Room Service (Bryan Adams Album) - Recording and Writing

Recording and Writing

Adams first started working on the album in 2001, but he later started working on the soundtrack album, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron which was slated for release in 2002. Adams had started working on the album in The Warehouse Studio, Canada, but he ran out of time because he was about to headline a tour in Europe. He, together with his associates, created a system and decided to do small overdubs while on tour, to see how it worked out. The idea of recording while on tour was mainly due to boredom on Adams part. With his earlier releases Adams used, in his owns words; "go kind of nuts, a bit stir crazy", so he began using his spare time on tour to write and record new songs. Which is not as complex as one might assume, a normal concert took two hours, which left the bulk of the day doing nothing or getting to the next gig. "I tried to make use of the time which is generally spent doing nothing" Adams says, he was able to gather enough gear into a couple of suitcases to create a small studio for himself. They'd normally order a couple of rooms, order room service, and then begin the recording season. Adams believed it to be a better working environment, even when Adams and the crew moved the gear many times during a season. They would normally get help from the local staff however.

"East Side Story", the opening track, when asked why he picked New York for the song, Adams replied; "Probably because there is so much street activity there, even though there is an east side to every city, the NY east side, or lower east side, is particularly full of character. It just seemed to paint the picture." The second track, "This Side of Paradise" is about finding the truth, ironically there were many American radio stations who refused to play the song because of the line "There ain't no Santa Claus". The first single, "Open Road" was completed over two continents while Adams was touring. "The basic track was recorded in Vancouver, at the Warehouse studio," Adams notes, but the vocals were done in Paris, France and guitarist Keith Scott started working on the song backstate in Lethbridge, Alberta. The music video for the song, is not so much about traffic as it is about "power, authority and anti-establishment" statements. The album's title track deals "with the idea that touring can very lonely". When writing the song, Adams wanted to make the "peephole in the hotel door" so people could know what he was doing. While acknowledging that isn't always like that, "but you do end up really missing the things you have at home".