The Troubled Troubadour. It was with both excited anticipation and uneasy trepidation that the Ryan Adams faithful gathered at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna last night for the final show of his Heartbreaker 2025 tour.
The anticipation was palpable as the mostly 40+, mostly well-dressed, mostly not very rock’ n’ roll folk took their seats.
The gifted, troubled, and prolific singer-songwriter was playing his groundbreaking debut solo album Heartbreaker in its entirety, a rare treat for even the most casual fan.
The trepidation was tied to the trail of headlines the eccentric, individualistic performer had attracted over the last week regarding the very show we had all turned up to see.
A second set in Melbourne where not one song was sung through to completion, supposedly shambolic sets in Christchurch and Wellington complete with duck noises and long, tangential, often nonsensical ramblings before songs, between songs – hell, even right in the middle of them. Hmm, if various fan sites were to be believed.
The big question really, then, as the seven lampshades on the Ryan in his Parlour type set began to glow warmly was, what the hell are we in for?
The answer. One of the most remarkable, unpredictable, spontaneous, eccentric, intense, personal and beautifully moving concert experiences you could ever have the privilege to witness.
And, yep, the occasional duck noise.
What an entertainer!
Moving between three different acoustic guitars, all tonally slightly different, depending on the requirements of the song, and an upright piano with the richest, clearest sound I have ever heard in a live setting, Adams, largely delivered what was promised.
A run through of that staggeringly good first album, a second set of originals and covers of judicious selection and stellar delivery, and a performance that, as they say of sports teams, left everything out on the park.
The audience banter was hilarious. You three people leaving now because you can’t wait to get a beer? I will fucking haunt you…
Unnerving. The insistence on demanding a heckling woman’s name in almost menacing fashion, that ended with her slung about him while he composed a song on the spot about her (and she’s had seventeen white wines…).
Respectfully authoritative, (sir, those people around you do not want you on your phone…).
He knew how to play a local crowd – plenty of anti-Australia digs, big ups for Lorde (I know her as Ella), and a not-so-discreet reference to the verbal stoush he had after an acoustic set with Neil Finn. I’ve learned to love his music. The man himself? Yeah…not so much, stifling a slight giggle.
The no camera flashes signs in abundance he explained in confessional tone at the outset. I had an ocular epileptic fit in Melbourne because of camera flashes, please refrain…or shoot at the floor…
But the music? Good God!
From the much-anticipated To Be Young, where he shifted seamlessly between a Blues and a Rock version, to the haunting, new, piano-led, poignant and pointed Outsiders, Adams showed why he’s held in such high esteem in the Rock pantheon by his fellow musicians. This dude can play.
The Blues on that first song reappeared throughout the set, as he’d throw in a minor seventh here and there, or slip into a slow, Louisiana-laden solo.
On Amy, he discovered a Spanish feel you never knew it had, launching into a flamenco frenzy, fingers flying, fireworks filling the theatre: mesmerising.
As he hunched over a piano, sometimes curled around the keys quizzically in a way that almost said, what does this thing do? he played, with his back to us, beautifully, hauntingly, and, like his guitar playing, shifting from loud to soft often in seconds.
After a particularly blinding keyboard moment he turned around and said wryly, bet you didn’t know I could play piano, did you?
He didn’t do Heartbreaker in its entirety, saying that he’d left some songs out deliberately because they were repetitive and senseless, instead giving us the beautiful and new “Walk Through the Dark” (the best song I’ve ever written), an astounding piano version of Blue Moon (truly!) and a set that finished with the darkly delightful I See Monsters, a truism if there were ever one.
In the intermission where you guys can go do your alcoholism or whatever it is you do, he appeared at the merch stand and signed t-shirts and albums. He looked clear-eyed, energetic and effervescently amusing.
Set Two began with another new offering, Saturday Night Forever, gave us Gimmie Something Good off the excellent Prisoner, a warmly received English Girls, a tear-inducingly, emotive Shiver and Shake and Ashes and Fire from that magnificent album, written at the height of his happiness as a newly married man.
He took to the piano to do a remarkable version of Lorde’s Current Affair lavishing praise on Pure Heroine, songwriter to songwriter and then, after a tangential segue into Ozzy Osbourne he announced his favourite Black Sabbath song…and played That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, a ripping version of the legendary Smiths song.
Amethyst, a new song taking aim at how the potential and excitement of Little Richard and Elvis and Chuck Berry is long lost in these vacuous times, was the closest he got to the vehemence and outrage he’s sometimes known for.
In reference to his troubles (cancelled for his inappropriate behaviour around women for which he has publicly apologised) there were a couple of comments, and that closing song Outsiders suggested nothing he does will ever be mainstream or, indeed, fully understood, not even by himself.
Which could sound like a two-and-a-half-hour pity party of a self-confessed fucking wreck, but the humour, the songs and the delivery put paid to all that.
He was generous – with his time, his wit, and his incredible talent. At times hilarious, at times impenetrably cerebral but always, always, a great entertainer with so, so many brilliant songs that likely he could have played all night and never run out of steam.
What a treat, and it’s proved to be a bitter-sweet treat. He announced at the outset, and on his Insta, that last night was his last ever live gig. The physical toll on this frail soul has been simply too much.
I rang my sister after Melbourne. She told me to quit playing live. If that’s for real, then it adds a poignant layer of joy over one of the most remarkable, exciting and inspirational shows I have witnessed.
As Ryan Adams said in his new song, Saturday Night Forever, …And if I had a wish/It would be Saturday night forever/Saturday night forever in my mind.
Me too.
Michael Larsen
Photos by Chris Zwaagdyk