Tonight I'm seeing Ryan Adams at Her Majesty's Theatre. I have very high expectations. One thing I won't be doing is yelling out requests for "Summer of 69", as one fan once did, referencing the similarly named - but much more rubbish - Canadian artist Bryan Adams. Apparently Ryan stopped that show and said he wouldn't continue until that fan left.
I'm also hoping that he hasn't hit the bottle again. I read a review a week or so ago, where the author recalled a concert of his he'd attended a year ago . . .
"When I saw Ryan Adams last year here in a solo acoustic setting at Seattle's Moore Theatre, the performance was an absolute train wreck. In a weird sort of way, it was actually fascinating to watch as Adams forgot the words to his own songs, and occasionally forgot he had sung them altogether.
But it was also sad, as it became more obvious as the night wore on that - brilliant songwriter that he is - Ryan Adams was far from being, well, you know - "well."
He even "performed" a few of his songs twice - forgetting he had done them the first time around at all. And this was in between slipping behind the amps onstage, to take a hit of whatever "medication" he was apparently taking, only to return to the stage to chase it down with a hit of the wine bottle that he never strayed too far away from."
Word on the street though is that Adams is clean and sober, and performing the best shows of his career. He also seems to be performing exclusively acoustically, which in some ways is a bit of a shame because it means there probably won't be many uptempo songs. If it leads to him playing stuff like "Sweet Illusions" and "How do you keep love alive?" though I'm all for it.
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