B R Y A N    A D A M S  

With his trademark white T-shirt and blue jeans, Bryan Adams may have looked like a regular guy. But his unerring gift for radio-friendly pop hooks made him the most successful artist exported from Canada in the Eighties, even as critics dismissed his straightforward, anthemic rock as a shallow formularization of Bruce Springsteen.

Adams’ father was a Canadian diplomat, and Adams attended military schools in England, Austria, Portugal, and Israel. When he was 12 his parents separated, and he lived with his mother in Vancouver, British Columbia. By then he had taught himself to play guitar and decided make music his career. At 16, he quit school, bought a grand piano with money from his college fund, and joined bands. At age 17 he befriended Jim Valiance, who had written songs for the Canadian band Prism. After two years of writing and recording demo tapes, their partnership produced the 1979 disco-styled Canadian single "Let Me Take You Dancing." The pair sold songs to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Joe Cocker, and Juice Newton, then landed a publishing deal with A&M Records, which led to Adams’ recording contract.

Adams’ eponymous debut album stiffed, but the follow up, You Want It, You Got It (#118, 1982) did better, and Adams opened shows for such bands as the Kinks, Foreigner, and Loverboy. Cuts Like a Knife (#8, 1983) was Adams’ U.S. breakthrough, producing hits in "Straight from the Heart" (#10, 1983), the title cut (#15, 1983), and "This Time" (#24, 1983); the latter two were accompanied by popular eye-catching videos. Reckless (#1, 1984) was even bigger, selling over five million copies and yielding such hits as "Run to You" (#6,1984), "Somebody" (#11, 1985), and "Summer of ‘69" (#5, 1985), Adams’ first hit ballad in "Heaven" (#1, 1985), and "It’s Only Love" (#15, 1985), a duet with Tina Turner (with whom Adams toured, and for whom he produced a track on her 1986 Break Every Rule). Adams appeared at Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985, and in 1986 performed on Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope Tour with Sting and U2.

His Into the Fire yielded hits in "Heat of the Night" (#6, 1987), "Hearts of Fire" (#26, 1987), and "Victim of Love" (#32, 1987). Adams refused to allow the use of the album’s "Only the Strong Survive" in the Tom Cruise film Top Gun, because he felt the movie glorified war.

After performing at the 1988 Freedomfest in London to honor freed South African apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela, Adams began work on Waking Up the Neighbours. Meantime, Joe Cocker recorded Adams’ "When the Night Comes," and Dion recorded his "Drive All Night"; Adams had a quick cameo in the 1989 Clint Eastwood film Pink Cadillac and performed at Roger Waters’ 1990 Berlin production of The Wall. The release of Neighbours (#6, 1992) was preceded by the appearance of "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" under the credits of the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood -- Prince of Thieves. The ballad was an instant smash, topping the U.S. pop chart for seven weeks, and the U.K. chart for a record-breaking 16 weeks. In February 1992 Adams took issue with his homeland’s "Canadian Content" regulations, which restricted airplay of Neighbours because Adams co wrote and coproduced the record with an Englishman, Mutt Lange. Adams briefly threatened to boycott the annual Juno Awards, Canada’s version of the Grammys, where he ended up winning Entertainer and Producer of the Year awards. A hits collection, So Far So Good (#6,1993), proved his continuing appeal in the Nineties followed by the highly successful 18 Till I Die and On A Day Like Today Albums.

THE ALBUMS