Bryan Adams at the Liverpool Echo Arena, Photograph reproduced with kind permission by Marie Dodd, November 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
For the next few months the Liverpool Echo Arena will vibrate to the sound of the multitude of Rock acts that will come to the U.K.’s music city in a blistering undertaking to see out 2014 and to make sure 2015 is another vintage year to remember. With the likes of Peter Gabriel and The Who making their way to the Mersey shoreline, the Echo is getting the attention it deserves, with the Kaiser Chiefs, Korn and Slipknot all descending upon the music heart, it can surely only be time before other more established bands realise that the tour schedule doesn’t always have to stop at Manchester.
Other musicians know this and make a point in coming back to Liverpool over and over again. For Canadian superstar Bryan Adams, the pleasure seems to be infectious, it resonates like a giant bell vigorously rung in the face of oppression and the call to arms of its locals to prepare for overwhelming odds and valour endured. It is though above all else, passion. A passion that is so extreme Mr. Adams nearly knocks himself out over in one crunching movement and still has the absolute finest humour to laugh heartedly over at the end of the song. No dramas, just pure unadulterated Rock music played by a legend.
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of the studio album that made the young man from Kingston, Ontario a global superstar, Bryan Adams rolled back the years when Reckless meant more than taking risks, it was affirming that that music at the time was missing a peculiar emotion of wildness, perhaps in a way 30 years on it has lost in many respects that ability to lose control with a generation bought up on the safe and the staid, the urge to gravitate towards the benign and the beige as cash cow programmes urge the presence of people with a spark to sell their soul on television. For Bryan Adams there is no safety net, not in life and not on stage. The music is loud, it crashes, it elevates, it raises the spirits of those who remember with excitement hearing the album for the first time 30 years ago and those who have come along since. Reckless it may be named but for the crowd inside the Echo Arena it was a chance to put caution on a fast boat to anywhere but home.
Music is meant to make the heart flutter, to grab the soul by the shoulders and scream majestically and beg to be heard and throughout the two hour set, Bryan Adams and his band did just that! Tracks from Reckless came and went in the blink of well pumped up eye, One Night Love Affair, She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancin’, the phenomenal twin sounds of Run To You and Summer of ’69, Kids Wanna Rock and the brilliant It’s Only Love were greeted as if Liverpool or Everton were playing in a European Cup Final and were two-nil up with one minute to play.
Skilful urgency, an abandonment of the beige, music that was out of control and played loud, Bryan Adams really knows how to build up the entertainment. Even on the song that spent so much time at the top of the U.K. charts it became to some a definition of beige, became a moment of celebration of Mr. Adams adeptness and longevity as a performer. There was a noticeable slowing down of the audience’s demeanour, a softness to replace the rocking heart during Everything I do (I Do It For You) but it was a change that only highlighted just how exceptional the song is. It holds a lot of memories within its chords for a lot of Bryan Adams fans and gave the evening that touch of class that others will have missed.
The evening resumed with great tracks such as 18 Till I Die, When You’re Gone, Cuts Like A Knife and Can’t Stop This Thing I’ve Started taking a bow towards the gallery, the prospect of Peter Gabriel, The Who and Brit Floyd causing the Echo to tremble in eager anticipation was a promise worth holding close and the recollection of a tremendous night supplied by Bryan Adams stoking the fire of what is to come.
Ian D. Hall