Bryan Adams Explains How His Guitar Riff With Gene Simmons Turned Into KISS’ ‘War Machine’

Famous musician and songwriter Bryan Adams opened up about the story behind the iconic KISS song ‘War Machine’ during an interview with The Eddie Trunk Podcast and stated that the song was created after he heard the guitar riff of the song from bassist Gene Simmons during a meeting in Los Angeles.

As many of you might know, Brian Adams received a phone call from producer Michael James Jackson to contribute some songs for the upcoming KISS album in 1982. The song ‘War Machine’ and a new version of ‘Rock ‘n Roll Hell’ were recorded by KISS in collaboration with Gene Simmons, for the tenth studio album ‘Creatures of the Night.’

During a recent interview, Brian Adams opened up about the making of the song ‘War Machine’ and revealed that after he went to Los Angeles in order to meet Gene Simmons, he heard Simmons’ guitar riff without a song, therefore, he went back to Vancouver in order to work on the riff.

Adams also revealed that while creating the track, he considered the live context, therefore he’s beyond thrilled to know the fact that KISS still is performing the song in their live performances to this day, nearly 4 decades after it was released.

Here is what Adams said:

“I think what happened was – they had recorded ‘Rock and Roll Hell’ and asked me to come down… You’d have to get Gene’s version of this, but he asked me to come down and meet with them, and maybe help out on some other songs, and so I thought, ‘OK.’ I went down to Los Angeles and Gene had a guitar riff, and we didn’t have a song. And I thought it was a pretty cool guitar riff, and I didn’t finish the idea when I was in LA, but I took it back to Vancouver and started working on it.

And sat down with Jim, and we came up with ‘War Machine.’ Again, I was always thinking about the live context of things, and that’s interesting you should tell me that that song is still on their live show because that’s exactly what I was thinking, that you could make this a really exciting song based on the lyrical content. And they recorded that. I think that was 1981, so I was a broke songwriter and really grateful for the opportunity, and to this day still very grateful for the opportunity.”

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