreamy final counter-chorals. For heaven's sake! Hands off this masterpiece! Foster's correct but useless piano takes the song's sublime chords and levels them mercilessly into a Debussyian syrup, let's say (excuse me Debussy, you're blameless). Infuriating.

"You've Been a Friend of Me" is Adams's second original, a semi-acoustic rocker that gallops decently for a while, leaving no memories.

"Help Me Make It Through the Night" is a country ballad by Kris Kristofferson, the kind you always know where the voice will go in the next five seconds. Like millions of other American things. Adams shows off his most annoying syrupy raspiness a 'là "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"

"You Shook Me" can be said to be the meeting point between the musical worlds of Foster and Adams. This blues invocation by the never sufficiently appreciated Willie Dixon is from 1962, but everyone knows it for the powerful reinterpretation rendered by Led Zeppelin in their first album from early 1969. Poor Adams gives it his all, but misses when he tries to emit beastly screams trying to chase after the twenty-year-old Robert Plant of that time... please! The comparison is pitiless and embarrassing.

Final Verdict:

I reiterate: the youthful years celebrated in this record are those of Foster (born in 1949, ten years more than Adams), with the Vancouver rocker simply a vehicle of interpretation for his producer, far from a heartfelt recall of his actual roaring years, which certainly included a different kind of material than this.

We've understood here that Foster was shaped by the soul/jazz/r'n'r of the fifties and sixties. Well, he could have made a record in his name, called it exactly as titled, sold four copies, and still had his satisfaction. Instead, he manipulated his fellow Canadian Adams, much more known to the masses and profitable at the box office.

And so, once again, screw both of them, as far as I'm concerned. Adams is a child of the seventies, of rock blues and pop-rock: none of this is present in this work except for "You Shook Me" of Zeppelinian glory. It would have been fun to hear Bryan tackle, who knows, "Black Night" or "School's Out" or even "All Right Now".

This somewhat boring mishmash deserves an absolute failing grade, as a sentence for the cowardly betrayal act of good rock, but I'm grateful to Bryan for many of his songs, so I only place a failure on it. Full.