Adams, Bryan

1959 - Born on November 5, 1959, in Kingston, Ontario.

1977-1978 - 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.

1980-1988 - This time was also the start of a long songwriting partnership between Adams and co-writer Jim Vallance, which led to the first solo album, Bryan Adams, released in 1980. His second album, You Want It You Got It (1981), contained the FM radio hit "Lonely Nights", but it wasn't until his third album, Cuts Like a Knife, that he broke through with four hits in 1983, most notably with the title track. He quickly followed up that album with Reckless at the end of 1984, which produced six Top 40 songs and has since been certified five times platinum in the US. Next came Into the Fire in 1987, which was also certified platinum. This was the last album completely written by Adams and Vallance, but many of the fragments of their other songs ended up on the forthcoming block buster Waking up the Neighbours. 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. Live!Live!Live! is the complete recording of the 3 July 1988 concert in Werchter, Belgium, which was broadcast by the CBC in Canada and on MTV around the world.

1990-1998 - 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. 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

2005 - On January 29, 2005, Adams joined the CBC benefit concert from Toronto for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. On May 25, 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 June 1, 2005, he published his first book of photos in the United States with Calvin Klein called American Women; proceeds from this book go to breast cancer research for programs at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. On July 2, 2005, Adams performed at Live 8's Canadian performance in Barrie, Ontario. On November 15, 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.

2006 - On January 29, 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 March 15, 2006, Adams was presented with the gold award for his photo editorial on actor Mickey Rourke at the German Lead Awards in Hamburg, Germany. On May 15, 2006, Adams 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 and 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.