'Broadway seemed like the holy grail of songwriting': Bryan Adams on co-writing Pretty Woman: The Musical

Originally published on September 3, 2018

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, Bryan Adams was a young Canadian rock star on his way to the next level of fame. It was around this time that his new song — a duet with Tina Turner — had climbed the charts, he had written music for Roger Daltrey of The Who, performed at Bob Geldof's original Live Aid concert, and even took a call from Luciano Pavarotti.

That period around 1990 remains one of the wildest chapters in Adams' life, and now he's returning to it in a surprising way.

Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts, took off just as Adams was taking his career to the next level. Now, the film has been adapted into a Broadway musical, which Adams co-wrote the score for.

"You have to make your luck in this world," Adams tells q's Tom Power. "I like the idea of having a project and so that's why I put myself forward. … I've done all kinds of things over the years aside from my records, you know, working in film and animated films and that sort of thing. So Broadway always to me seemed like the sort of holy grail of songwriting."

When it comes to the difference between writing music for films and the Broadway stage, Adams says scoring a musical is a lot more collaborative. He even had the chance to work with the late Garry Marshall, the director of Pretty Woman, before Marshall's death in 2016.

"Broadway is very much a group thing. So you'll sit down with the director and the book writer, your co-writer — and luckily we worked with Garry Marshall for a year, which was wonderful. It was his dream to bring his film, which he directed originally, to the Broadway stage. So for a year we had this wonderful dialogue about what he envisioned for each scene and he was extremely helpful in directing us about what he wanted to do. Sadly he died in the middle of the production. That gave us even more motivation to make us make his dream come true."

The musical adaptation of Pretty Woman is running on Broadway until June 2019.

Listen to the full conversation with Bryan Adams, where he talks about his longtime songwriting partner Jim Vallance, his friendship with Luciano Pavarotti and performing a duet with Taylor Swift. Hear that near the top of this page. 

Interview with Bryan Adams produced by Vanessa Greco

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