Everything Bryan Adams does, he does for you – Dagsavisen

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5

CONCERT

Bryan Adams

Oslo Spectrum

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Bryan Adams is getting close to retirement age, but keeps going and going. The audience in Oslo Spektrum is also mostly adults, but there are still standing rooms on the floor at the Canadian’s concerts. It’s going to rock here. To rub this in, he starts with the almost new “Kick Ass”. It will last two and a half hours, with around 30 songs that are mostly performed in an exemplary manner.

It’s easy to see why so many come to see this over and over again. According to our calculations, the concert now is his eighth in Oslo Spektrum. According to our memories, Dagsavisen has not been present at any of them, so then it was time. Adams has been a big star for 40 years. At the same time, it must be said that he has become one of the foremost symbols of rock’s strong class divide. Not directly reviled, but often ignored when it comes to mentioning pop music of “significance”, and all the more among friends of big, melodic rock.

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After the heat is turned on with the simple “Kick Ass” comes magnificent soul rock in “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”. “Somebody” is the kind of power ballad that he helped introduce in the 80s. “18 Till I Die”, on the other hand, is almost punk rock. “Please Forgive Me” is sentimental vice-pop. “Kids Wanna Rock” good, old-fashioned rock and roll. “Go Down Rockin'” is a rather poor consolation for the fact that the Rolling Stones are on tour elsewhere. It strikes me that many of Bryan Adams’ songs are them second best of its kind, but that’s not all bad.

Some of the evening’s features were originally duets. First of these is “It’s Only Love”, which he did with Tina Turner 40 years ago. Here it is his faithful guitarist Keith Scott who has to do the best he can with the chorus, but gets to play a fierce guitar solo as thanks for the help. A verse of Turner’s “The Best” is also included in the package. Adams has to do without Mel C in “When You’re Gone”. On the contrary, he does this one alone with the acoustic guitar, but he has the fans in Oslo Spektrum as backing vocals. This artist never has to beg people to sing along.

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The rockabilly songs “You Belong To Me” and “I’ve Been Looking For You” are presented as a “Shall we dance” competition, and create a great atmosphere in the hall, especially because the liveliest contestants appear on the big screen. At the other end of the spectrum, “Don’t Drop That Bomb On Me” is the serious moment of the evening. It is probably forgotten when it is followed by “Everything I Do (I Do It For You), which spent 17 weeks at the top in Norway. It was a lot of time, almost a record, and you can hardly tell from the atmosphere that many must be a little tired of it? Because everything Bryan Adams does, he does for his audience. The tour is named after the recent album “So Happy It Hurts”, but he does not challenge his guests with many songs from it.

The 40-year-old breakthrough album “Reckless” is celebrated with a number of brilliant numbers. “Heaven” is effectively turned up a bit in tempo. With programmatic versions of “Run To You” and “Summer Of 69” the performance could really have been over. But now comes the wish concert where the audience has sent in their favorite songs in advance. Here it will be “Cloud No 9”, “One Night Love Affair” and “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman”. The question is how real is this? “I don’t understand why I chose them myself”, says the singer, they are also the same ones that were played in Stockholm a few nights before, but maybe the fans think the same way? We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

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After “Cuts Like A Knife”, Bryan Adams gives the band time off for this time. He gives a thank-you speech to his mother, talks about how he started playing in his teens, and sings “Straight From The Heart”. All, all the way to the end, “All for One”, now without Sting and Rod Stewart, but people still accept it – to put it mildly.

Bryan Adams travels on to perform in Stavanger on 30 April. When the summer comes, he will be back for concerts in Bergen (26 June), Trondheim (30 June) and Bodø (2 July).