Are you sitting down? Bryan Adams has just made an appearance on Chris Difford’s podcast and inadvertently admitted that he’s been lying to us all these years.
Difford – the legendary songwriter of Squeeze fame – is now into season five of his podcast, I Never Thought It Would Happen, and the first show in the new series finds him gamely grappling with Adams on such topics as what the star got up to during lockdown and the knotty subject of whether he still has his first guitar…
In Adams’ global smash Summer of ‘69 (from 1985) the star famously tells the (previously universally presumed true) story of acquiring his “first real six string” which he bought “at the Five and Dime”.
Adams subsequently “played it 'til [his] fingers bled” and despite the fact that he “had a band” and “tried real hard”, “Jimmy quit, Jody got married” and he “should've known we'd never get far”.
Adams then goes on to say that this happened in “the summer of '69” and that “those were the best days of [his] life.”
However, after taking the above as gospel upon the song’s release some 40 years ago, over the years Adams recollection as to the timeline of events, and the precise origin of his first guitar has increasingly come under scrutiny.
And the star has previously played fast and loose with the truth, seemingly changing dates and stretching the definition of “first real six-string” to beyond breaking point.
After all, what exactly would an ‘unreal’ six-string be? Was Adams first tempted by the dark art of the bass before finding his true calling? Or is he referring to hours spent fantasising with the unreal reality of a silent tennis racket?
We need facts, damnit. And now – thanks to Chris Difford – we have them.
Brace yourself.
“When I was 12 I went to visit my uncle in Reading and told him that I wanted to buy an electric guitar, and he took me down to a music shop in Reading and I still have that electric guitar. It’s an Italian thing. An imitation Stratocaster.”
So let’s get this straight. Adams bought the guitar from a shop in Reading… Hardly “a five and dime” therefore.
And it gets worse.
Given that Adams' date of birth is 5 November 1959, Adams turned 12 in 1971, meaning that the purchase was made in late 1971, most likely 1972.
I.e. NOT 1969… Sigh…
Still things could be worse…
“At that time my father was working for the Canadian Embassy and we got posted to Israel and we spent a year there. I took my guitar, but when we left I gave it to my next door neighbour and, when I got back to Canada, I bought another one. But I thought ‘Why did I do that?’
But then I got a random email from someone, saying 'Hey I have got your guitar from 1970. Do you want it back?' And I was like, 'Yeah, of course I want it back!' But then I never heard anything more about it.
“But 10 years after that email, I’m in a club in Berlin and a guy walks up to me and says, 'Brian, I have the guitar from your childhood. Give me your address and I’ll send it to you.” I said, “Are you the guy who wrote to me back in ‘94?' and he said, 'No, but I’m his friend. He died in a plane crash and left it to me, but he wanted to give it to you'".
“It’s the stupidest story, but that’s what happened. And so I got it. I got it back. Funny old world.”
Phew. We love a story with a happy ending… But don’t get us wrong, we’re still a little rattled about that whole 1972/Reading thing…
“I had no idea it would become such a classic,” Adams told Classic Rock in 2005, “Originally, the song had been called The Best Days Of My Life, but we had always played around with the idea of writing a song about summertime.
"At one point while we were doing the demo, I just threw in the lyric ‘It was the summer of 69’ and it stuck. And the guitar intro is about the only thing I can play, so that was pretty easy.”
As to whether 1969 were, in fact, the best days of Adams' life, we can only presume. However, based on the recent revelations concerning the purchase of his guitar, we’re now taking any claims from the Canadian hitmaker with a pinch of salt.
Coming up next: Bruce Springsteen reveals that he wasn’t born to run, and Joan Jett admits that she actually hates rock and roll.
