Bryan Adams Jams with Prime Minister Harper

Kingston born singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, along with his songwriting  partner Jim Vallance, paid a visit to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s home for a jam session earlier this month.

In a photo posted on his Twitter account by the Prime Minister (shown), Adams can be seen playing one of Stephen Harper’s own guitars, while the P.M. accompanies him on the piano.

The guitar shown is rumoured to be a custom instrument from KISS singer Gene Simmons, who sells the autographed hand-crafted replicas of his axe-shaped bass guitar on his website.

Bryan Adams was in Ottawa to receive the Governor General’s Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Award and also to speak about Canadian copyright legislation.  He and his writing partner were then invited to visit the Prime Minister’s residence at 24 Sussex Drive.

Adams told the Toronto Star Tuesday that they were surprised to find Harper has a room permanently decked out with band equipment. “Playing music is the way the family relaxes,” Harper told Adams.

With Vallance playing drums, Adams on bass, Harper on piano and his son Ben on guitar, they played Adams’ hit song “Run to You” from his fourth Album that was certified Gold in Canada in 1985.

For his part, Stephen Harper admitted such visits are one of the perks of his job.

“You get to meet all kinds of people that you wouldn’t normally get to meet,” Harper said to students visiting Parliament Hill that week.

“I play a little bit in my spare time in a band and had an opportunity to have Bryan Adams come over and play with me a little bit. I don’t think that would happen if I wasn’t Prime Minister,” Harper said.

But Bryan Adams wasn’t the first singer-musician related to the Kingston area to meet a Prime Minister…

In 2003, Napanee’s Avril Lavigne met then-PM Jean Chretien in 2003 when he presented her with a diamond award for selling a million units in Canada.

Chretien apparently made an effort to bond with the young star by admitting he was  “complicated” in school, having been kicked out of three colleges, and also claimed to have been a “skateboard boy”, much to the amusement of Lavigne.

Bryan Adams was born in Kingston on November 5, 1959.

Tags: Avril Lavigne, Bryan Adams

Category: Entertainment