125 Facts About Bryan Adams

1.

Bryan Guy Adams was born on November 5,1959 and is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and photographer.

2.

Bryan Adams has been cited as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, and is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide.

3.

Bryan Adams joined his first band at age 15, and at age 20 his eponymous debut album was released.

4.

Bryan Adams rose to fame in North America with the 1983 top ten album Cuts Like a Knife, featuring its title track and the ballad "Straight From the Heart", his first US top ten hit.

5.

In 1991, Bryan Adams released " I Do It for You", which went to number one in at least 19 countries, including for 16 straight weeks in the UK.

6.

The song was included on Bryan Adams' Waking Up the Neighbours, a worldwide number one album that sold 16 million copies, including being certified diamond in Canada.

7.

In 1996, Bryan Adams' 18 til I Die was a top five album in many countries, but only reached number 31 in the US.

8.

Since 1999, Bryan Adams released eight albums, three reaching number one in Canada, and the last three reaching the top three in the UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

9.

In 2008, Bryan Adams was ranked 38th on the list of all-time top artists on the Billboard Hot 100.

10.

Bryan Adams has won 20 Juno Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture or Television amongst 16 Grammy nominations, and has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and three Academy Awards for his songwriting for films.

11.

Bryan 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.

12.

On 1 May 2010, Bryan Adams received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

13.

Bryan Guy Adams was born on 5 November 1959 in Kingston, Ontario, the son of Elizabeth Jane and Conrad J Adams, an English couple who emigrated to Canada from Plymouth in the 1950s.

14.

Bryan Adams travelled with his parents to diplomatic postings in Lisbon and Vienna during the 1960s, and to Tel Aviv during the early 1970s.

15.

Bryan Adams bought his first electric guitar at the age of 12 in Reading, an Italian brand from Gherson, based on a Fender stratocaster.

16.

Bryan 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.

17.

Bryan Adams got into different bands such as CCR and Deep Purple, and attended concerts by Led Zeppelin, T Rex, Elton John, and Tina Turner.

18.

Bryan Adams started working in the Vancouver music scene with bands and as a studio session singer.

19.

Bryan Adams recorded "Roxy Roller" which came in at No 99 on the US charts.

20.

In 1978, at age 18, Bryan Adams met Jim Vallance through a mutual friend in a Vancouver Long and McQuade musical instrument store.

21.

Bryan Adams's self-titled debut album, mostly co-written with Jim Vallance, was released in February 1980.

22.

From January to May 1982, Bryan Adams spent months traveling on his "You Want It You Got It Tour"; within a few months the album had been picked up across the United States and Bryan Adams was on tour opening for The Kinks and Foreigner.

23.

In 1983, Bryan Adams travelled to America, opening for Journey and performing on over 100 dates in five months.

24.

Bryan Adams has stated that "Summer of '69" was not a success when initially released in the UK because British radio stations did not add it to their play lists like they had "Run To You".

25.

In December 1984, Bryan Adams embarked on a two-year world tour to launch the album starting in Canada and United States, then into Japan, Australia, back to the UK, where for dates he supported Tina Turner for her Private Dancer Tour, and again to Canada.

26.

Bryan Adams sang a small passage of this song on Live 8 in Barrie during All For Love.

27.

In September 1985, Bryan Adams worked on Roger Daltrey's sixth solo album Under a Raging Moon.

28.

Bryan Adams co-wrote two tracks for the album: "Let Me Down Easy" and "Rebel".

29.

In January 1986, Bryan Adams provided the ending background vocals to the song "Don't Forget Me " by Canadian rock band Glass Tiger for their debut album The Thin Red Line.

30.

In December 1987, Bryan Adams contributed the song "Run Rudolph Run" to the album A Very Special Christmas, which benefited the Special Olympics.

31.

Bryan Adams is nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Performance for CBS's "Live In Belgium" television special.

32.

In November 1989, Bryan Adams flew to London, England on the 18th for press interviews for the upcoming shows of New Year's Eve in Japan.

33.

Bryan Adams resumes writing material for the album with Mutt Lange and attends Tina Turner's 50th birthday party at London's prestigious Reform Club.

34.

Bryan Adams returned to Little Mountain Sound Studios mid-month to record even more material for the next album.

35.

Bryan Adams returned to London and joined Eric Carmen in the studio to record the backing vocals for "Feels Like Forever", a song written by Adams for Eric's then-upcoming LP.

36.

Production of the Bryan Adams project continued with Mutt Lange in England for the next two months.

37.

Bryan Adams added vocal tracks on the melody of David Foster's "River Of Love" in his home studio in Vancouver.

38.

On 21 July 1990, Bryan Adams took part in Roger Waters's concert production of The Wall - Live In Berlin, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall eight months earlier.

39.

Bryan Adams performed on 28 September 1990 in Chile in the huge 55,000-seat Estadio Nacional Julio Martinez Pradanos in Santiago, then headed to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, the next day to perform alongside David Bowie and Mick Taylor at Estadio Monumental Antonio Vespucio Liberti.

40.

At the beginning of 1991, Bryan Adams returned to London on the sixth to start mixing with Mutt Lange.

41.

Bryan Adams joins them in the studio to lend vocals and guitar tracks.

42.

In protest, Bryan Adams briefly threatened to boycott Canada's annual Juno Awards, where his album was eventually almost completely ignored by the awards committee.

43.

Bryan Adams did end up winning the Juno International Achievement Award, Canadian Entertainer of the Year and Producer of the Year Award.

44.

In July 1992, Bryan Adams performed at Wembley Stadium in front of 80,000 fans, the largest audience on his tour, with Little Angels and Extreme serving as opening acts.

45.

Bryan Adams performed for the first time ever in Hungary and Turkey.

46.

In 1993, Bryan Adams collaborated with Rod Stewart and Sting for the single "All for Love" co-written by Bryan Adams for the soundtrack of the film The Three Musketeers.

47.

King, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald, Bryan Adams took the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem for a tribute to the great master of soul Sam Cooke.

48.

In November 1993, Bryan Adams released a compilation album entitled So Far So Good, that again topped the charts in numerous countries such as the UK, Canada, Germany and Australia.

49.

In 1994, Bryan Adams embarked on a long tour that takes him to Southeast Asia, during which he became the first Western artist to perform in Vietnam since James Brown played there in 1971 at the end of the Vietnam War.

50.

In 1999, a demo version of Bryan Adams' translation appeared on the single CD "Cloud Number Nine" in 1999.

51.

Bryan Adams co-wrote and performed the songs for the DreamWorks animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron in 2002.

52.

In 2004, ARC Weekly released its chart of top pop artists since the last 25 years and Bryan Adams came up at number 13 in the chart with four number-one singles, ten top five hits and 17 Top-10 hits.

53.

Bryan Adams joined for the first time and performed at 26 minor league baseball parks.

54.

Bryan Adams has played in over 72 countries [wow] and played for over 8 people.

55.

In 2006, Bryan Adams co-wrote and performed the theme song "Never Let Go" which was featured in the closing credits of the film The Guardian.

56.

Also in 2006, Bryan Adams co-wrote the Grammy Award-winning gospel song "Never Gonna Break My Faith" for Aretha Franklin.

57.

Bryan Adams opened the concert with "So Far So Good", then after about an hour it was Joel's turn to take the stage.

58.

Bryan Adams has performed on several occasions at Wembley Park, 4 times at Wembley Stadium in 1988,1992,1996, and 1999.

59.

Bryan Adams released his eleventh album, 11, internationally on 17 March 2008.

60.

Bryan Adams did an 11-day, 11-country European acoustic promotional tour to kick off the release of the album.

61.

Bryan Adams was one of four musicians who were pictured on the second series of the Canadian Recording Artist Series to be issued by Canada Post stamps on 2 July 2009, with estimated one and one-half million Bryan Adams stamps printed.

62.

Aldean poured his heart out singing lead on the song and Bryan Adams supported on harmonies during the chorus.

63.

On 12 February 2010, Bryan Adams performed a duet with Nelly Furtado.

64.

Bryan Adams was one of several Canadian musicians to visit Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at his official residence.

65.

In November 2010, Bryan Adams released the acoustic album Bare Bones.

66.

Bryan Adams performed at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cricket World Cup on 17 February 2011, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

67.

On 30 September 2014, Bryan Adams released a new album titled Tracks of My Years.

68.

Bryan Adams released his first album of all new material in seven years on 16 October 2015.

69.

On 7 September 2015, it was announced that Bryan Adams would be performing at the 2015 AFL Grand Final, along with English singer Ellie Goulding and American musician Chris Isaak.

70.

On 21 September 2017, Bryan Adams announced via social media his release of a new compilation album, Ultimate, with two new songs "Please Stay" and the anti-war themed "Ultimate Love", on 3 November 2017.

71.

Bryan Adams performed "the Ultimate tour" during the year 2018.

72.

Bryan Adams toured Australia, New Zealand, UK, Europe, the US, and Canada.

73.

Bryan Adams brought the ultimate tour 2018 to India in the month of October 2018, where he performed at Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi.

74.

Bryan Adams was one of the first foreigners to stage a large-scale concert in India in the early 1990s, and he has returned to tour India several times.

75.

Bryan Adams was on the cover of the September 2018 issue of Rolling Stone India, within which they printed an interview with him; the article stated that Bryan Adams is "one rock legend whose concerts have created mass frenzy every single time in every single city he's played" in India.

76.

Bryan Adams released his fourteenth album Shine a Light on 1 March 2019.

77.

Bryan Adams, while writing this song, did not think it would be performed by Aretha.

78.

Bryan Adams was among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

79.

Bryan Adams told the Times that he had asked Universal for access to the master tapes for Reckless in 2013 while working on a remastered edition of the album, but had been told that the tapes could not be found.

80.

On 15 November 2019, Bryan Adams released an EP dedicated to Christmas.

81.

On 13 November 2020, Bryan Adams was featured on "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" as part of the BBC Radio 2's Allstars' Children in Need charity single.

82.

On 7 December 2020, Bryan Adams announced a series of UK concerts following the long hiatus of the "Shine a Light Tour" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the cancellation of a sold out 17-date tour with Bon Jovi in US arenas.

83.

In July 2021, Bryan Adams signed a deal with Bertelsmann Music Group to release his next album.

84.

On 11 October 2021, Bryan Adams released the title track of his 15th studio album, So Happy It Hurts.

85.

Bryan Adams announced dates for a worldwide tour starting in February 2022.

86.

On 17 December 2021, Bryan Adams announced the cancellation of all remaining tours and concerts for the year, including his New Year's Eve show in Vancouver, due to both concerns and restrictions due to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.

87.

On 1 April 2022, Bryan Adams released Classic, an album of reworked and reimagined hits.

88.

Bryan Adams approached Disney in 2009 to see if they would be interested in making the 1990 film into Pretty Woman: The Musical for Broadway.

89.

Bryan Adams recruited Jim Vallance, and the two of them spent the next two years writing the music and lyrics, and completed the songs in March 2018.

90.

Bryan Adams' voice has been described as a "sandpaper tenor that's a cross between Joe Cocker and Bruce Springsteen".

91.

Bryan Adams has played various styles of rock, from hard rock and arena rock to pop rock and soft rock.

92.

The genre of the single was disco; the melody, a piano riff inspired by Robbie King, was composed by Vallance on his parents' piano during the Christmas holidays in 1977; Bryan Adams, meanwhile, helped turn the riff into a song.

93.

In 1982, Vallance and Bryan Adams received a call from producer Michael James Jackson to contribute some songs for the next Kiss album.

94.

Since the 1980s, Bryan Adams has participated in concerts and other activities to help raise money and awareness for a variety of causes.

95.

In 1986, Bryan Adams performed at The Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert in Wembley Arena to celebrate first 10 years of the Trust and again in June 1987 at the 5th Annual Prince's Trust Rock Gala along with Elton John, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and others.

96.

In July 1989, Bryan Adams committed to work on another charity record: the remake of the Deep Purple classic "Smoke on the Water" for Rock Aid Armenia to obtain funds for the earthquake that occurred in Armenia at that time.

97.

Bryan Adams helped commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall when, in 1990, he joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall in Berlin, Germany.

98.

On 2 March 1993, Bryan Adams attended the Rock for the Rainforest, benefit concert hosted by Rainforest Foundation Fund is a charitable foundation founded in 1987 and dedicated to the focus on rainforests and defend rights of the indigenous peoples who live there.

99.

On 29 January 2005, Bryan Adams joined the CBC benefit concert in Toronto for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

100.

Twenty years after performing at Live Aid in the US, Bryan Adams played at Canada's Live 8 show in Barrie, Ontario.

101.

Bryan Adams auctioned a white Fender Stratocaster guitar signed by many of the world's prominent guitarists.

102.

On 29 January 2006, Bryan Adams became the first Western artist to perform in Karachi, Pakistan after the September 11th attacks in conjunction with a benefit concert by Shehzad Roy to raise money for underprivileged children to go to school.

103.

On 14 September 2014, Bryan Adams was the first artist to sing at the Invictus Games organised by Prince Harry in East London.

104.

In 2016, Bryan Adams canceled an 14 April concert at Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi.

105.

In previous years, Bryan Adams had built a playground for Ashburnham Community School in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London with his foundation.

106.

On 10 November 2002, Bryan Adams participated in the benefit concert at the Royal Opera House in London for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.

107.

Bryan Adams is the president of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Environment Fund, a non-profit company registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to support sustainable initiatives to promote the preservation of the beauty and natural value of the islands.

108.

In May 2020, Bryan Adams was criticized for a profane social media post blaming the COVID-19 pandemic on "bat eating".

109.

Bryan Adams has been published in British Vogue, L'uomo Vogue, American Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, British GQ, Esquire, Interview magazine and i-D, and shot advertising and PR campaigns for Hugo Boss, Guess Jeans, Sand, Converse, Montblanc, John Richmond, Fred Perry, Escada, Gaastra, Zeiss, Joop, Zeiss AG, Schwarzkopf, Ermenegildo Zegna, AGL shoes, Windsor, Jaguar and OPEL cars.

110.

Bryan Adams won three Lead Awards in Germany for his fashion photography, most recently in October 2015 for his story in Helmut Berger, and previously in June 2012 and again in 2006.

111.

Bryan Adams founded the art fashion Zoo Magazine, based in Berlin, for which he shoots regularly.

112.

In 2002, Bryan Adams was invited, along with other photographers from the Commonwealth, to photograph Queen Elizabeth II during her Golden Jubilee; one of the photographs from this session was used as a Canadian postage stamp in 2004 and again in 2005, another portrait of both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

113.

Bryan Adams photographed Iggy Pop, Rita Ora, Cher, Grimes, Normani, Kali Uchis, Jennifer Hudson, Saweetie, St Vincent and Bohan Phoenix.

114.

Bryan Adams has photographed many of his colleagues in the music business.

115.

On 30 October 2021, Bryan Adams cancelled his participation in a tribute to singer Tina Turner, just before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, after testing positive for COVID-19.

116.

Bryan Adams was nominated for his fifth Golden Globe in 2007 for songwriting for the film Bobby; the song was performed by Aretha Franklin and Mary J Blige.

117.

In 2008, Bryan Adams was ranked 38th on the list of all-time top artists in the Billboard Hot 100 50th Anniversary Charts.

118.

In 1990, Bryan Adams was awarded the Order of British Columbia.

119.

On 20 April 1990, Bryan Adams was made a Member of the Order of Canada, and on 6 May 1998, was promoted within the order to the rank of Officer of the Order of Canada.

120.

Bryan Adams received these awards for his contributions to popular music and philanthropic work via his foundation, which helps improve education for people around the world.

121.

On 1 May 2010, Bryan Adams received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

122.

Bryan Adams has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

123.

Bryan Adams is a recipient of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal.

124.

In 2023, Bryan Adams was nominated for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

125.

Adams' backing band, known as "The Dudes of Leisure" or the "Bryan Adams Band", is the informal name given to the group of musicians who accompany Bryan Adams both in the studio and during live performances.