Bryan Adams was right on the money when he described Reckless as “the best album I ever made”.
From that one album, released in 1984, came the hit singles Heaven, Summer Of ’69, Somebody, Run To You, One Night Love Affair and his duet with the legendary Tina Turner, It’s Only Love.
All 10 tracks on Reckless were written by Adams with his key early collaborator Jim Vallance, and in an interview with Classic Rock magazine in 2015, Adams said of the album: “It was the culmination of a lot of really good energy and good songs coming in at the right time. Jim and I were at our peak as songwriters, and the record was made with real musicians, which is why it still sounds good. When it was simple, that’s when it was the greatest.”
Run To You was the lead single from the album. It reached No 4 in Canada, No 6 in the US, and No 11 in the UK. But as Adams revealed, it was a song that had previously been rejected by veteran American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult.
Adams had been surprised that Blue Öyster Cult had passed on Run To You, given that its opening guitar riff echoed the band’s classic 1976 hit (Don’t Fear) The Reaper.
But when Adams began prepping Reckless, he dug out Run To You and with fresh ears it sounded better than he had remembered – so good, in fact, that he wondered why he hadn’t thought to keep it for himself.
This was one of a handful songs that Adams and Vallance had written in advance. They also had One Night Love Affair, which would end up as the opening track on Reckless, and the ballad Heaven, recorded in 1983 as the theme to the flop movie A Night In Heaven.
In the basement of Vallance’s home in Vancouver, Canada, the city where Adams also lived, the pair wrote more songs in quick succession.
“It was almost as if every day we got together another song would happen,” Adams said. “Monday would be Somebody, Tuesday would be She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancin’, Wednesday would be Summer Of ’69…”
Recording began at Vancouver’s Little Mountain studios in March 1984, with Bob Clearmountain in the producer’s chair.
When they cut Run To You, all they needed was one take.
“I’m proud of that,” Adams said. “I remember Bob Clearmountain standing up in the control room and saying, ‘Whoah! You guys have gotta hear this!’ And when he played it back, I said, ‘Let’s not touch that. Next song!’
“We did record it two or three times afterwards, because we could. But we never got it as good as the first one.”
Another song that came together quickly was one that Vallance had brought to the table. It’s Only Love wasn’t written with a vocal duet in mind, but Adams felt it needed another voice, “to make it special”. And for that, he had only one candidate in mind: Tina Turner, the soul singer who had recently launched her comeback with the single Let’s Stay Together.
A demo of the song was sent to Turner’s management, and a meeting arranged for when she was doing a show in Vancouver as support to Lionel Richie.
Adams admitted he was nervous as he waited for her backstage.
“And then,” he recalled, “I saw this big mane of hair coming down the hallway. I could hear her saying, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ Someone said: ‘There he is.’ And Tina says, ‘Bryan, I loooove this song! I wanna record it!’ I said, ‘Let’s do it tomorrow!’”
When Turner said yes on the spot, Adams thought to himself: I’ll believe it when I see it. But on the following afternoon, Turner arrived at Little Mountain to deliver a performance that left Adams and his team feeling like they’d been hit by a force of nature.
Adams remembered it vividly.
“After we’d recorded it and she said goodbye, it was like a tornado had just ripped through there,” he laughed. “I said: ‘Bob, could you just play that back? You definitely got that on tape, right?’ He said yes, thank God.”
Released as a single in late 1985, It’s Only Love was a top 20 hit in the US and Canada, top 30 in the UK, top 5 in various other countries. But more than that, it stands tall as one of the greatest duets of all time.
