The singer-songwriter quit music two years ago. But his new album, 'Ashes & Fire,' symbolizes his rebirth.
Ménière's disease is an inflammation of the inner ear. Specifically, a swelling in the tubes of the ear canal that control the body's balance. No one knows its cause, but stress, exhaustion and substance abuse are among the factors thought to contribute. Its symptoms include nausea, physical disorientation and occasionally debilitating bouts of tinnitus and the loss of hearing at certain frequencies. There is no known treatment.
For an average person, Ménière's is irritating. For musicians, it can be the end of a livelihood, even a loss of their identity. Sounds actually disappear.
For the singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, who was diagnosed with the condition five years ago and crested during the final tours with his former backing band the Cardinals in 2009, it was a literal threat to his career. His new solo album "Ashes & Fire," out Tuesday, is proof he beat it, and his Oct. 10 show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery sold out in minutes. But at the time, the illness was a metaphor for the many ways he was losing balance.
After a run in the mid- to late-2000s when the famously productive yet erratic singer got sober, formed a steady band and made some of the most respected albums of a long career, everything unwound.
"You can go on steroids, painkillers or speed to treat the symptoms," Adams said, smirking at his own loose-cannon reputation (he's been drug- and booze-free since late 2005). "I tried one of those."
In 2009 he found himself without an outside record deal, and would soon be heartbroken from the death of a close grandmother and his band's bassist, with a hole in his hearing that wouldn't go away. He announced he was quitting music, which for a 36-year-old singer with 16 full-length records to his name, was akin to retiring from dinners.
But "Ashes & Fire," released on his own Pax AM label in partnership with Capitol, is a valediction for the time when he was one of the most famous screw-ups in music. It's an intimate, emotionally nuanced exploration of what it means to have a career seem to dissolve in self-abuse and self-doubt, and the humbling shock of finding a verdant home in Los Angeles in spite of it.
His new album is perhaps his sonically gentlest yet most emotionally strafed since his solo debut "Heartbreaker." Produced by veteran Glyn Johns, who worked with artists like the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Eagles, "Ashes & Fire" is a return to the powerfully intimate delivery style that made his reputation. It was all recorded live with few overdubs, with virtuoso low-key guests takes from Norah Jones and keyboardist Benmont Tench, of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
A walk around Adams' Hollywood recording studio is clear proof. Adams, notoriously irascible to journalists, greets guests amiably, dressed in red plaid and exquisitely mussed bangs. He bounds downstairs to show off the small rooms packed with vintage analog recording gear — a tape machine sourced from Motown's manufacturing unit; Fairchild compressors made famous by the Beatles and the studio reference monitors that recorded Metallica's "Master of Puppets" and Dokken's "Under Lock & Key," two of his many, many favorite records.
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