A&M 5013
Producers: Bryan Adams and Bob Clearmountain
Track listing: One Night Love Affair / She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancin’ / Run to You / Heaven / Somebody / Summer of ’69 / Kids Wanna Rock / Only Love / Long Gone / Ain’t Gonna Cry
August 10, 1985
2 weeks
In the mid-’80s, singer-songwriter Bryan Adams may have been the hardest-working Canadian in show business. In 1983 alone, he spent 283 day on the road. As a result of this relentless touring schedule and his catchy brand of hook-filled rock, Cuts Like a Knife, Adams’s third album, reached number eight.
Before Adams and co-producer Bob Clearmountain regrouped to record a follow-up album, the pair met in the studio to cut “Heaven,” a song for the soundtrack of A Night in Heaven, a box-office bomb about a male stripper. At the time, Clearmountain was obliged to complete another project. “We recorded it during off hours at the Power Station in New York,” he says. “It was one of those situations where I was mixing something else during the day and I’d usually work with Bryan at night until 6 a.m.” The duo’s unusual hours didn’t hamper their work, however — when the soundtrack was released, radio programmers, hungry for new Adams material, jumped on the track and demanded that it be released as a single. But Adams had other plans. “Bryan didn’t to be released as a single,” says Clearmountain. “He wanted to save it for Reckless.”
The album was initially recorded at Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, Canada. Clearmountain, who had co-produced Adams’s previous two albums, You Want It, You Got It and Cuts Like a Knife, says Reckless was a bit more difficult to make. “We were getting pickier,” he says. “We wanted it to be better than the other two.” Adams and Clearmountain even opted to re-record a few tracks. “When we finished ‘One Night Love Affair’ we decided that it was a little on the boring side, so we went back and re-recorded the drums and half of the guitars,” Clearmountain says. “We thought that since it was going to be the opening song on the album, we should make it as good as it could be.”
The re-recording of some of the tracks pushed the sessions past the scheduled deadline, putting Clearmountain in the position of working on two projects at once at Electric Ladyland Studios in New York. “We were supposed to have been finished with Bryan’s album, so I was working on Hall & Oates’s Big Bam Boom from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and then Bryan would come in and I would work with him until about 6.a.m.”
It took approximately three months to complete the album, relatively long by Adams’s previous standards. “We did You Want It, You Got It in two weeks,” Clearmountain says. “Cuts Like a Knife took about six weeks.”
When Adams first played Clearmountain the demos for the album, “Run to You” was at the end of the tape. “He said, ‘Don’t even bother with the last song, I’m probably going to give it away.’ But when I got to the song, I realized that it was one of the best songs on the tape. I had to talk him into doing it and I’m glad I did, because it came out really well.”
If Clearmountain saved that track, he gives Adams all the credit for “It’s Only Love,” which almost didn’t make the album. “It wasn’t sounding that great,” he recalls. “I thought maybe we needed another guitar or something, but then Bryan said, ‘What if this was a duet with Tina Turner?’ “All agreed it was a great idea, but that’s all it was, until Adams’s manager Bruce Allen put in a call to Turner’s representative. “She was totally into it,” recalls Clearmountain, “and it came out great. It was genius on Bryan’s part to suggest it.” Foreigner’s Lou Gramm also made a guest appearance, singing backing vocals on “She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancing.”
In all, Clearmountain felt the extra effort on Reckless had paid off. “It was the most consistent songwriting he had done,” he says. “Cuts Like a Knife was good. It had its high points, but this album seemed to have more to it song-wise.”
Clearmountain’s hunch proved correct. In January 1985, “Run to You” became a top 10 hit. A second single, “Somebody,” peaked at number 11, setting the stage for the long-awaited release of “Heaven.” On June 22, 1985, the track became Adams’s first Number One single and helped push Reckless to the top spot in its 38th week on the chart. It made Adams the first Canadian artist to top the album chart since Bachman-Turner Overdrive, an act also managed by Allen, had done it in 1974.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of August 10, 1985
1. Reckless, Bryan Adams
2. Songs from the Big Chair, Tears for Fears
3. No Jacket Required, Phil Collins
4. The Dream of the Blue Turtle, Sting
5. Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen