Fifty years into his musical career, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams is still going strong, with an arena tour and a new album on the way. “What else am I gonna do?” he asks What’s On...

Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless find it hard to digest the fact that Bryan Adams is now 65, or that he’s been in the music business for half a century.

By way of mitigation, the raspy-voiced rocker started young. He bought his first electric guitar at the age of 10, was performing in bands by the time he was 15, signed his first record deal at 18, and released his debut album when he was 20.

That was in 1980, and the next couple of decades saw his career skyrocket. A conveyor belt of hit singles included Run To You, Somebody, Summer Of 69, All For Love (with Sting and Rod Stewart), When You’re Gone (with Mel C) and of course (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, which spent 16 weeks at number one in the UK. That song alone sold a staggering 15 million copies worldwide, with Adams’ total album sales now close to 100 million.

It was an incredible era, but the softly spoken Canadian admits much of it is now a blur.

“It was such a big touring time for us,” he says. “We did thousands of gigs, but I don’t remember a lot of it. If it hadn’t been for videos, I don’t think I’d remember any of it. I wonder if it’s just because your brain only has the capacity to store a certain amount of information, and the rest of it falls by the wayside.”

The singer’s profile might have dipped in the subsequent decades - like many other rock acts from the era - but falling by the wayside was never likely to happen, not least because Adams has kept writing (including a Pretty Woman musical), recording and performing live throughout.

The tour for his last album, So Happy It Hurts, spanned three years and 16 countries, wrapping in Australia in February, and after what seems like an indecently brief pause, he’s already back on the road. After squeezing in a few shows in Las Vegas  in March (“to keep my agent happy”), his upcoming UK tour kicks off another lengthy trek round the globe. What on earth keeps his foot so hard on the gas?

“I don’t really think about it - I just keep going. I run the ideas past my band and make sure they’re okay to do the work. We take a break, see our families and then go back out. I was saying to Keith [Scott, his long-term sidekick and guitarist] the other day - what else are we gonna do? I love what I do, and to be fair, for example, our Australian tour was the biggest tour of Australia we’ve ever done. It was absolutely massive, and we could’ve played another week if we’d known it was gonna go so well.”

The latest tour is ostensibly to promote new album Roll With The Punches, although the LP won’t actually hit the shops or streaming services until September. Instead, Adams plans to drip-feed individual tunes to audiences over the next few months -  although he insists the live shows won’t be dominated by tunes people don’t know.

“You’ve gotta play the songs that people love - that’s the whole point of being on tour. Then you pepper it with a couple of new ones if they go over well. So far, Roll With The Punches is going over really well, so we’ll keep it in there.”

The album’s title track already sounds like a classic Adams rocker. The positive reception, and success of the recent shows, sees him on an upward curve after a few tough years during which he lost his record deal and parted company with his long-term manager. He now manages himself, runs his own record label (the sarcastically titled Bad Records) and is a lot happier - and less frustrated - as a result.

“I’m completely independent now, and it’s such an amazing thing. For me, there’s no point having a record deal. A few years ago, I went in to see a big label, as I had this album, Get Up, that I’d done with Jeff Lynne. I was super excited about it, but the record company’s head of PR just looked at me and said ‘It might be a great record, but I wouldn’t know what to do with you.’”

There’ll be no such conundrum when Roll With The Punches is released on Bryan’s own label. The song’s title is all about carrying on in the face of adversity.

“I think it’s timely in the sense that there’s all kinds of things happening in the world - for example, the Americans going after Canada,” he starts, before diverting to more generic, as well as personal, concerns.

“People are always going to try and drag you down, but you’ve just gotta get back up and live another day. Over the last few years, I’ve had my own ups and downs - getting dropped by my label, forming my own record company, being an independent artist and other things associated with my business going back a few years. So a lot of it comes from this new-found independence. Nothing’s gonna get me down.”

Bryan has initially chosen to move forward by looking back. The new label’s first release was newly recorded versions of two songs he wrote when he was 21… for Kiss. Rock And Roll Hell and War Machine appeared on the glam rock band’s 1982 album, Creatures Of The Night, and helped give him the confidence to write with and for other artists. As well as delving into the archives for new material, he also released live versions of three of his early albums, all recorded during a three-night residency at the Albert Hall in 2024.

“It’s been really fun to look at the past and try to find ways to bring it into the future. At the same time, the ideas don’t stop coming - I still write songs, and I’m happy to put those out as well."

Whether any of the songs turn out to be hits seems largely inconsequential. That’s partly because Bryan is happy to still be doing what he loves, but also because he knows he’s unlikely to get played on the radio - something that really gets the bee flying round his bonnet.

“I think the record business is quite ageist, really - once you’re out, you’re not allowed back in. I could put out Summer Of 69 now and it wouldn’t get played. Although thinking about it, it didn’t get played at the time either!

“There’s just a load of gatekeepers now that don’t let certain things get played on the radio. One of the songs on Get Up was called Go Down Rocking, which is kind of my raison d’etre - I don’t give a sh*t what’s gonna happen with all the different types of music that are out there; I’m just gonna do what I do best, and that’s rock out.

“Believe me, I have no expectations about any of this - for the tour, for the music. I’m just doing what I do and doing the best I can.”

Bryan Adams plays Birmingham’s bp pulse LIVE on Sunday 18 May.

By Steve Adams