There are rock stars you like and bands you love. And those old songs that somehow get stapled to a particular summer, a girlfriend, a road trip, a broken heart, a wedding, a place you lived, a person you lost.
And then there are the artists who somehow become part of the geography of your life.
Bryan Adams has, literally, taken me around the world – especially lately, even when I don’t always get to the exotic and remote destinations he plays that I investigate.
Montevideo. Santiago. Bogotá. Las Vegas. Well, so far this year. But, Stockholm, Nashville, San Jose, Philadelphia, wherever the next time.
The night when he took my request in Lake Tahoe a couple of years ago was insane. And he also randomly fist-bumped me at the Wynn in Vegas before his “Bare Bones” show back in May.
And I did manage to have his “fill-in” guitar player Luke Doucet graciously visit and tell the craziest story about how he wound up on in stage all over South America back when I scaled Machu Picchu because Bryan Adams was playing in Uruguay.
And tonight, after all of those planes and trains and strange currencies and ticket stubs and hotel rooms and adventures, Bryan Adams is coming back to me.
8
Heaven. Or, well…Baltimore.
Rolling with Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, another stop on his never-ending Roll With The Punches world tour, and like I was in Philly and San Jose last year, I’ll always be right there.
I’ve probably seen Bryan Adams somewhere around 75 times in 50 different places, which sounds ridiculous until you understand that the music was merely the beginning of the adventure. That’s what I told Doucet when I tracked him down this spring after discovering him, quite accidentally, standing onstage playing guitar for Bryan in Uruguay.
A fading Capital Centre ticket: Wednesday, July 8, 1987. Section 120. Row E. Seat 5. $16.50. Sixteen dollars and fifty cents!
(Try buying the parking tonight for that down at CFG Bank Area.)
There’s the pink ticket from Camden in August 1997 when he had the Eagles cheerleaders crossing the stage for “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me.” The Tower Theater in Upper Darby in May 2000. Took my son to that one!
The Warner Theatre in Washington on April Fool’s Day 2001 — PIT, row AA, seat 102, $37.50.
8There’s a ticket from Hovet in Stockholm in February 2002, printed in Swedish, 370 kronor plus a 20-kronor fee. Ripken Stadium with Def Leppard in 2005 (we had a limo with Mike Flynn that night). The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in January 2009 in the first row of the balcony the night after the Ravens eliminated the Titans on our infamous Steve McNair trip.
The Hippodrome in Baltimore in 2011 (almost didn’t remember that one). The Strathmore in 2012, which Allen McCallum reminded me about on Thursday at the ballpark. The National Theatre in 2013 in Wilmington, Delaware. D.A.R. Constitution Hall in 2016 in the white outfits right after Jenn got out of the hospital.
They aren’t ticket stubs anymore. They’re breadcrumbs. They show me where I’ve been.
And who I was and who I was with when I was there.
For years on Facebook, I have called Bryan my favorite rock star whom I’d never met. (And I’ve met and interviewed a helluva lotta rock stars…more than 75 Hall of Famers, alone!)
I’ve posted Bryan Adams videos, ticket hunts, road-trip nonsense and “fanboy” dispatches from everywhere. One night, the cameras caught #JennStrong and me dancing and singing and threw our smiling faces onto the giant screen behind him. It cuts like a knife when Bryan Adams puts you and your wife on the big screen and you look so happy it hurts!
All of these pictures and memories mean more to me now than they did then, which is why I’m culling it all and storytelling here when the mood strikes me.
8Because music keeps time differently than calendars do. I’m starting to see all of the bands I love retire, die, get old or just get too lousy and diminished to want to see on a stage.
If you see Bryan Adams tonight – or anytime soon – you’re getting a superstar still in his prime, not a 66-year old washed-up pop star.
My relationship with Bryan’s music long ago stopped being about “Summer of ’69” or “Run To You” or “Heaven” or “Cuts Like A Knife” or even Reckless, one of those perfect albums where you can argue about your favorite song and never really be wrong.
I have sang “Summer of ‘69” at least 50 times in my life with local guitarist Ed Lauer on a dozen different bar stools in this city. It was our “go to” when he was strumming five nights a week in Fell’s Point.
I mean, on our wedding night, I sang “I’ll Always Be Right There” accompanied by the very talented Paul Lamantia to my wife on a seat at Michael’s Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie – acoustically (and pretty freaking well, I might add) in front of everyone I know.
Bryan Adams was the centerpiece of our wedding night.
And still, 23 years later, he’s better than ever if you go to see him.
8A few years ago, when I had Gina Schock of The Go-Go’s on the show and we started talking about why Bryan was so magnificent live. Gina told me that she had gone from not caring very much about Bryan Adams to seeing him perform and becoming completely smitten with the guy and his music, going back and studying it. I understood perfectly. I told her about Jenn and me chasing those intimate acoustic “Bare Bones” shows, including seeing him in a synagogue in downtown Washington with only a few hundred people in the room – and how his voice in those settings could just stop you.
It is among the more glorious things I’ve ever witnessed.
Bryan Adams sings like an angel and you’ll hear that in the back of the arena tonight when the show starts.
Which brings me to the Recher: May 4, 2008. Bryan Adams walked into a little rock club on York Road in Towson and played a legendary solo acoustic show.
Think about that sentence.
Bryan Adams – at the Recher Theatre!
The place held maybe 500 people at the time, and Brian Recher has been on my show telling the history of that extraordinary little room that somehow brought the world to Towson. The venue itself remembers that Bryan show as one of its legendary nights: a rare solo acoustic appearance that sold out in minutes – hit after hit after hit. He was kinda just working out the whole “solo” thing pre-Bare Bones and we witnessed it.
8That’s the Bryan Adams I love most.
Strip away the giant screen. Strip away the lights. Strip away the production.
Give the man a guitar. Give him a microphone.
Now try to hide!
Because the songs hold up. Better than ever…
I’ve also said on Facebook that “acoustic” should be code for everybody in the room shutting the hell up. When Bryan is singing one of those ballads in a small room, I don’t need to know what the people behind me had for dinner. I came to hear the song. Of course, there was an asshole Karen in front of me in Vegas, who was actually from Canada.
And increasingly, I go to hear the songs because I know none of this lasts forever. Which is why I did those two nights in Vegas back in May and why I’ll be there tonight.
8He won’t be doing this forever and certainly not at this insane level of quality. His new songs are great, too! He’s far from done being creative or creatively touring.
So, I respect Bryan Adams if not “admire” and more than anything, just wanna rock and dance and sing and swoon. And see…
Maybe that explains South America.
Bryan announced dates this spring in places I had always wanted to see and something inside me said: “Go.”
So, I went. And I discovered one of the greatest rock and roll stories I ever unearthed and then told it on the show!
In Montevideo, I arrived without a ticket because the show had been moved from the stadium to Antel Arena. My Spanish remains somewhere between “pathetic” and “potential international incident,” but I know how to stand outside a concert holding up one finger.
One ticket.
8“Una boleta!” (I think…)
A wonderful family from Salto, Uruguay, had an extra. They adopted the lost gringo with a digital ticket and suddenly I was inside after being at BWI 24 hours earlier.
The lights went down and immediately I noticed something was wrong.
“That’s not Keith Scott!!!!”
I’m watching Bryan Adams and somehow staring at the other guitar player.
“Who the hell is that guy?”
I’m Googling in the middle of the concert, attempting to interrogate the young woman beside me in Spanglish – “el otro… guitarra… who is this dude?”– and I discover Luke Doucet, an accomplished Canadian musician who had played with Sarah McLachlan and had essentially been dropped into the Bryan Adams band like someone being asked to quarterback the Ravens on Thursday after reading the playbook Monday.
8Bryan had called him – three days before the tour started, under duress. “I wouldn’t take this gig,” Adams told Doucet.
Luke had 72 hours to learn 26 songs.
Then: welcome to the band.
See you in Puerto Rico.
Everywhere he goes, the kids wanna rock!
Two nights later I was in Santiago. A ticket magically dropped the day before the show for about sixty bucks, and I wound up side-stage practically above Luke. The giant “Roll With The Punches” boxing glove floated over my head. I was filming it, laughing, pretending it was punching me.
A few nights later: Bogotá.
8Three Bryan Adams shows. Throw in that AC/DC spectacular in Santiago, too!
Six countries. One trip. Two weeks.
And in between, Machu Picchu – a place that wasn’t even originally on my bucket list until the Bryan Adams dates began connecting dots on a map. I was sitting high in the Andes at Machu Picchu trying to negotiate Colombian only ticketing rules because I couldn’t buy the Bryan VIP package (where Bryan plays for 30 minutes and sings a private song!!!) without a Colombian credit card.
(Of course I was.)
Normal people contemplate the mysteries of the Incas.
I was trying to upgrade my Bryan Adams ticket so I could finally meet him in Bogota!
I never did and still haven’t…
8But, that trip really changed me. And I wrote as much afterward: seeing Bryan in Bogota gave me the excuse, Montevideo gave me the curiosity, and suddenly music had pulled me deeper into South America and into Chile with Angus Young and Brian Johnson.
Then I came home and tracked down Luke Doucet because I had to hear the story.
That’s what music does to me.
It sends me somewhere. Sometimes across an ocean.
Sometimes back to being 18 years old holding a $16.50 ticket at the Capital Centre.
Sometimes into a synagogue in D.C.
Sometimes to row seven in Stockholm.
8Sometimes to a little club in Towson.
Sometimes to Lake Tahoe, where Bryan asked the audience what song they wanted to hear and somehow the voice answering was mine – and he played my request, “The Only One.”
It became another amazing travel story because, really, how many times does your favorite singer ask you what song you want to hear and point at you and get your name wrong three times until he gives up?
And he certainly earned the $300 I was willing to fork over for that VIP “experience” that I missed in Bogota, which really sucks!
And this summer in Las Vegas, after all these decades of calling him the greatest rock star I’d never met, there he suddenly was walking into the Vegas room and down the aisle where I happened to be.
Bryan Adams fist-bumped me!
Some things are better left uncomplicated, eh…
8I’ve spent four decades running to Bryan Adams.
Tonight, he’s coming back to me.
Home.
Baltimore.
Straight from the heart.
(And if anyone can ever get him to come on my show, I’d be eternally grateful…)
