OTTAWA -- I wonder how it's possible Bryan Adams can play so well after all these years.
Or how, for that matter, does he look exactly the same now, at 45, as he did when I was a teenager in the '80s?
Well, those upturned collars he used to sport are back in fashion and it looks like, with two new albums on the way and a rocked-out concert at the Ottawa Bluesfest Main Stage in front of a massive crowd of 23,450 fans last night under his belt, he just might be too.
"Are you hanging in back there?" he asked, looking out at the back. At another point he remarked on the length of the 10-day festival.
"Are you people insane?" he joked.
I had been expecting a tired parade of hits and praying I wouldn't have to hear the sappy station-changing Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? Even after assurances from others who'd seen him play live -- like the killer show he put on at Gatineau's Robert Guertin Arena two years ago -- that's all it takes to become a fan again, I wasn't sure.
But Adams was so in command of the stage and the crowd, so ready to rip on the guitar, so strong and raspy in his voice decades after he broke out, it was impossible not to be sucked in by the unique combination of buoyancy and heavy riffs once he and his four-piece band started playing.
Wearing a simple black T-shirt and jeans, Adams gave new twists to old, old favourites. Opening with There Will Never be Another Tonight from 1991's Waking Up the Neighbours, he proceeded to veer back and forth between his hits of the 80s and 90s.
They were endless, with 18 'Til I Die, Kids Wanna Rock, Can't Stop This Thing We Started, Back To You, It's Only Love, (with Keith Turner ripping it up on guitar to, as Adams joked, replace Tina Turner) and an awesome acoustic/electric mix to Summer of '69. The entire crowd was singing the words to a beautiful Cuts Like A Knife.
Predictably, Adams had a hard time picking out which songs to play during the two-hour show.
"There's too many to choose from. I wasn't going to play all 12 albums," he said. "We'd keep you here 'til dawn."
And talk about rising to the occasion.
Perky teen Jeannie, who works at Richmond's I.D.A. on Perth St. and took singing lessons for precisely a month -- "they didn't really work out," she laughed -- bounded up on stage when Adams chose her from clamouring thousands to fill in for Sporty Spice on the infectious duet When You're Gone.
She must have hugged Adams a half-dozen times before and after belting out the words and holding the tune -- most of the time -- before pointing out her boyfriend to the rocker.
"If you don't get lucky tonight," joked Adams, before carrying her off the stage.
Adams wrapped up with an encore which included Run To You. And after pausing to tell the crowd he bought one of his first guitars in a then-seedy section of the market, played a soft, sweet acoustic version of Straight From the Heart.
"I kind of feel Ottawa was where it all started for me,"he said.
It was enough to make me forgive him for sticking in that silly Cloud Number Nine tune from 1998's On A Day Like Today because well, it wasn't that other song I don't like.
But I bet he could have made even that sound good too.
