Bryan Adams
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Bryan Adams Biography
From the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s, Canadian singer/songwriter
and guitarist Bryan Adams was one of the most successful recording
artists in popular music worldwide. Usually dressed in blue jeans,
sneakers, and white T-shirts, the energetic performer stalked stages
around the globe, electric guitar in hand, singing his own up-tempo
pop/rock songs and ballads before audiences numbering in the tens of
thousands. He released a series of multi-platinum albums containing
chart-topping singles featured in popular motion pictures. His raspy
voice, simple compositions, and straightforward musical approach earned
him early critical approbation as a likable if unoriginal rock &
roll journeyman, but as he began to become massively popular, reviewers
increasingly pointed out the clichés in his lyrics and the derivative
nature of his music, especially as he softened his style in the early
'90s for his hit movie theme songs. By the end of the '90s, his record
sales had fallen precipitously and he had become largely identified
with his movie work, though he continued to tour extensively, playing
his many hits.
In January 1978, Adams met Jim Vallance. Seven years Adams' senior,
Vallance had been the drummer in the successful Canadian band Prism and
had written most of the songs for their self-titled debut album under
the pseudonym Rodney Higgs. But, finding that he disliked touring, he
had left the band and was trying to develop a career as a songwriter
and producer. He and Adams agreed to form a partnership in which they
would co-write songs and he would produce demo tapes of them, on which
Adams would sing. (It has been extensively reported, repeated in one
rock encyclopedia after another, that they sold songs to a variety of
established artists prior to the launch of Adams' own recording career.
This is not true. In fact, the songwriters did place songs with many
artists, but most of the recordings took place well after Adams started
making records himself.) Utilizing Vallance's connections, they began
sending those demos to Canadian music publishing companies, and in
August 1978 they were signed to a songwriting and production deal with
Irving-Almo Music, the publishing arm of A&M Records. Adams,
meanwhile, was negotiating with RCA Victor Records for a separate
recording contract, but when A&M got wind of that, they quickly
signed him as an artist as well. In February 1979, A&M released his
first single, the Adams/Vallance composition Let Me Take You Dancing,
a disco song he later disavowed, particularly the 12 single remix
version. It spent 23 weeks in the Billboard dance chart, peaking at
number 22, with a reported worldwide sale of 240,000 copies. March 1979
saw the release of Rock n' Roll Nights by BTO (formerly Bachman-Turner
Overdrive), which Vallance had produced and on which he had placed
several songs. Next, Adams and Vallance placed songs on the third Prism
album, Armageddon, with Rodney Higgs and Adams credited on Take It
or Leave It, Adams collaborating with Prism guitarist Lindsay Mitchell
on Jealousy (later recorded for Adams' second album), and Adams
writing You Walked Away Again alone. Adams and Vallance also placed
I'm Ready on the 1979 album Goose Bumps by former Stories singer Ian
Lloyd. (Adams would record his own version of the song on his third
album.)
Meanwhile, Adams was working on his debut LP, and Bryan Adams was
released on February 12, 1980. The album was not released initially in
the U.S., although Hiding from Love (written by Adams and folksinger
Eric Kagna) was issued as a single and reached number 43 in the dance
chart. Ian Lloyd's next release, 1980's 3WC (Third Wave Civilization),
featured two Adams/Vallance songs that Adams later would reclaim for
his own albums, Lonely Nights and Straight from the Heart. In May
1980, Adams assembled a backup band and embarked on his first tour as a
solo act, spending four months playing clubs and colleges in Canada.
Then, he went to work on his second album, You Want It, You Got It,
which A&M released in mid-1981. The album was Adams' first to come
out in the U.S. He toured North America for six months starting in
October, earning opening spots with the Kinks and Foreigner. The album
broke into the Billboard chart in January 1982, peaking at number 118
in 13 weeks, while Adams' version of Lonely Nights hit number three
in the mainstream rock chart and became his first solo Hot 100 entry at
number 84.
As songwriters, Adams and Vallance continued to place their extra
material with other artists. Jump, written by Adams and bandmember
Paul Dean, was featured on Loverboy's quadruple-platinum album Get
Lucky, released in October 1981. And in January 1982, Prism's fourth
album, Small Change, featured the Adams/Vallance compositions Don't
Let Him Know and Stay, the former becoming a number one hit on the
mainstream rock chart and a Top 40 hit on the Hot 100. Adams toured
Canada opening for Loverboy in the spring of 1982, then began work on
his third album. His next notable credit, however, came when his,
Vallance's, and bandmember Gene Simmons' War Machine was featured on
Kiss' Creatures of the Night in October 1982. His own album, Cuts Like
a Knife, was ready by the end of the year, and A&M prefaced it with
his version of Straight from the Heart, released as a single in
December. It broke his career open, peaking in the Top Ten of the Hot
100 and setting up the LP, which followed in January 1983 and
eventually reached the Top Ten and went platinum, spawning further Top
40 hits in the title song and This Time. The album's success was
stimulated by Adams' extensive touring in support of it, which began in
Canada in January and February and continued from March to August in
the U.S., where he opened for Journey, with a six-week tour of Europe
in the fall and dates in Japan in November, followed by another round
of shows in Canada. In total, he spent 283 days on the road in 1983.
Meanwhile, Adams and Vallance had accepted an offer to write their
first song for the movies, and November 1983 saw the opening of A Night
in Heaven and the release of its soundtrack album, featuring their song
Heaven, which Adams performed. The track made the Top Ten of the
mainstream rock chart in early 1984, but Adams declined to release it
as a single just then. Instead, he held it back for his next album,
which he and Vallance began writing after he completed a tour of the
Far East in March 1984. As usual, the products of their writing
sessions began to turn up on other albums before Adams himself
re-emerged. Can't Wait All Night was the title song of Juice Newton's
June 1984 album and became a singles chart entry. Boys Nite Out
(co-credited to bandmembers Marc Storace and Fernando Von Arb) was
featured on The Blitz, an album by Krokus, released in August 1984. The
following month saw the opening of the film Teachers, the soundtrack to
which included two Adams/Vallance songs, Teacher, Teacher, which
became a Top 40 hit for .38 Special, and Edge of a Dream, a singles
chart entry for Joe Cocker. Adams' fourth album, Reckless, was released
on his 25th birthday, November 5, 1984, preceded by the single Run to
You, which reached the Top Ten. It was followed by no less than five
Top 20 singles drawn from the album: Somebody, Heaven (which hit
number one), Summer of '69 (Top Ten), One Night Love Affair, and a
duet with Tina Turner, It's Only Love. The LP, which hit number one
in the U.S. on August 10, 1985, sold five million copies in America and
a reported three million more in the rest of the world. (Adams also
earned his first two Grammy nominations, best male rock performance for
the album as a whole, and best rock performance by a duo or group for
It's Only Love. ) As usual, Adams toured extensively to support it,
his World Wide in '85 tour launching in late December and continuing
through November 1, 1985. He found time early on to co-write (with
Vallance and David Foster) Tears Are Not Enough, Canada's answer to
Do They Know It's Christmas and We Are the World, as a charity song
for Ethiopian starvation relief, which was recorded by the all-star
group of Canadian artists Northern Lights and became a number one hit
in Canada, later included on the We Are the World LP. He also opened
the American side of the Live Aid concert on July 13, 1985.
Adams' success made him and Vallance, if anything, even more appealing
to other artists as songwriters. In August 1985, Loverboy featured
another of their compositions, Dangerous, on the Lovin' Every Minute
of It album. The song was later released as a single and reached the
Hot 100. In September, Roger Daltrey included two Adams/Vallance songs,
Rebel and Let Me Down Easy, on his album Under a Raging Moon, and
Let Me Down Easy also became a chart single. (The songwriters
reworked Rebel for the next Adams album.) Adams was also in demand as
a guest performer on records. Vallance was producing the Canadian group
Glass Tiger, and Adams came in to sing a duet vocal on their song
Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone). It hit number one in Canada in
February 1986 and number two in the U.S. eight months later. In April,
Adams and Vallance's song No Way to Treat a Lady appeared on Bonnie
Tyler's album Secret Dreams & Forbidden Fire. (Tyler had covered
Straight from the Heart on her platinum 1983 album Faster Than the
Speed of Night. Four months later, Bonnie Raitt also sang No Way to
Treat a Lady on her Nine Lives album.) In May 1986, Adams and
Vallance's song It Should Have Been Me was included on Neil Diamond's
album Headed for the Future. (The following year, it was covered by
Carly Simon on her album Coming Around Again, with Adams producing.) In
June, Adams participated in six stadium concerts as benefits for
Amnesty International. In September, the songwriters contributed Back
Where You Started to the Tina Turner album Break Every Rule.
Into the Fire, the fifth Bryan Adams album, was released in March 1987,
prefaced by the single Heat of the Night, which became Adams' fifth
Top Ten hit in the U.S. The album also spawned the Top 40 hits Hearts
on Fire and Victim of Love, but its success fell far short of that
enjoyed by Reckless. Nevertheless, Into the Fire reached the Top Ten in
the U.S. and sold a million copies, with another million sold overseas.
Adams' worldwide tour in support of the album went on for more than a
year, starting in May 1987 and continuing until July 1988. (One of the
final shows, in Werchter, Belgium, was filmed for a television special,
Bryan Adams: Live in Belgium, broadcast on television in Canada January
15, 1989.) Meanwhile, as usual, there were songs for other artists.
Adams and Vallance's Back to Paradise, co-written by Pat Benatar and
performed by .38 Special, was used in the film Revenge of the Nerds II
in the summer of 1987 and became a singles chart entry, and in August
Adams' co-composition Hometown Hero appeared on Loverboy's Wildside
LP.
After finishing his tour in support of Into the Fire, Adams became
involved in the Clint Eastwood movie Pink Cadillac, taking a bit part
in the film and, with Vallance, co-writing Drive All Night, which
Dion sang on the soundtrack, released in May 1989. Adams, Vallance, and
Diane Warren also wrote When the Night Comes, which was featured on
Joe Cocker's album One Night of Sin in August 1989 and, when released
as a single, reached the Top 20. Unfortunately, this was one of Adams
and Vallance's final collaborations. They broke up their songwriting
partnership in August 1989. Adams teamed up with writer/producer Robert
John Mutt Lange, previously known for his work with AC/DC, Foreigner,
and Def Leppard, to write songs for his next album. In December 1989,
Live! Live! Live!, a concert album drawn from the 1988 Belgium show,
was released only in Japan (it later gained release elsewhere), and
Adams did a couple of New Year's shows in Japan to promote it. He also
played occasional other special shows or festivals in 1990 (including
Roger Waters' all-star performance of The Wall in Berlin in July 1990),
but spent much of his time in England with Lange working on his sixth
album.
In 1991, Adams was approached by the producers of the upcoming Kevin
Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and asked to work on a
theme song. He was provided a melody written by the composer of the
movie's score, Michael Kamen. With this, he and Lange fashioned
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You, which he also recorded and which
played under the closing credits of the film when it opened on June 14,
1991. Meanwhile, although he was still putting the finishing touches on
his album, he had committed to begin a concert tour in support of it,
and on June 8, 1991, he had gone back on the road in Europe
co-headlining with ZZ Top. Released as a single, (Everything I Do) I
Do It for You became a massive hit. It topped the U.S. charts for
seven weeks, the longest any song had remained at number one for eight
years, and it went triple platinum. Its international success was even
greater; it spent 16 weeks at number one in the U.K., making it the
longest-running chart-topper of the rock era there. Total worldwide
sales came to eight million copies, more than any single since We Are
the World.
Adams finally finished his sixth album, Waking Up the Neighbours, and
released it on September 24, 1991, supporting it with his Waking Up the
World tour, which ran through July 1993. Also featuring the Top Ten hit
Can't Stop This Thing We Started and three other Top 40 hits, There
Will Never Be Another Tonight, Do I Have to Say the Words? (both
co-written by Adams, Lange, and Vallance), and Thought I'd Died and
Gone to Heaven (plus, of course, [Everything I Do] I Do It for You ),
the album sold four million copies in the U.S. and another six million
in the rest of the world. It also earned Adams six Grammy nominations:
record of the year, song of the year, best pop vocal performance
(male), and best song written specifically for a motion picture or TV,
all for (Everything I Do) I Do It for You, and best rock vocal
performance solo and best rock song for Can't Stop This Thing We
Started. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You was also nominated for an
Academy Award. (Adams' only victory was the Grammy for movie song. In
the peculiar ways of the Grammys, there was also another nomination the
following year for best rock male vocalist for There Will Never Be
Another Tonight. )
As he began to look forward to his next album, Adams as usual placed
songs with other artists. Feels Like Forever, co-written with Diane
Warren, appeared on Joe Cocker's Night Calls album in July 1992, and
Why Must We Wait Until Tonight?, co-written with Lange, was sung by
Tina Turner on the soundtrack to her film biography, What's Love Got to
Do With It, in June 1993, later becoming a singles chart entry. Adams
released a hits compilation, So Far So Good, in November 1993. It was a
multi-platinum success, and Please Forgive Me, a new Adams/Lange
track on it, reached the Top Ten. Within weeks came Adams' theme song
for the movie The Three Musketeers, All for Love (co-written with
Lange and Michael Kamen), recorded with Rod Stewart and Sting, which
hit number one in the U.S. on January 22, 1994. The same month, Adams
embarked on an ambitious tour of the Far East, including countries
rarely visited by a Western pop artist, among them Vietnam.
Adams maintained a low profile through 1994 and the beginning of 1995
as, once again, he and Lange painstakingly crafted a new album. He
re-emerged in the spring of 1995, however, with another romantic ballad
written as the theme song for a film, the flamenco-tinged Have You
Ever Really Loved a Woman? (once again co-written with Lange and
Kamen) from the Johnny Depp/Marlon Brando film Don Juan DeMarco. And he
was rewarded with another number one hit on June 3, 1995, as well as a
Grammy nomination for best male pop vocal performance and another Oscar
nomination for best song. In the fall, he contributed Rock Steady
(co-written with Gretchen Peters) to Bonnie Raitt's live album Road
Tested, performing the song as a duet with her, and the two shared a
chart single with the song. These successes were enough to hold his
fans until May 1996, when he finally delivered his seventh new studio
album, 18 'Til I Die, and launched an 18-month world tour to promote
it. Although it went platinum in the U.S., the album performed
disappointingly, missing the Top Ten and spawning only one Top 40 hit,
Adams and Lange's Let's Make a Night to Remember. Happily, Adams had
another successful duet up his sleeve, as he and Barbra Streisand
combined in the fall of 1996 on I Finally Found Someone (written by
Adams, Lange, Streisand, and Marvin Hamlisch), the theme from her film
The Mirror Has Two Faces, which became a Top Ten hit and earned him his
third Oscar nomination.
Adams' next hit was something of a surprise, since it found him in the
realm of country music. Lonestar released his and Lange's You Walked
In on its Crazy Nights album in June 1997, and the song went on to
become a Top 20 country hit and pop singles chart entry. Less
surprising was his penning (with Jean-Jacques Goldman and Eliot
Kennedy) of the title song for Celine Dion's November 1997 album Let's
Talk About Love, which went on to top the charts and sell ten million
copies in the U.S. Meanwhile, having finished up his tour, Adams filmed
an appearance for MTV's popular Unplugged series on September 26, 1997,
and it was released as an album in December. It was only a modest
success, but served as a stopgap until the appearance of his next
studio album, On a Day Like Today, which was released in October 1998.
On this album, Adams changed gears, abandoning Lange in favor of
several songwriting collaborators, the most prominent of whom was
Gretchen Peters, and completely eschewing ballads in an attempt to
reestablish himself as a rocker. In the U.S., the result was a failure,
as the album spent only two weeks in the charts, peaking at number 102.
Overseas, the disc fared better, with a number 11 showing in the U.K.,
where When You're Gone (co-written with Eliot Kennedy), a duet with
Melanie C. of the Spice Girls, was a Top Ten hit. The album also hit
number three in Canada. In June 1999, Bryan White reached the country
charts with his cover of You're Still Beautiful to Me, an Adams/Lange
song that first appeared on 18 'Til I Die, and it made the country Top
40. Adams next issued a second hits compilation, The Best of Me, in
November 1999. (The American branch of A&M initially declined to
release it.) The previously unissued title song (co-written with Lange)
charted in Great Britain.
Adams was absent from the American charts for more than a year, then
surprisingly returned via the dance charts for the first time in two
decades. His vocals were heard on Chicane's Don't Give Up, which was
a number three dance hit in the spring of 2000. Adams himself,
meanwhile, was collaborating with Hans Zimmer on his first full-length
song score for a film, the animated DreamWorks feature Spirit: Stallion
of the Cimarron, which appeared in the spring of 2002, its soundtrack
making the Top 40, as the emphasis track Here I Am, featuring Adams,
peaked at number five in the adult contemporary chart. Adams released
his ninth studio album, Room Service, and the 2 CD/1 DVD set Anthology
in 2005. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Written by William Ruhlmann