Bryan Adams recalls how he ended up writing songs for Kiss

Bryan Adams is among the most successful artists of all time, with an estimated amount of more than 75 million records sold worldwide, but before becoming a huge Rock star he wrote some songs for Kiss. He recently recorded those songs as a solo artist and released them. He recalled in an interview with Eddie Trunk (Transcribed by Blabbermouth) how he ended up co-writing “War Machine” and “Rock and Roll Hell” for Kiss.

Bryan Adams recalls how he ended up writing songs for Kiss

“I was 21, and I released my album called ‘You Want It, You Got It’. And I got a call from a guy called Michael James Jackson, who was a producer at the time, and he called me to say, ‘Hey, I really like your record. And I’m actually working with this band KISS. Would you like to write a couple of songs with them or for them?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. What? Is this for real?'”

“He said, ‘Yeah.’ And so they flew me to Los Angeles and I met Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley and Eric Carr, who was the drummer at the time. I sort of sat down with each one of ’em individually and wrote songs with each one. I wrote a song with Paul and I wrote a song with Eric. And with Gene I didn’t write anything, but Gene had a really good bassline that I sort of recorded on my cassette recorder.”

He continued:

“I took it back to Vancouver, and I was telling my usual songwriting collaborator, Jim Vallance, that I’d done this thing, and ‘Check out this bassline of Gene’s.’ And we listened to it, and within an hour or so, we’d written this song called ‘War Machine’ around it. So that’s how ‘War Machine’ came about. And then just to drag Jim into it further, he had a song that he wrote by himself called ‘Rock And Roll Hell'”.

“I said, ‘We should retool that song’ — ’cause it didn’t do anything — ‘we should retool it for KISS.’ And he said, ‘Okay, let’s give it a go.’ So I came up with a verse idea and then the two of us sort of came up with a lyric idea and we finished the song and sent it down there. And that became the second KISS song. Gene wanted a third verse, so he wrote a third verse for it,” Bryan Adams said.