Bryan Adams Reveals The Best Lesson He Learned from Tina Turner

To this day, Bryan Adams takes a lesson he learned from Tina Turner more than 40 years ago with him whenever the iconic Canadian rocker goes on tour. A few years before the two recorded their sexy, gritty Grammy-nominated duet “It’s Only Love” in 1984, he went to see the legend in Vancouver at a club as she was mounting her comeback.

A 21-year-old Adams and songwriting partner Jim Vallance had written a song for Turner called “Lock Up Your Sons Because Tina’s in Town.” “Terrible,” he says, with a laugh. He convinced the bouncer to let him go backstage after the show and he saw a visibly ill, bundled up Turner. “I realized at that point she had the flu, and she had just put on this incredible show. I thought, ‘Wow! Nobody knew she was sick. She just went out there and gave everything she got.’ From that moment on, I never complained, ever, about being a little under the weather if I had to go on because I’ll just go out and do it. She’s at the forefront of my mind whenever that happens.”

Adam will kick off an eight-week North American tour Sept. 11 in Kamloops, British Columbia at Sandman Centre. The ticket presale starts April 29 and general onsale begins May 2 at BryanAdams.com.

The outing, named the Roll with the Punches tour, has already kicked off internationally and Adams is calling as he’s headed to Reykjavik for a concert.

The So Happy It Hurts tour, named after his 2022 album, ended in Australia and New Zealand in February.

“I don’t actually have a beginning or and end” to touring, Adams says. “It all sort of melds into one.”

The Roll with the Punches Tour takes its name from the forthcoming album Adams will release on his own label, Bad Records, later this year.

 “I’ve got my own sort of schedule and how we roll things out,” Adams says. The title track and another song are already available, and he expects to put out a few more songs before the album is released in August and pepper them into his shows. 

Adams started Bad Records a number of years ago as a home for his catalog, much of which has reverted back to him from Universal (which bought PolyGram, which had purchased his original label home, A&M).  

All the mergers made Adams feel like “a chair in the lobby,” he says. “I could have probably rolled [my contract] over and kept it there. But there was something about being independent that I liked and, after much back and forth, finally I was free,” Adams says. “I’ve been signed to a label pretty much on and off since I was 16 years old, so the feeling of and the understanding of being able to be an independent artist is actually quite liberating.”

Among the projects he has released on his own label are two box sets from his 2022 and 2024 Royal Albert Hall residencies, as well as re-records of past albums. For Record Store Day earlier this month, his label put out a previously unreleased version of “It’s Only Love” featuring just his and Turner’s vocals and a keyboard. “It shows you the power of her voice like never before,” he says.

Adams has found the hands-on aspect of running a label inspiring. “I even went to the record manufacturing company in Poland where we were putting things together,” he says. “It was a Sunday, and I just expected one person to be there to say hello and shake my hand. The entire company showed up because they don’t get artists saying hello, and it was just fascinating.”

The Royal Albert albums and videos show the superstar’s command over his audience, especially when he plays the opening chords of one of his many hits like “Summer of ’69,” and the crowd instantly goes wild. “You just hope the microphone’s working,” he jokes when a song gets such a rabid response. “That’s one of the great things about having so many songs. I look down my set list and I’m always pleased to know what the next song is. I know it’s gonna be fun to play,” he says. “It wasn’t like there was any plan. It was just every couple of years I would put out the best songs I’d written and occasionally, some of them stuck.”

The North American tour encompasses 39 dates, averaging around five shows a week. The longtime vegan jokes his stamina is “powered by lentils.” He adds: “I do the best I can. There’s nothing you can do if you get a cold or a flu. You just have got to soldier on,” as Turner taught him. (Adams speaks lovingly of the late Turner, for whom he produced her 1986 album, Break Every Rule and even sang at her wedding, saying his greatest memory of Turner is when he introduced her to his daughters. “It makes me a bit weepy thinking about it, to be honest, because she was just super, super kind to me. She loved the fact that I was having children.”)

Playing his native Canada is always special for Adams, “especially now that we’ve been sort of, I don’t know, skewered by your president,” he says of Donald Trump. “It’s really unified the country in a way. And so, it’s exciting.” Popular Canadian rock band The Sheepdogs will open the Canadian dates.

Pat Benatar and Neil Geraldo will open the U.S. leg. Surprisingly, Adams has never met the husband-and-wife duo but does have a connection that goes back more than 40 years when in 1981 he wrote a song called “Lonely Nights” for Benatar. “She didn’t do it, but it ended up being the first song off my second album that really opened the door for me in America,” the rocker says. “I may have to add that during the set because it’s kind of a good story to tell. I just really love her voice so it’s great that she’s gonna be out with us.”

From the start of his career, Adams has focused on spanning the globe and in the ‘80s and ‘90s was one of the first Western artists to play in India, Pakistan, Vietnam and many of the former Eastern Bloc countries. After Reykjavik he will continue through Europe, ending in Helsinki, Finland in mid-August.

“For me, it was just a wanderlust to be able to see the world,” he says of touring so widely in the early days. “You know, ‘Here’s an opportunity. I wonder if we can do a gig there.’ And when you start to investigate these places, you find out that, yes, there is a chance you could do it,” he says. “I recently inquired whether I could get to do a show in Iran, and, unfortunately, it’s still not the time to do that. I would love to be one of the people that could break down that sort of cultural boycott that’s happening. There are also parts of North Africa that I’d like to go to.”

Adams, a well-regarded professional photographer who has released retrospectives of his photography and autographed notable figures including the late Queen Elizabeth, does not spend days off between gigs exploring with his camera. Instead, he is understandably “probably resting” or working,” he says. His days on the road “are really organized. There’s no randomness about it. I enjoy finding things and exploring, but usually if you’re in the middle of a tour, that’s the last thing you want to do. You want to rest because you’ve got work to do.”

Adams, who has also written songs Kiss, Roger Daltrey, Motley Crue and Loverboy, in addition to his multiple hits, still owns his estimable publishing catalog even though his writing partner Vallance sold his to Round Hill in 2021.  “I’ve been asked by loads of people [to sell]. I’m not interested,” he says. “Maybe somewhere in the future. It’s definitely not on my radar now.”

‘ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES’ NORTH AMERICA TOUR DATES:

Thu Sep 11 – Kamloops, BC – Sandman Centre 

Fri Sep 12 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena 

Sat Sep 13 – Victoria, BC – Save On Foods Memorial Centre 

Tue Sep 23 – Prince George, BC – CN Centre 

Wed Sep 24 – Kelowna, BC – Prospera Place 

Fri Sep 26 – Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome 

Sat Sep 27 – Edmonton, AB – Rogers Place 

Sun Sep 28 – Regina, SK – Brandt Centre 

Mon Sep 29 – Winnipeg, MB – Canada Life Centre 

Thu Oct 2 – St. Catharines, ON – Meridian Centre 

Fri Oct 3 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena 

Sat Oct 4 – Ottawa, ON – Canadian Tire Centre 

Tue Oct 7 – Peterborough, ON – Peterborough Memorial Centre 

Wed Oct 8 – Montreal, QC – Bell Centre 

Thu Oct 9 – Quebec City, QC – Videotron Centre 

Sat Oct 11 – Moncton, NB – Avenir Centre 

Sun Oct 12 – Halifax, NS – Scotiabank Centre 

Wed Oct 15 – St. John’s, NL – Mary Brown’s Centre

Sat Oct 25 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena^

Sun Oct 26 – Boston, MA – TD Garden^

Wed Oct 29 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center^

Thu Oct 30 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden^

Sat Nov 1 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Arena^

Sun Nov 2 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena^

Mon Nov 3 – Rosemont, IL – Allstate Arena^

Wed Nov 5 – Raleigh, NC – Lenovo Center^

Thu Nov 6 – Duluth, GA – Gas South Arena^

Fri Nov 7 – Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena^

Sun Nov 9 – Hollywood, FL – Hard Rock Live^

Mon Nov 10 – Tampa, FL – Amalie Arena^

Thu Nov 13 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center^

Sat Nov 15 – Phoenix, AZ – PHX Arena^

Sun Nov 16 – San Diego, CA – Viejas Arena^

Tue Nov 18 – Los Angeles, CA – The Kia Forum^

Wed Nov 19 – San Jose, CA – SAP Center^

Fri Nov 21 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena^

Sat Nov 22 – Portland, OR – Moda Center^

Mon Nov 24 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena^

Wed Nov 26 – Minneapolis, MN – Target Center^

*With The Sheepdogs

^With Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo

+With Amanda Marshall

Related Images: