Bryan Adams – Still Cutting It Live

Bryan Adams arrived on stage at the Manchester Arena with a huge catalogue of songs to choose from.

Kick Ass, a track off his last album So Happy It Hurts kicked off a consummate, joyful and engaging show. The fans really though wanted to hear his older tracks such as Can’t Stop This Thing We Started which swiftly followed.

A video of a scenic drive through the Canadian countryside accompanied Run To You it was far more pleasant than my drive over the M62 to Manchester! The “Groover from Vancouver” (as Adams is fondly known), seemed eager to promote his home country.

Guitarist Keith Scott is as much part of the show as Adams, from playing Spanish guitar on Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman to a blistering rock guitar solo on It’s Only Love he showed he is a superb and competent guitarist.

The latter track might have missed the glamour of Tina Turner as on the recorded version, but Scott made up for her absence by taking the track to a higher level.

Whilst Adams is mostly associated with the ballad (Everything I Do) I Do It For You he demonstrated that he can swiftly change musical styles with ease from a ballad to rockabilly on You Belong To Me to pop tracks such as Shine a Light.

When You’re Gone, was re-born as a ballad performed acoustically by Adams and sounding all the better for it, though even he was taken aback by the reaction to Summer of ’69, “maybe we should have played that one earlier” he remarked. The track is one of his classics and has probably been sung by his fans many times on a Karaoke evening!

Kids Wanna Rock took the majority of the audience back to their youth though whatever age you were, when music is as good as this, you were never too young or too old to rock.

Cuts Like A Knife sliced through the audience in style making you wonder why they do not write songs as good as these any more. The aptly named So Happy It Hurts opened the encore when Adams and his four piece band appeared to be on a roll with the mutual respect between him and the audience became even more apparent.

All that was left was a solo acoustic version of Straight From The Heart laying the song bare, though as Adams showed there is still plenty of mileage left in his particular brand of rock.