It's Deja Vu All Over Again

10/23/1998 6:00 PM, LAUNCH
Rob O'Connor

To hear Bryan Adams tell it, he's been a rock star for "115 years now," but don't call him a star. The author of radio-ready hits such as "Cuts Like A Knife," "Summer Of '69," "Heaven" and that great parenthetical hit "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" doesn't consider himself one. "I'm an anti-star," he says. "I think I'm a singer. There's a lot of drive in me to create music that suits my voice. I meet people who are stars and they have that star vibe, and I want to dive behind the sofa."

Yet, Adams has clearly aligned himself from time to time with people with that glittery hue: duets with Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Tina Turner, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart and now on his latest album, On A Day Like Today, Melanie C. (a.k.a. Sporty Spice). "I bumped into her in L.A.," says Adams of Sporty. "I was looking for someone who it would be fun to sing on this song, and she was interested in doing something else [besides the Spice Girls]."

Of all his past singing partners, only Rod Stewart, in Adams's book, is the definition of a star. "[Barbra Streisand] was a cool chick to hang out with. She never gave me the impression she was a star. Tina [Turner] was very humble. Rod's a star. If there's anyone who can play the star game, it's him. Bless him."

As for Adams, "I've been able to maintain a certain amount of anonymity. They recognize my name," he says. "I was walking down Central Park East and a lot of doormen recognized me. I appeal to doormen. Only doormen."

For his 10th studio album, Adams went back to the way he used to record his albums, writing the material beforehand and then spending three months getting it down on tape, as opposed to the year-and-a-half he'd spend with his old producer Robert John "Mutt" Lang (AC/DC, Def Leppard, Shania Twain) writing from scratch in the studio.

"The songs on this album were started prior to my Unplugged record," say Adams. "I was working in the Summer last year trying to put new songs together. I spent three weeks writing. I had all these songs. I'm not going to get away with doing a whole new album for Unplugged, so I used three." The remaining tracks were recorded with Bob Rock in Vancouver with overdubs in Jamaica. Adams wrote the album's title track and first single with Phil Thornalley (former Cure bassist and producer/ co-writer of Natalie Imbruglia's hit single "Torn").

Adams hasn't decided whether or not he'll tour to support this album. After 20 years of hustling himself from Holiday Inn to Holiday Inn, the man who wrote "Rock 'N' Roll Hell," "War Machine" and "some other dreadful piece of shit" for Kiss's Creatures Of The Night album (back when he was just getting started in the biz) is content to wait and see how the album fares on its own. "Hotels," he cracks, "think, 'Oh yeah, he's back. We'll give him his old room.' So it's deja vu all over, like Groundhog Day."