Robert John “Mutt” Lange is widely regarded as one of the most influential record producers in music history.
Lange’s extensive credits include producing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” and “Back in Black,” Foreigner’s “4,” Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” and “Hysteria,” as well as Shania Twain’s early catalog. These are only a few examples of his numerous multi-platinum successes.
For the past decade, however, the South African-born producer has largely stayed out of the public eye—except when it comes to working with Bryan Adams.
Lange and Adams have a longstanding professional relationship. Lange produced Adams’ 1991 album “Waking Up the Neighbors” and 1996’s “18 til I Die.” The pair, along with Michael Kamen, won a Grammy Award in 1991 for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” from the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” which Lange co-wrote and produced.
Lange also worked on several tracks for Adams’ other albums, including “So Far So Good” (1993), “The Best of Me” (1999), “Room Service” (2004), “11” (2008) and “So Happy It Hurts” (2022).
On Adams’ latest release, “Roll With the Punches,” Lange returns not as a producer but as a musician, contributing keyboards to five of the album’s 10 tracks and backing vocals to nine.
“I love working with him,” Adams told UCR. “I kept sending him ideas; every time I came up with a chorus or a verse, or if I had a basic track, I’d send it and ask if he’d sing background vocals. It’s not tough to get him inspired; he loves music so much. It just ended up being a really cool collaboration.”
Adams said a couple of songs on “Roll With the Punches” originated from ideas Lange had been developing with a Swedish singer. “They hadn’t really completed anything,” Adams said. “They just had a bunch of tracks. That’s how songs like ‘Will We Ever Be Friends Again’ and ‘Life is Beautiful’ came together. They sort of started something, then didn’t finish it or it needed to be finished. So along comes the fixer. I wouldn’t actually call myself that, because Mutt’s the fixer. He’s amazing at putting things together. But we would go back and forth on the Internet. We never actually met, but it worked great.”
Lange is not the only longtime collaborator involved with “Roll With the Punches.” Jim Vallance, Adams’ longtime co-writer, provides backing vocals on “A Little More Understanding,” a song Adams found while searching through his archives and finished. “I want to try to inspire Jim to get back into it again,” Adams said. “I think after the Broadway musical ‘Pretty Woman,’ Jim was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m done with this. That’s enough.’ He doesn’t want to do anything after that. So slowly but surely I’m trying to inspire him to get back into the fold, because he’s one of the best.”
“Roll With the Punches” is Adams’ first album of all-new material for his label, BAD Records. His previous releases for the label were “Classic” and “Classic Pt. II,” a two-volume set of re-recorded hits released in 2022. Adams is also now managing his own career, although he said the change has not been dramatic.
“I’m doing everything like I used to, and having more fun with it,” said Adams, who plans to release vinyl editions of albums that were never previously available in that format and is preparing another set, “Tough Town,” which will collect non-album tracks from movie soundtracks and other projects.
“I’m having more fun on the creative side—things I suppose could have been done if I’d had somebody at the label interested in doing them, but they weren’t,” Adams said. “Once an album came out, it would just do what it was going to do, and then they’d disappear. Unless you’re a touring artist, you have no way of furthering that. I feel grateful that I am a touring artist, so I can keep talking about the music and putting things out.
“I felt like I was managing myself for quite a while. Let’s just put it this way: an artist doesn’t leave a manager for no reason. But everything’s going great, and we’re rolling with the punches.”
Adams is currently on a U.S. tour through Nov. 26, followed by U.K. and European dates in December, and shows in Asia in the new year.