Bryan Adams Guests On Nile Rodgers’ ‘Deep Hidden Meaning Radio’

Bryan Adams joined Nile Rodgers on the latest episode of “Deep Hidden Meaning Radio” to discuss how he nearly asked Nile to produce his biggest album Reckless, working with Tina Turner, and finding a drummer in a bar to finish “Summer Of 69.”

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Regarding working with Rodgers, Adams says, “I just came off making a record with Bob Clearmountain, the record I’d just done was called Cuts Like a Knife. And we were about to go in to do another record, but Bob suddenly got very busy, like he wasn’t going to be able to do the album. And so there was a moment there where I was like, ‘Wow, who do I want to work with?’ And I thought of you. And so I put together a song which I thought you would dig and it’s called ‘Somebody.’ You could have produced the album.

“So I had this riff which I was working on, which was … [plays guitar riff] And I thought, that’s Nile, that’s my interpretation of Nile. I thought, ‘Man, if I can get Nile to produce my record, I’ll play that song on him and see what he can do.’ So that’s what I wanted to tell you, man. It ended up that Bob could do the album, Reckless, and we recorded the album and we recorded that song, but you were my inspiration for it.”

Regarding his all-time hit, “Summer Of 69,” he explains, “I don’t know if you’ve had this experience with songs in the past, but I had a vision in my head of how I imagine the song to be, or it was just a feeling. I felt it needed to go a certain direction and we cut the song a certain way and, ‘Nah, it’s not right.’ So I went back into the demo studio, I re-demoed it, I’ve cut it three times and I cut it once as a demo, once as a track, went back and re-demoed it. And then I walked into a bar one night and I saw this ska band and the drummer, he’s like 21 years old and he was just fired up. And I went, ‘See, that is the energy I want on this record.’

“So I went up to the guy, I said, ‘Hey man, have you ever been in a studio?’ He goes, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Do you want to come in tomorrow?’ He went, ‘Yeah.’ And so he came in, his name is Pat Steward and Pat came in, we cut the track and it was just like bang. That was the energy we needed, we needed to have that sort of really unprofessional sound to make this record. It needed to have a sort of youthfulness and vitality. It needed to have some of… It just was just a wildfire. So that’s where that track came together, thanks to Pat.”

Listen to Bryan Adams and Nile Rodgers on “Deep Hidden Meaning Radio.”