And so he and Lange set up a new songwriting partnership, with rather more stringent working methods than Bryan was used to. "I used to be very precious about songs," says Bryan. "When the idea came up, that was it. But when I went into the studio with my songs this time, Mutt went, "Yeah, that's OK, but where are the other 10?" He really turned my way of thinking around, made me realize there really were no rules, and that a song just has to have something special, no matter what it is - that you have to come up with it, make it work, stretch it, rip it apart, strip it down, take its clothes off and see how it looks. "One of us would come in with an idea for a song, and we'd try and set up some sort of structure for it, then puzzle over it for a while, try and come up with a middle eight; then he'd come up with some genius rhythm thing for it, and we'd go back and listen to that, then realize the verse wasn't very good; so we'd erase that, re-write the verse - it was unbelievable!

He'd take old songs that Jim [ Vallance ] and I had written, which I thought were quite cohesive, and he'd listen to the chorus and say, That chorus is quite a good verse. What?! "I'd never worked that way before. I used to go into the studio with 10 songs, written, arranged, lyrics, everything, and record it, be finished in six weeks, and put it out This record was a far cry from that. I was touring in Europe, and Mutt and Bob Clearmountain would be mixing all the time I was on tour. They'd spend a couple of days getting the mix set up, I'd come in and approve it, then go back on tour. I was flying back and forth: flew out, did two shows, fly back to London to mix, do two more shows, fly back to London to mix. A bizarre way of working." Bizarre, but undeniably effective - which just as well, considering the gargantuan studio bills such a method entails. Small potatoes, of course, if you end up having the biggest hit for more than a decade. (Everything I Do) I Do It For You is the kind of success that can bring its own kind of pressures, that can change a chap's life irrevocably. So how has it changed Bryan's? He thinks a moment, then answers. "Well, it took a fair amount of pressure off deciding what the first single would be..."

Waking Up The Neighbours was more than four years in the making. Originally Steve Lillywhite was to produce the album, but the recordings were scrapped and Lillywhite was replaced by Robert John 'Mutt' Lange, a more stylized producer who's put a shine on multi-million sellers like Def Leppard, AC/DC and The Cars. A criticism of Waking Up The Neighbours is that it sounds more like Mutt Lange album than a Bryan Adams album. "It's a great record," Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott said back in March, "but you can hear Bryan and Mutt tugging over it. And without trying to piss him off, Bryan's album sounds like a Def Leppard album with Bryan Adams singing it." "Joe phoned up Mutt and apologized, said he didn't mean the things he said in that interview," counters Adams. "He was really worried what I was gonna think. Mutt has his own, identifiable sound. I instinctively don't like the big background vocal thing (as perfected on Def Leppard's last three albums) but I didn't complain, because I felt: 'Well, I'm committed to making a record with him, and that's how it'll be.' I think by the time we'd worked together for a year and a half, we understood each other a lot more. As I said on stage last night, the last three songs we wrote start to show almost another focus for the LP. With those songs ('Vanishing', 'Hey Honey - I'm Packin' You In!' and '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You') Mutt understood my voice much more, he understood that he didn't have to spend hours and hours trying to get me to sing in a certain way, 'cause I sing in a certain way already."

It's rumored that Mutt Lange's work obsession took him to the brink of a nervous breakdown while completing The Cars' Heartbreak City. "He's incredibly committed," confirms Adams. "I've never met anyone like it in my life. He really is an all-encompassing producer: he writes, arranges, sings, plays. There were times when we were working around three in the morning, and I'd go, 'Look, I can't sit here any longer', and he'd say, 'Okay man, see ya later'. So I'd go off to bed, wake up around 10 or 11am, go back to the studio and he'd still be there - and not only had he not gone to sleep, he'd also sussed out the problem we'd had the night before! Mutt's a lovely guy, I've got nothing but fantastic things to say about him. He really pulled me out of a rut. I'll be forever indebted to him." After Reckless came Into The Fire, a good record, but a stift. "With Waking Up The Neighbours, I took my own advice, which is: kids wanna rock."

Despite what could be construed as a somewhat holier-than-thou attitude, Adams insists: "I'm not a preaching vegetarian. I stopped eating red meat ages ago. Then, when I began work on Waking Up The Neighbours with Mutt, he encouraged me to stop eating fish and eggs. Those were the last things to go. That was four years ago." At one point he scrapped a year and a half's worth of work. Finally he joined up with the producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange in England, who got him back on track. In fact, Lange, whom he deeply admires, became a guru - in ways more than musical. He has joined Lange in becoming a puritanical, almost fanatic, vegan. He'd already stopped eating red meat when they began working together, but now he will eat nothing that flies or swims either. "It feels great. I recommend it highly to all persons. I had bad skin, it went away in two weeks. I had really bad sinuses, they cleared up immediately. I looked better, acted more rationally, maybe there was a change in mood swing." In mid-peroration, Adams began to sound not unlike a barker on the midway selling a sure-fire health cure: "People out there eating ten Twinkies a day: you've got migraine headaches, your eyes are red, you're scratching, teeth decaying: you're eating the wrong thing. Zap a hamburger in, go down to the game, slug a few beers and a hot dog in, and I'm fine, next thing you know you wake up a few weeks later you got spots all over your forehead and you wonder, Jesus, where did that come from?" Mutt Lange has helped him clean out the mind, too. "He improved my spiritual life. I'm not incredibly religious or spiritual, but I learned a lot of ways from him, the laws of karma. I read books on his path and it's very interesting."

(Thanks again to Jack -zephyr 102 - for this great article!)