Bryan Adams has opened up for the first time about his relationship with the late Princess Diana.
Adams told The Sunday Times that an unlikely and “surreal” friendship evolved between the two after a song he wrote that seemed to heavily reference her marriage to Prince Charles caught her attention.
The Canadian song-smith said that the late royal found the lyrics to his song “Diana” to be “very funny” and invited him over for tea so she could hear the song again.
A romance between the two was heavily rumoured in the 1990s.
The relationship came under scrutiny again in 2003 after his ex-girlfriend Cecilie Thomsen told press that theirs “was a stormy relationship and Bryan’s affair with Diana didn’t make it any easier.”
Adams does not address the romance rumour directly in the interview. However, he said the pair “had a lot of really, really good conversations.”
“In fact it’s strange and surreal to think about. I really, really liked Diana, she was an amazing woman and a super-great inspiration,” he said of his friend.
“Meeting her was truly one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”
When the pair first met on a flight, the “Groover from Vancouver” told her he had used her name in a song, to which she responded: “Yes, I know, very funny. Actually I’d like to hear it again.”
“When I first went round to KP (Kensington Palace) she wasn’t, like ‘I really need to talk to somebody’, and you don’t bulldoze into someone’s life wanting to know everything in the first 10 minutes,” he said.
“It was ‘let’s have a cup of tea’. But later the more friendly we got the more I learnt what was really going on.”
The song “Diana” was the b-side to his hit single “Heaven.”
The lyrics “The day that he married you – I nearly lost my mind” and “Diana – what ya doing with a guy like him?” caught media attention as they seemed to heavily reference the tumultuous marriage between Diana and Prince Charles, now King Charles III.
The song even refers to the titular Diana as “the queen of all my dreams.”
“He might have lots of dough; but I know he ain’t right for you” Adams says elsewhere in the song.
“You’ve got one choice – you can get away. Leave it up to me. I’ll bring the ladder – if you bring your limousine.”
In his interview with The Sunday Times, Adams called the lyrics “laddish humour” and claimed he was in fact inspired by “that guy who [had] broken into the Queen’s bedroom and sat on her bed smoking a fag.”
This refers to the true tale of Michael Fagan, a painter and decorator who broke into the bedroom of Queen Elizabeth II. The late monarch woke up with Fagan sitting on her bed.
Adams retired the song after Princess Diana’s untimely death in 1997, “out of respect.”
