Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams (born November 5, 1959) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him among the best-selling music artists. Adams was the most played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s and has had 25 top 15 singles in Canada and over a dozen in the U.S., UK, and Australia.

This profile of Bryan Adams covers Early Life and Family Background, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Adams released his eponymous debut album when he was 20 years of age. He rose to fame in North America with the 1983 top ten album Cuts Like a Knife; the album featured its title track and the ballad "Straight from the Heart", which became his first U.S. Top-ten hit. His 1984 Canadian and U.S. Number one album, Reckless, became the first album by a Canadian to be certified diamond in Canada and made Adams a global star; the album's six charting singles included "Run to You" and "Summer of '69", both top ten hits in the U.S. And Canada, and the power ballad "Heaven", a U.S. Number one hit. His 1987 album Into the Fire, with its U.S. And Canadian top ten song, "Heat of the Night", rose to number two in Canada and the top ten in the U.S.

In 1991, Adams released "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", which reached number one in at least 19 countries. The single was number one for 16 straight weeks in the UK; it is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The song was included on Adams's Waking Up the Neighbours (1991), a worldwide number one album that sold 16 million copies and was certified diamond in Canada. Another major hit off the album was the Canadian number one and U.S. Number two hit "Can't Stop This Thing We Started". Beginning in 1993, Adams' hits were mostly ballads, including the worldwide number one or two hits "Please Forgive Me" (1993); "All for Love" (1993); and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" (1995), the latter two topping the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Adams was ranked 48th on the list of all-time top artists on the Billboard Hot 100. Adams has won 20 Juno Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media amongst 16 Grammy nominations. He has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and three Academy Awards for his songwriting for films. Adams has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. On May 1, 2010, Adams received the Governor General's Awards in Performing Arts – Lifetime Artistic Achievement for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

Early Life and Family Background of Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams was born on November 5, 1959, in Kingston, Ontario. He is the son of Elizabeth Jane (née Watson) and Conrad J. Adams, an English couple who emigrated to Canada from Plymouth, South West England in the 1950s. One of his grandmothers was from Malta, as was one of his great-grandmothers. His father was a British Army officer who joined the Canadian Army then worked as a United Nations peacekeeping observer and Canadian foreign service diplomat.

Adams travelled with his parents to a diplomatic posting in Lisbon, where he attended St. Columban's School. At various points, he and his family also resided in Israel, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Raised in Ottawa, he attended Colonel By Secondary School in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa.

Adams bought his first electric guitar at the age of 10 in Reading, an Italian brand from Gherson, based on a Fender Stratocaster. In an interview with music magazine Guitar World, Adams said:

During his childhood, Adams was sent to a psychiatrist because he was not getting along with his parents. According to Adams, the psychiatrist told him that there was nothing wrong with him and that his parents needed psychiatric help.

In 1974, Adams, his mother, and his younger brother Bruce moved to North Vancouver while his father was posted abroad. While there, he attended Argyle Secondary School and Sutherland Secondary School.

Adams dropped out of school at age 15. He has said that his worst period of drug and alcohol abuse occurred before his 16th birthday. Once, after Adams had been arrested and thrown in jail, a sergeant said, "Your mum's come to pick you up, and when you go out there I want you to go and look at her and see how unhappy you are making her." Adams states that he went outside, looked at his mother, and thought, "Oh yeah, I can't do this to her anymore." Adams attributes the pockmarks on his face to his drug use.

Adams did not see his father for a period of 12 years following his parents' divorce. He later reconciled with him.

1970s of Bryan Adams

Adams left school to play in a group called "Shock" and used the funds his parents had saved for his college education to buy an Estey grand piano to tinker with. At one point he sold pet food and worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant, which paid the rent. His interest grew in CCR and Deep Purple; he attended concerts by Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, Elton John, and Tina Turner. He began working in the Vancouver music scene with bands and as a studio session singer. At the age of 15, he became the vocalist for glam rock band Sweeney Todd, replacing their original vocalist Nick Gilder.

With Adams the band re-recorded "Roxy Roller", the Canadian hit single from their first album, which came in at No. 99 on the U.S. Charts. The band then recorded their second album If Wishes Were Horses (1977) with Adams billed as "Bryan Guy Adams" on vocals. Adams left the band at age 16. In 1978, at age 18, Adams met Jim Vallance through a mutual friend in a Vancouver Long and McQuade musical instrument store. Vallance was the former drummer and principal songwriter for Vancouver-based rock band Prism, and had recently quit that band to focus on a career as a studio musician and songwriter. They agreed to meet at Vallance's home studio a few days later. This became the beginning of a partnership which was prolific and continuous through the 1980s; together they co-wrote for Adams and a long list of recordings for other artists, including Kiss, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Johnny Hallyday, Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy, Carly Simon and Neil Diamond. The Adams/Vallance songwriting partnership, while discontinuous after the end of the 1980s, as of 2022, is still in existence.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Adams), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.