Bryan Adams Biography

Bryan Adams, OC, OBC (born 5 November 1959, Kingston, Ontario) is a Canadian rock singer, guitarist and songwriter. Some of his best-known albums are Reckless, Waking up the Neighbours and 18 'Til I Die.

Adams was awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia for his contribution to popular music and his philanthropic work. He was also inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 1998, and more recently inducted into the Music Hall of Fame at Canada's Juno Awards April 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards for songwriting.

Adams, was born in Kingston, Ontario, and travelled throughout Europe and the Middle East with his diplomat parents, until they settled back in Canada in 1973. Adams started his musical career after dropping out of school at the age of 15.

At the age of seventeen, Adams sent a few demo recordings to A&M Records and was signed to them, by the age of 18, for one dollar. He has written and released fourteen albums since then. Some of the first demos written in 1978 have surfaced over the years; most notably "I'm Ready" (recorded for both the album Cuts Like a Knife and later his release for MTV Unplugged) and "Remember", which went on his first album. Both songs were covered by other artists before his first album was even released.

In 1985 Adams co-wrote the Canadian benefit record for Ethiopia called Tears Are Not Enough. In that same year, he took part in the U.S. side of the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia. He was a featured member of Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope Tour and was in London to play at the Nelson Mandela birthday party concert at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

In 1990 he joined many other guests (including Michael Kamen) for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall in Berlin, Germany. In 1992 Adams protested against Canadian Content regulations, which were changed as a result. He successfully campaigned for the Southern Antarctic Whale Sanctuary in the mid-1990s with Greenpeace Chairman David McTaggert. (The two distributed over 500,000 postcards at concerts around the world encouraging politicians to vote yes for the creation of the sanctuary.) On his 1998 album On a Day Like Today, he supports the Elephant Sanctuary, Hohenwald in Tennessee and Elefriends in England. Adams also supports breast cancer research through donations from his photography (see below).

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

On 2 July 2005, Adams performed at Live 8's Canadian performance in Barrie, Ontario.

On 25 May 2005, Adams and cousin Johnny Armitage raised £1.3M from a concert and auction entitled Rock by the River for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

On 15 November 2005, Adams played in Qatar and raised an astonishing £1.5M ($2,617,000) through a performance and the auction of a guitar he had purposely signed by many of the worlds most prominent guitarists. The money went to Qatar's "Reach Out to Asia" campaign to help the underprivileged across the continent, and to his own projects of rebuilding a school in Thailand and building a new sports center in Sri Lanka, both of which had been devastated by the tsunami.

On 29 January 2006, he was the first western artist to perform in Karachi, Pakistan, in conjunction with a benefit concert to raise money for underprivileged children to go to school; some of the proceeds of that concert also went to victims of the 2005 earthquake.

On 15th May he attended the Hope Foundation's London event (hosted by designer Bella Freud) helping to raise a portion of the £250,000 pounds for support of Palestinian Refugee Children.

On 15th May 2006 Adams was made an Ambassador to the Prince's Trust, an honarary appointment made by Prince Charles Charity in London to raise awareness for young people looking for work.

In June 2006 at three different charity auctions in London, England, Adams offered individuals from the public the chance to bid to sing with him live in concert. Over £50,000.00 was raised with money going to the NSPCC (The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), Children in Need (an annual British charity appeal organized by the BBC) and the UCLH.

His works for movie soundtracks include: