Obama is just Bryan Adams without music

O’ar Pali talks to the ageing Canadian rocker and realises that the President-elect has merely emulated the pious pop-star rhetoric that has made Adams a global brand

It would be no real surprise to pick up the first issue of The Spectator from 1828 and find a review of a Bryan Adams show: he is one of those performers who is just there, and (it seems) always has been. Unless you were on a different planet during the 1990s I guarantee that you heard, loved or hated his single ‘Everything I Do’, which was one of the best-selling records of the decade. Adams has picked up Grammy and Oscar nominations like confetti. And if you haven’t danced to his 1984 floor-filler, ‘Summer of ’69’, then your children or grandchildren have (during Freshers’ Week while nervously drinking punch). In addition to his musical career, he has been a stalwart of the Prince’s Trust for the past two decades, photographed the Queen and mounted a photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. In short, this 49-year-old Canadian rocker is more establishment than most royal courtiers.

Thus I find myself sitting in his Chelsea studio, next door to his London home, enjoying a cup of tea with the Big B.A. himself. I had seen him only a couple of days earlier at the Prince’s Trust youth charity dinner, when his performance of classics such as ‘Cuts Like a Knife’ made a crowd of initially shy middle-aged men and women abandon all restraint and remember their sweaty bop days.