Into The Fire

Reckless made Bryan Adams a stadium act, so the obvious move in 1987 was to make Reckless again. He didn’t. Into the Fire is the record where he and Jim Vallance decided they wanted to be taken seriously, and you can hear them reaching for it. “Native Son” is about what got done to the people who were here first. “Remembrance Day” is about the ones who didn’t come home. More harmonica and mandolin, a lot less top-down-in-the-Camaro.

“Heat of the Night” opens it and got on the radio, and it’s the one song that still sounds like the guy from Reckless. The rest is heavier and more earnest, which is either the problem or the point depending on the day. It didn’t throw off six singles and nobody expected it to.

Then Adams basically vanished. The Vallance partnership wound down and he didn’t surface again until 1991 with the Robin Hood song. This is the last one before all that. It got written off as the letdown after the big record. Put it on now and it sounds like a guy who’d rather mean it than sell it.