Bryan Adams

BRYAN ADAMS

 
Bryan Adams  (born 5 November 1959) is a Canadian singer, musician, producer, actor, social activist, and photographer.  Adams has been one of the most successful figures of the world of rock music during last three decades.  He’s known for his strong husky vocals and energetic live performances.  In 1991, he released his popular Waking Up the Neighbors album which included “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”, one of the best-selling singles of all time.   (More from Wikipedia)

 

 

Dion DiMucci was one of the leading rock and rollers of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and his work still sounds great to me to this day.   
 
After a long career in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and a period of Christian contemporary recordings, Dion was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and released a great comeback album called Yo Frankie in 1989.  The sticker on the cover proclaims:  “The man who invented the rock & roll attitude . . . has now perfected it.”  Produced by Dave Edmunds, the album features numerous guest appearances:  Paul SimonLou Reedk.d. langPatty Smyth and Bryan Adams.  Reed’s speech at the induction ceremony is also included on the sleeve. 
  
(September 2012)
 
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Without question, Patrick Leonard is the most prominent ex-bandmember of Trillion and is primarily known as a keyboard player, producer and songwriter in the early part of Madonna’s career.  Other rock artists that Leonard has worked with over the years literally reads like a Who’s Who:  Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, Ted NugentBryan AdamsKenny LogginsPeter CeteraJody WatleyNatalie Imbruglia, and Natasha Bedingfield.  Showing his flexibility, he also co-wrote and produced two of the songs (including the title song, and both in Greek) for an album for Cypriot Greek pop musician Anna Vissi, Apagorevmeno (2008); and co-wrote a song for new age musician David Darling, “96 Years”. 
 
 (October 2012)
 
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The concert event The Wall – Live in Berlin, a July 1990 performance of the 1980 Pink Floyd album The Wall took place at the site of the Berlin Wall that had come down eight months previously.  The concert was organized by Roger Waters, who had been the frontman for the band during their hitmaking period in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, though he left Pink Floyd in 1985 over creative differences and attempted to prevent the other bandmembers from continuing to use the name (they settled out of court in 1987). 

 

Roger Waters had said during an interview in July 1989 that the only way he would perform The Wall live again was “if the Berlin Wall came down” – and four months later, it did.  Attendance at the concert site itself was a record-breaking 450,000, and it was also broadcast live worldwide.  Scorpions opened the concert with “In the Flesh” and also performed on three other songs.  Guest artists included Cyndi LauperMarianne FaithfullThomas DolbySinéad O’ConnorJoni MitchellVan MorrisonBryan Adams, and Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of the Band.  Tim CurryAlbert FinneyUte Lemper and Jerry Hall are actors who also performed, mostly during “the Trial” sequence toward the end.  As the concert was performed, a gigantic wall (550 feet long and 82 feet high) that appeared to be made of large styrofoam blocks was completed; at the end of the trial, the judge declared:  “Tear down the Wall!”, and the wall was pushed over, row by row. 

 

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Other Canadian rockers include Bryan Adamsk.d. langRushLoverboyKlaatuKate and Anna McGarrigle, and so many more.  Anna McGarrigle wrote the title song “Heart Like a Wheel” on Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel that was later used as the name of a 1983 film also called Heart Like a Wheel about drag racer Shirley Muldowney; while Kate McGarrigle was married to Chapel Hill-born singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III whose union resulted in the birth of two more musicians, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright.  I have a CD somewhere that features the whole family if I remember right. 

 

(April 2013)

 
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Together with Ryan Adams (not to be confused with Bryan Adams), Jesse Malin co-founded a hardcore punk rock band in 2002 called The Finger.  

 

(June 2013/2)

 
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Opposition to the unfair imprisonment of two women in Pussy Riot became a cause célèbre of many Western celebrities plus musicians from every genre imaginable:  Bryan AdamsBeastie Boysthe Black Keys, John CalePeter GabrielGreen Day, Nina Hagen, Kathleen Hanna, Paul McCartney, MobyYoko OnoPet Shop BoysRed Hot Chili Peppers, Patti Smith, StingPete Townshend, etc.  Pussy Riot was featured on 60 Minutes as well. 

 

For their part, the bandmembers in Pussy Riot that were not in prison distanced themselves from all of this attention and were quoted as saying:  “We’re flattered, of course, that Madonna and Björk have offered to perform with us.  But the only performances we’ll participate in are illegal ones.  We refuse to perform as part of the capitalist system, at concerts where they sell tickets.” 

 

(December 2013)

 

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First-wave punk rock bands were probably the last group of rock bands that were started by people who likely didn’t expect them to last.  This was true of most 1960’s bands also, as immortalized in the Bryan Adams song “Summer of ’69”:  “Me and some guys from school / Had a band and we tried real hard / Jimmy quit, Jody got married / Shoulda known, we’d never get far”.  After shaking their collective fist at the world and putting up with the chaotic atmosphere inside most young punk bands, it is not surprising that most never got past the release of two or three singles.  Even 40 years later though, these early punkers put out staggeringly good music on these modest discs. 
 
(March 2017)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021