Michael Heatley - Ryan Adams

O NLY ONE LETTER differentiates Bryan Adams, the Groover from Vancouver, from alt.country superstar Ryan Adams. Hence the possibly apocryphal tale, told by a letter writer to Mojo magazine, of the man who came to see Ryan Adams at Sheffields Boardwalk club because he thought he was a Bryan Adams tribute act and came away converted.

But while the younger man from Jacksonville, North Carolina 28 at the time of writing has yet to write his own Everything I Do (actually, he has, though not in sales terms), he already had four albums to his name before Gold broke it all wide open in late 2001. The Rolling Stones, Gram Parsons, Van Morrison and Neil Young have all been quoted as Adams influences, and such lofty comparisons seem only to have stoked the fires of mythology.

Yet it could be that Steve Earle offers a more relevant comparison. A decade earlier, Earle had emerged from country to place one foot firmly in the rock arena, with earth-shaking effect. Adams Copperhead Road may well be to come, but interestingly hes being pitched by management and record company to a young, trendy audience. Add fans of Young, Parsons, Morrison etc. and, even, those to whom Adams fan Elton John is king and you have a potential across-the-board audience.

But what of Adams himself? To many, hes a walking, talking contradiction, and thats something hes happy to play along with if not play up. His romances with the famous have seen him become gossip-column fodder, and while hes an expert at mesmerising an audience with the aid of a guitar, a harmonica and a book of lyrics hes taken to stadium-rocking in mini-Springsteen fashion.

The fact remains, though, that his rise has been meteoric. His dbut solo London gig in 2000 drew an audience of 275; in the spring of 2001 he returned to play two nights at a 500-capacity theatre, while his third visit in less than a year saw him sell out the 2,000-seat Shepherds Bush Empire. But that is where many so-called alt.country acts like Wilco, Steve Earle and the Jayhawks have levelled out.

Since then, hes moved on up both in concert status and critical standing, ensuring that the man whose breakthrough band Whiskeytown were labelled the Nirvana of alt.country would not go down with the genre. Newsworthy both on and off stage, this North Carolina native had removed all room for confusion and made a name for himself as the brightest hope in American rock for the first years of a new millennium. Bryan who?

This will undoubtedly not be the last book on Ryan Adams, but to this writers knowledge it is the first. Id like to thank all those, credited or otherwise, who assisted me in the endeavour not to mention the excellent websites which are listed in the discography. There are as many different viewpoints on his music as there are influences on Adams work, and hopefully theyve all come together to entertain and inform. Hes certainly packed a lot of life and music into his first 28 years, and theres no doubt more to come.

C AN THERE BE a more predictable musical genre than country? One of many jokes suggesting a negative answer runs like this: What happens when you play a country music record backwards? You get your wife back, your house back, your truck back, your dog back

Yet it doesnt and hasnt always been that way. The genre most famously imbued with rocknroll excitement by Gram Parsons in the late Sixties has provided a more recent generation of US singers and songwriters with a means of escape from the post-punk dead end. Among those was Whiskeytown, led by Ryan Adams. Yet though hes emerged as a leading light in a genre that has variously worn the names country-rock, alt.country and Americana, hes in no hurry to be pigeonholed.

I dont really worry about the Americana tag, he commented while still at the head of Whiskeytown. I just think they mean bands that write songs. If you write songs and they make sense, you end up getting called Americana. As for alt.country, I just would hate to be part of a genre in which the band would die when the genre dies, like grunge (Nirvana). Quite frankly, our biggest influences are the Stones and Fleetwood Mac, neither of which is very alternative or country.

I would never diss country, he concluded. In fact we write the best country songs. But were just an American rocknroll band. That just about sums up everything we do.

The emotional content of country music has long been a target for rock bands keen to increase their musical vocabulary. A seismic shift in American music had occurred when the Grateful Dead followed in the footsteps of Bob Dylan and went country in the late Sixties with the likes of American Beauty and Workingmans Dead. The Rolling Stones caught the drift with Gram Parsons help, with songs like Wild Horses (recorded both by them and Parsons Flying Burrito Brothers) and Sweet Virginia, from ExileOn Main Street, resulting.

Gram Parsons is not only the biggest single influence Ryan Adams has name-checked over the years but the man history sees as the main progenitor of country-rock. Having cut his teeth with the International Submarine Band, he joined The Byrds for 1968s seminal Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album before jumping ship to found the Burritos after a leadership tussle with Roger McGuinn. Far from wanting to pursue a strategy of merging country and rock, McGuinn had no idea who hed hired: When I hired Gram I thought he was a jazz pianist: I had no idea hed be this Hank Williams character.

Yet as Chris Hillman, who left The Byrds at the same time as Parsons, points out, country and rock had long been bedfellows. Elvis, when he was at Sun Records, when he was good, the initial stuff he did for Sam Phillips, that was country-rock. Country-rock, rockabilly, its all the same thing. After he went in the army, it was over.