Music
EDITED BY KEVIN O’DONNELL@ODtron>
12
94 EW.COM FEBRUARY 24/MARCH 3, 2017
The beloved indie-rock stalwart, 42, talks about pining for cool-kid cassettes
in the ’80s, crushing Nickelback at karaoke, and digging deeper for his 16th studio
album,Prisoner(out now).BY LEAH GREENBLATTRYAN ADAMS
SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE
THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT
WITH MY OWN MONEYSonic Youth’sSister. To me it
was a risky choice because I’d
only read about them inThrasher
Magazine, I’d never actually heard
them. At that point, I basically
had heavy metal records, some
< 1 >Prince, Tears for Fears, stuff
like that.Sister was the first record
I was purposefully seeking out....
I was 15, and I would save my lunch
money, mow a lawn or two, bor-
row from my grandmother. There
wasn’t much money to be had in
the North Carolina town that I’m
from, so I would look at so many
cassettes before I would decide.
THE FIRST SONG I COVEREDI actually never played a cover until
my late 20s. I think the first I ever
learned from front to back was
< 2 >[Oasis’] “Wonderwall,” which
is strange to say, but I just wasn’t
interested in another person’s
songs—or I had enough of my own
to play, I guess? I also don’t think
I had the guitar skills. [Laughs]
THE MUSIC THAT REMINDS
ME OF MY FIRST LOVEMy girlfriend in high school,
Kim, made me a compilation of
a bunch of pop-punk bands.
It had something from the first
< 3 >Green Day, the one with the
numbers in it and a goth-lookingADAMS: RACHAEL WRIGHT; PRINCE: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; GALLAGHER: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC