A night to remember

The Bryan Adams' concert in Dubai was definitely a night to remember for those who attended the show. Adams burst on to the stage with lead guitarist Keith Scott and drummer Mickey Curry and kicked the evening to a thrilling start with Back To You. And went on to sing for two hours straight.

Dressed in simple white trousers and a white T-shirt, Adams drove the crowd wild with a succession of hits. Adams blended rock with ballads, with songs such as 18 Till I Die, The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You, Let's Make A Night To Remember, and Run To You which had the audience eating out of his hands.

The great thing about the show, though, was that Bryan didn't rely on the almost slavish avidity of his fans, but chose to take chances. Instead of saving a song like Everything I Do for the encores, he surprised the crowd by casually introducing it as "a nice little song that we wrote".

This during the first hour of the show and performing it largely acoustically. Adams compelled the audience to sing along to his early anthem Cuts Like A Knife. From then on, the band gained a harder edge and even the outlandishly wicked tune of The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You was somewhat filed down by a raucous, strident delivery.

Adams belted out some big bad blues with a medley of If You Wanna Be Bad, Ya Gotta Be Good and Let's Make A Night To Remember purring down the mike and doing stage stunts that four years ago were unheard of at a Bryan Adams concert.

For starters, sticking out his tongue at the end of some of the songs. Very Mick Jagger. Very Stephen Tyler. But Adams? Surprisingly, the new on-stage attitude was lapped up by the audience. Every time he growled into the microphone the crowd went wild for more.

Having played in Dubai twice before, Adams said he was back for a third time for his shows here are in the Bryan Adams scheme of things, stripped-down, intimate little gigs.

When he performed the Julio Iglesias cover track Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?, a lot of the bachelors in the audience called up their girlfriends on their mobiles. For one such guy and his girl, it was truly a night to remember, when Adams took the mobile from the guy and sang the chorus line into the phone for the girl.

The human touch, gelling with and making friends with the audience, is what made the concert so successful. Adams smiled and thanked everyone who threw soft toys and teddy bears at him, wore someone's cowboy hat before throwing it back into the crowd and kept talking to the audience, making the whole evening truly entertaining.

The defining moment of the concert came three songs into the show when he sang the classic Adams anthem Summer Of '69. Till that point it was Adams and the band, playing back to back tracks. After Summer of '69, he took a breather to introduce both the band and himself, to a chorus of laughter and amazement from the audience.

Adams reduced a few girls (at least!) to tears with his popular mellow numbers like Heaven, Everything I Do (I Do For You) and of course, Please Forgive Me.

The Canadian megastar put up a triumphant display of the revolutionising power of rock. As he sang the tear-jerker ballad Everything I Do (I Do It For You), impulsive hands shot up with lighters, all around, couples in the audience sang the song to each other and an entire bunch of people were singing along with their eyes shut.

When you attend a Bryan Adams concert, you know your musical emotions are being manipulated. Bryan pushes all the right buttons and does all the right things.

For his performance of the song, When You're Gone (a duet with Mel C), from his new album Best Of Me, Bryan called a girl, Adrienne, onstage from the audience and rocked the house down, jamming with her. He insisted she sing the entire song with him, kissed her before she left and even got down to pulling her hair open and dancing with her.

The rocking Canadian raised the roof with his version of If You Wanna Be Bad, You Gotta Be Good, where he imitated an irritated girlfriend nagging him, with body gestures and all.

With an endless number of requests for an encore, Bryan and the band came back and performed Bryan's brand new single along with Nick of Chicane, Don't Give Up.

Dance act Chicane enthralled the audiences with their Ibiza-flavoured trance music for about 45 minutes before Bryan Adams came on. Bryan ended the evening with a heart-rending, sing-along version of Please Forgive Me. The prickly sensitivity of Adams' voice made the raucous rocker's ballads transcend the audience into a temporary environment where, just for that moment, Adams convinced every member of the audience that he was singing the song just for them.

To paraphrase an Adams song: "Everywhere you go, the kids wanna rock."
And that's exactly what Bryan gave Dubai the chance to do at the concert.
The man who walked off stage, calling himself Bob, promised Dubai he'd be back around this time next year. And as was the case with every concert Bryan has ever given, the audience walked off humming their own version of all the Adams' anthems.