Bryan Adams to play Rexall Place June 19
Pondering where it cut like a knife in the summer of ’69 is going to get a lot easier when Bryan Adams comes to Rexall Place on Tuesday, June 19 – to explain it all for us in song.
Tickets go on sale Monday.
Adams is expected to evoke a rush of incontinent nostalgia from all attendees, since the man is responsible for a huge swath of pop-rock anthemia that has made a permanent mark on the Canadian musical landscape. Merely reading their titles can be enough to launch musical brain worms: Straight from the Heart, Run to You, Back to You, Kids Wanna Rock, Somebody, Heaven, Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started, It’s Only Love, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Please Forgive Me, When You’re Gone, All For Love, Have You ever Really Loved a Woman, I Thought I’d Seen Everything, Don’t Give Up, Here I Am – and you can see a shift from the anthemic rock of the ’80s to the romantic balladry of the 90s and 2000s, but his point has been well made, don’t you think?
New material? Does he have new songs? Do fans want to hear “one from the new album?” There is no new album, but there’s a new single on an upcoming EP that sounds intriguing. Even Bryan Adams seems to be getting soft on the idea of the “album” in this brave new world of singles. Spending a lot of time in England in recent years, Adams collaborated with electronica group Loverush UK on the song Tonight in Babylon, which – we’re told –was No. 1 on the dance charts in the UK. The Brits are always so frightfully up-to-date on this sort of thing. The EP will be released in Canada in March. So yes – we do in fact want to hear one from the new album. Just one now, OK? Just kidding. This guy can do whatever he wants and his fans will love him, just as long as he plays Straight from the Heart, Run to You, Back to You, Kids Wanna Rock, Somebody, Heaven, Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started, It’s Only Love, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Please Forgive Me, When You’re Gone, All For Love, Have You ever Really Loved a Woman, I Thought I’d Seen Everything, Don’t Give Up and Here I Am.
They say this is his first Canadian tour in 20 years – marked by 20 dates in 20 cities – though Bryan was last in Edmonton playing a show at Telus Field in 2009, also at the Winspear Centre going “unplugged” earlier that year, and then prior to that at Rexall Place (called Skyreach Centre then) in 2003, so it’s not like fans have missed him.
He must like us.
