Renaissance rocker Bryan Adams on photographing Queen Elizabeth II

Bryan Adams talks to Yahoo Entertainment about photographing Queen Elizabeth II, where he got his first real six-string, and what he was really doing in the summer of ‘69.

Video Transcript

LYNDSEY PARKER: I want to ask you a bit about your photography because your photos are stunning. I think you're a real Renaissance man. And I saw the photo that you took of the Queen of England, which is actually on its 20th anniversary, because the Golden Jubilee was 2002. And it's not a photo I've ever seen of the Queen. It's not a portrait. It looks very candid. I want to know the story about this, because I assume that there are a lot of protocols to even get to photograph the Queen at all.

BRYAN ADAMS: I had an agent in London, who is still my agent. I'd only just recently joined them on a recommendation of another photographer. And so they called me and said, would you like to represent Canada and photograph the Queen? Well, actually, the original composition was, are you free on Wednesday? And I said, yeah, why? He goes, would you like to photograph the Queen, blah, blah, blah? I said, where would that be? He says, oh, it would be at her house. Where would that Palace be? He goes, Buckingham Palace.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Whoa.

BRYAN ADAMS: So that picture you see is actually one of the entrance foyers to the garden in the back of Buckingham Palace.

LYNDSEY PARKER: How did you get such a naturalistic photo of her? Because you know, like, as I said, most of the photos you see of her are very stiff upper lip, keep calm, carry on. And this looks like just a shot of you having a laugh.

BRYAN ADAMS: Well, I asked her to sit there, because she was about to leave. And all the photographers that worked with her get five minutes. That's all you get. You get five minutes, and then you're done. And just is she was leaving, I said, you know, ma'am, would you mind just sitting on the chair for a moment? There's some Wellington boots in the corner of the picture. She looked over at them and then looked back at me and then that was the picture.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Were you nervous? You don't seem like a man who's intimidated by much. But I mean, I've even seen photos of when Madonna met the Queen, she looked nervous as hell.

BRYAN ADAMS: No, she was very at ease and made me feel comfortable. And I hope I did the same.

LYNDSEY PARKER: As I mentioned, I keep using the word Renaissance man. But between the photography--

BRYAN ADAMS: That makes me sound old.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I didn't mean it like you lived in the Renaissance era. Multi-hyphenate, triple threat, quadruple threat, let's use one of those. So I'm very happy to speak with you, so happy it hurts, if you will, about the album, "So Happy it Hurts," got the branding in there. I want to just jump right in with the significance of the title.

I hear a lot of joy the album. It's not been the most joyful last couple of years. I know the pandemic was hard on a lot of artists. I know you had tour dates and a show at the Royal Albert Hall, I believe, that had to be canceled. You were making this record, I assume, during that period. How did you keep the optimistic attitude that was hard for all of us to maintain?

BRYAN ADAMS: There was no conscious intention of mine to try and make a joyous record. It was just how it came out. I started working with a really good engineer. And things started to come together on one song, and then the next song, and then the next song. So as you see things start to develop, it's quite inspiring. I was just inspired to carry on. And so that's why I recorded so much in the last, I guess, 18 months.

I think at one point I actually considered that maybe we wouldn't ever play again and that this was sort of it. I didn't know. I mean, there was no way of knowing, really. The good thing about the whole pandemic was I was able to take all the papers out of my pocket that had all the ideas on them and put them on a board and start figuring out what songs worked. Yeah.

LYNDSEY PARKER: You have a vision board?

BRYAN ADAMS: It's basically a board with a lot of scribbles on it.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I believe you got COVID twice, which I would imagine that we could make you, as you say, never want to play again, never want to leave your house again.

BRYAN ADAMS: Well, no, to be fair, and I certainly don't want to belittle it, because I know a lot of people have suffered from it, and I've even lost friends from it. But it didn't affect me in the way that it was sort of characterized out there. I've actually had worse flu bugs than the COVID.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I'm sorry you didn't get to do the induction for Tina Turner at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

BRYAN ADAMS: I didn't make it because they made me test to see if I had COVID, and I had COVID. I didn't even know I had it. If I'd made it there, then of course I would have performed with her.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Well, it must feel good to be performing again. How have the songs-- I assume, you know, even though "So Happy it Hurts," as of this, as of the time we're talking, isn't out yet, I assume you're playing new material? How is it going over?

BRYAN ADAMS: The idea on "So Happy it Hurts," the song, it's sort of about freedom and getting back out in the open road. And that's one thing we couldn't do. We couldn't go out. The pandemic just made us realize that we've lost our freedom. So I guess it's really about freedom.

LYNDSEY PARKER: There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time. What were you actually doing in the summer of '69? Because you were probably actually only about nine years old at that time.

BRYAN ADAMS: Yeah, but the song is not about 1969. It's a metaphor of-- it could be any summer. It's a song about nostalgia. And I mean, to be honest, really honest about it, it was really-- I was just joking around when I put that in there because I like the alliteration of summer and 6 and 9. I thought there was good alliteration there. So it's got nothing to do with the year at all.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I just want to know where you got your first real six string and if you still have it, Do you still have your first guitar?

BRYAN ADAMS: Yes, I still have it. And I had a few first guitars. My very first guitar was a guitar my father bought me, which was a Flamenco Spanish guitar. I wanted to be a drummer, and he said, OK, no. You can be a guitar player. And he gave me this Spanish guitar for Christmas. And that just shows you where he thought my professional music career was going to go.

I don't know if you've ever played a Spanish guitar, but it's quite difficult. The neck is very thick. And the strings are not quite hard. So for an eight-year-old, it was quite tricky. But I learned a few chords, and I got started, and that led to wanting to have better guitars. And yeah, so I still have my old electric guitar from 1970.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Oh, so it wasn't that long after '69 when you got your first real six string. You seem maybe more artistically driven than you ever have. Like, you're doing all this stuff. What keeps you inspired?

LYNDSEY PARKER: I'm just happy being creative. And the ideas come. And as long as they keep coming, I'm going to keep making them. I've just done a third project, which is I've rerecorded a lot of my old masters, including "'69." Those are going to come out probably the first week of March as well.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Is it a Taylor Swift type of situation?

BRYAN ADAMS: Exactly.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Can you tell me a little bit more about what made you want to do this?

BRYAN ADAMS: I just I was in negotiation with my record company, and they didn't want to return the masters, so I recorded them again.

LYNDSEY PARKER: How will they sound different from the originals? Did you actually try to do them differently?

BRYAN ADAMS: You'll have to check it out. It's really exciting, actually.